Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Current Show: Winter 2009-2010: Stephen Eichhorn

We just put up the new show last night. The day before was the first day of snow here in Chicago, and while we were at lula measuring walls and hanging work there was a classic nasty winter sleet storm outside, with slush collecting an inch deep on the sidewalk and flakes the size of postage stamps dropping onto the windows and slowly dissolving into streams on the glass. For the next few months, while winter howls outside, Lula is going to be a little safe house for spring.






We're super happy to have Stephen's collages up. It has to be seen to be believed. This is not photoshop. There is no shortcut here. He has literally hand-cut every leaf and petal from his source material of old magazines and weird seventies forest wallpaper. Stephen has shown as far away as the U.K., as well as both coasts. For a little more about the work, take a look at this little video (about 2 1/2 minutes). Below are a couple of images from his studio. The green stuff in those trays is a pile of stuff he's cut out, waiting to be applied.


And a couple more of the images:


Friday, September 18, 2009

Show: Fall 2009: Kim Jae Young and Jeremy Bolen


The new show at Lula features photographer Jeremy Bolen and printmaker and book artist Kim Jae Young.

Until recently Jeremy Bolen was a singer and guitarist in local Chicago art pop act Chin Up Chin Up. He's also a photographer. He's spent the last few summers
taking pictures in the Northeast, in what used to be referred to as the
Borscht Belt, and in the Salton Sea in Southern California. Both areas were once thriving resort areas, now abandoned.He's been chased, yelled at and has fallen through decayed flooring to get pictures for the ongoing photo project Leftover and
Leaving. This fall Lula is showing just a small sample of something that is going
to be epic.


Kim Jae Young is a native of Seoul, South Korea, currently working on an MFA at the School of the Art Institute. Her work is meticulous and highly labor intensive. The mandala-like Bottom series includes three screen prints of 16, 20 and 23 colors respectively, recreating the subtle gradations of light as seen through the bottoms of plastic beverage bottles. The intricacies of her book works in the bar cases are similarly obsessive and even more dramatic.



The present show is scheduled to be up through November of 2009. Jeremy's photographs are $750 mounted, $600 for the photo only. Jae Young's Prints are between $240 and $360, with two, Bottom #4 and Bottom #5 priced at $550. All of them are framed. For more information and sales contact Anders or Marianne (see left).

Friday, August 28, 2009

A Benefit for 46 Million (plus)

Several artists who have shown at Lula in the past along with a number of other local and nationally recognized artists, are participating in an online art auction to benefit efforts to pass real, substantive health care reform with a strong public option. For more information about the auction see curator Anders Nilsen's web journal, the monologuist, as well as coverage in the Reader and Time Out.

Artists associated with Lula include: Cheryl Weaver (Sky photo pictured above), Jeffrey Brown, Kyle Obriot, Stephen Eichhorn, Sonnezimmer Print Studio, Jordan Crane, Anders Nilsen and Todd Baxter. Among the other artists are Dan Clowes (author of Ghostworld), Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, and Genevieve Castree (her watercolor "Because the Night" pictured below).

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Show: Summer 2009

The current show is made up of the double exposed Polaroids of Kyle Obriot. The photos are made with a Polaroid Land Camera, for which the company no longer makes film. Kyle hunts down old film and improvises his double exposures in the short time allowed by polaroid's instant chemistry. He just has a minute or two after the first image, to find a second to lay over it. Kyle is a photographer and film maker from the Detroit area, currently living in Chicago.




Todd Baxter is a transplant to Chicago from New Mexico. He makes a living in commercial photography, actively pursuing his own work in his home studio looking out on Humboldt Park. He grew up in New Mexico, lived for a while in Oman and then Budapest before settling in Chicago where he's lived for the past eight years or so. As a student he worked mostly in painting and collage, and both closely influence his approach to taking pictures. Much of his work involves painstaking digital collage of elements from different photos, like tapirs and astronauts, together into single seamless pictures. The monumental scale of pictures like the one here don't really translate on a computer screen.
Todd is currently working on an incredibly ambitious multi photo narrative series about two kids (owl scouts) who get lost in the forest and their misadventures. Some of the progress of the project, and the objects and constructions he's making for it can be seen here.


Jae Young Kim is a native of Seoul, South Korea. She is currently a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jae Young is presently showing several sculptural books and other constructions in the bar cases. More of her prints and other works on paper will be shown in the dining room in the Fall.