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Preview 9: A Boldness to Dare & Try
at Chicago Artists Coalition September 6 – 20, 2019 EXPO Art Week Curator Link to website catalogue: www.bit.ly/Preview9artists featuring: Leticia Bernaus, Karen Dana Cohen, Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero, Alejandro Jiménez-Flores, Tamara Becerra Valdez, and Latham Zearfoss What does it mean to lift weight beyond assumed limits? The six dynamic visual artists in this year’s Preview 9 boldly extend themselves to new challenges as artists. Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero, widely known as DJ Cqqchifruit, begins the BOLT residency with a renewed dedication to studio practice. Guerrero builds on their past decade as a leader of queer performance cultures in Miami and Chicago; for this Preview show, focusing on visual expressions of autonomy, gender, and heritage. Leticia Bernaus, a photographer and experimental filmmaker of confident precision, broadens her environmental and viewer interaction by installations of lens-based work. Bernaus places herself as a figure in site-specific performance and scenes, repetitively provoking the absurd and familiar. Alejandro Jiménez-Flores, a being of gentle spirit and immense cleverness, works conceptually to evoke representations of self, and their alter ego florencio, by light and shadow, negative space, and floral renderings on chiffon. Jiménez-Flores’ way of sight fills-in shape and presence that others’ might not imagine; viewers should take care to not miss the artist’s own presence on the gallery wall. Karen Dana Cohen paints with the care of an artist who truly loves creating worlds. Her blurred lines tell truths of intimacy and interiority, and through large- and small-scale works, she is powerful in assertions of space. Dana recently relocated to Chicago from the East Coast, and is a presence from whom this city can look forward to seeing more. Tamara Becerra Valdez, a force unafraid to venture into the back alleys of disregarded materiality, finds deep meaning in rough exteriors, textured surfaces, and overlooked public spaces. Valdez sees and casts the narratives of human life that exist in age, language, and code, public and privately known. The artist Latham Zearfoss will be the first BOLT resident from this group to present a solo show, at the beginning of January next year. Zearfoss is a long-time arts organizer and contributor in Chicago, equally regarded for their studio practice and community engagements. Zearfoss has returned to town from a residency in New Zealand, and in this Preview shares elements of recent and forthcoming work. |
video still from "NOT EXACTLY LOVE" series by artist Leticia Bernaus 2018
video still from "MYTH OF CQQCHIFRUIT" by artist Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero 2015
from A Decade Faded, by Tamara Becerra Valdez 2019
video still from "NOT EXACTLY LOVE" series by artist Leticia Bernaus 2018
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