Winter Show 2014: Todd Baxter

Lula is pleased to announce its 2014 Winter show, Project Astoria: Test One, photographs by Todd Baxter. Opening reception with the artist will be held Tuesday, December 17th, 6-9.

Project Astoria is an exploration of an imagined new planet and its moons, discovered hidden within our Sun's system by an amateur astronomer in Astoria, Illinois, in the 1920's. The moons, named for his daughters, are found to be habitable and are colonized by a co-operative multinational expedition from our own world in the mid 1970's. The images follow the moons' immigrants as they explore, adapt and create a new life in their strange new worlds. Moving between the surreal feeling of a fairy tale and something more comfortable and deceptively mundane, the Astoria Project takes Baxter's unique visions to an ambitious new level. Trained as a painter and collagist, Baxter creates lush, atmospheric, intricately constructed narrative scenes that feel at once strange and familiar. The images from Astoria are painstakingly and seamlessly assembled from location shots taken in places as close by as Kentucky and Washington and as far afield as Morocco, Hawaii and Guam. Astoria's inhabitants are shot in the studio with hand made costumes, or in the case of one giant snow creature, constructed from clay with a dog's fur applied seamlessly by digital means. The characters and stories are fleshed out by Baxter and collaborator Aubrey Videtto.

Fall Show: Katie Loomis and Carrie Gundersdorf

For the Fall show we are excited to pair the work of two Chicago based artists, Carrie Gundersdorf and Katie Loomis. 

Gundersdorf is both a painter and collagist. Following an interest in imagery of astronomical and weather phenomena she builds collages that play with repetition and pattern using the found images of sunspots, lightning strikes and the Aurora Borealis. The familiar imagery is abstracted and reframed through repetition and patterning in a way that touches on a long history in art from traditional crafts to high modernism.

Also pulling inspiration from scientific imagery of the universe and geologic formations, Katie Loomis' paintings investigate the line between control and spontaneity. She uses careful manipulations of paint to create perfect edges of color paired with a more random, dye-like staining technique where paint is applied into un-sized canvas. She achieves phenomenal effects and vivid colors evoking a tension of opposite aesthetic impulses. 

  













A reception with the artists will be held Tuesday, September 17 from 6 to 9. Hors d'oeuvres will be served 

Summer Show 2013: Sonnenzimmer and Jordan Martins

For this Summer's show Lula presents a collaboration between Jordan Martins and Sonnenzimmer.

Jordan Martins (above) is a collagist, creating finely detailed, intricate, massive compositions from widely varying visual sources, minutely fragmented and sealed in resin. Sonnenzimmer‘s Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher are well known as designers and poster artists, but they have been getting increased attention lately for their paintings as well (see below). Working in an intuitive, collaborative abstraction, the two produce gorgeous, unexpected, pastel-colored images. The three artists will collaborate on a series of prints to be hung together with a number of their own respective compositions paired and grouped collaboratively. The show opens, with a reception with the artists on June 11th from 6-9. Drink specials and hors d’oeuvres provided by Lula.

Spring Show 2013: Jarmo Koponen and Alex Cohen

Lula Cafe is pleased to to present work by Jarmo Koponen and Alex Cohen for the Spring show, opening March 5th, 6-9.

Jarmo Koponen is a photographer and painter, native to Finland and currently living in Minneapolis.  Lula is presenting a series of landscapes and abstract architectural forms. The images are quiet and contemplative, with an underlying, subtle tension. Kaponen's work has been shown internationally. This is his first exhibition in Chicago.

Alex Cohen's work could hardly be more different. Cohen is a painter and ceramicist born and raised in Chicago whose work is colorful, playful, warm and loose. Lula is presenting a selection of his portraits. His subjects are straightforward and close at hand including his friends and family, icons of hip hop and skateboarding and at least one influential sitcom from the 1980s. For more information and a price list contact andersbrekhus@gmail.com or mfairb@gmail.com.