First things first

Here's the press release for my exhibit:

The Suburban will host exhibitions by longtime friends and colleagues Dennis Kowalski and Patrick Collier in September and October. The opening reception is 2-4 pm Sunday, September 21, at The Suburban, 125 N. Harvey Ave. in Oak Park, IL.

Kowalski is a central figure in the history of contemporary art in Chicago. His particular approach to conceptual art in the 1970s set the pace for many younger artists to follow. In recent years his inspiration has come from the impact humans have on their environment, stating, “It is more difficult to maintain a civilization as it is to create one. We appear to lose interest.”

A native Chicagoan, Kowalski grew up across the street from Midway Airport when the area was still very much undeveloped and therefore had a sense of the natural about it. He has watched the city fill in while at the same time disintegrate: “The maintained sections of city come and go, and change location, yet continually deteriorate. For me, there are two symbols that typify this phenomenon: architecture/built structures and nature. Architecture deteriorates as the civilization deteriorates. It is destroyed through war, changing functional ideologies and changing styles.” This ever-changing yet neglected city of Chicago, just like most large cities, does not necessarily allow for a return to nature unaffected by the blight. “Nature has never been abused as it has within the last two hundred years or so. This factor certainly impacts the sustainability of current and future civilizations.” Kowalski’s installation at The Suburban will reflect these ideas.

Collier came to Chicago in 1985 as a writer transitioning into the visual arts. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1992. In 1998 he and his wife, Gillian Hearst, opened a gallery, bona fide, on West Chicago Ave. Collier was also a regular contributor to The New Art Examiner. In 2003 the couple moved to a small farm in Oregon and for several years grew organic vegetables for market. Not long after his arrival in Oregon, Collier became involved in the Portland art community and currently writes art criticism for Oregon ArtsWatch. Working in a variety of media, he often incorporates writing and forms suggestive of text into his visual art. Collier states, “A sentence in its expressiveness is not all that much different than a horizon in its expansiveness.” Most recently, he has explored this theme in his photographic work, some of which will be on view at The Suburban.

About The Suburban: The Suburban is an independently run artist exhibition space in Oak Park, IL. We give complete control to the artists in regards to what they choose to produce and exhibit. Thus it's a pro artist and anti curator site. The Suburban is not driven by commercial interests. It is funded within the economy of our household. Its success is not grounded in sales, press or the conventional measures set forth by the international art apparatus, but by the individual criteria set forth by the artists and their exhibitions. In this, The Suburban is more closely aligned with the idea of studio practice than that of the site of distribution.