For EXPO Chicago, Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce a solo presentation by Marisa Adesman. This presentation continues her recent solo exhibition Forklore, on view at our Los Angeles gallery in 2021.

Adesman’s highly detailed scenarios evoke surrealist painters of art history such as Leonora Carrington and Méret Oppenheim as well as dark 1980s animated cartoons. Her compositions disorient how we think about domestic space and explore ideas about the strength and fragility of women. For example, Balancing Act depicts a nude woman laying on her back, her glass legs elevated toward the darkened sky while balancing a vase on her feet. The work is a mysterious allegory of appetites, equilibrium, immortality, and femininity.

Adesman’s humorous, thought-provoking paintings often depict ordinary objects in bizarre contexts and striking states of shapeshifting and mystical liquification. This can be seen in the wallpaper Adesman created specifically for EXPO Chicago, which depicts a luminous vine-like fork pattern. The fork, a recurring motif for the artist, symbolizes civilization, consumption and control. Her precise draftsmanship and delicate brushwork draw viewers into these fantasies, revealing insights into the human condition and challenging our perceptions of reality.

Marisa Adesman (b. 1991, Roslyn, NY) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI in 2018 and her BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, MO in 2013. She has exhibited work widely including at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), St. Louis, MO; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Black Mountain College Museum, Ashville, NC; and Mead Art Museum, Amherst College; Amherst, MA. Her first solo museum exhibition is forthcoming at KMAC, Louisville, KY. Adesman lives and works in St. Louis, MO.

 

A Chicago native, Sarah Ann Weber, draws reference from the tumultuous unrest of her hometown in the 1960s. Her imagery explores the disconnect between violent scenes of protest during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and photos of Hugh Hefner lounging in the original Playboy Mansion, which was located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. Hefner perfectly embodies this complicated moment in history; he was a political agitator despite his reputation as a flagrant hedonist, unapologetic in his pursuit of pleasure and opulence.

Weber bestows each image with a whirl of psychedelic colors and blossoms rendered in watercolor and colored pencil. Beneath each delicately patterned surface lies something unmistakably sinister. In the beautiful chaos, it becomes unclear whether figures are dancing or fighting, lounging or scheming.

Sarah Ann Weber (b. 1988, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at venues including Club Pro, Los Angeles; Some Time Salon, San Francisco; The Franklin, Chicago and Rena Sternberg Gallery, Glencoe, IL. Selected group exhibitions include Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco; Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale; MAUVE Gallery, Vienna, Austria; Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn; Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles; Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten. Berlin; Locust Projects, Miami and Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago.

For EXPO Chicago, Anat Ebgi presents new lightbox works from Jibade-Khalil Huffman and sculptures of Jason Bailer Losh.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman’s (b. 1981, Detroit) photo-based and moving-image works are experiments relating archives and collage to memory and language, particular to race and semiotics. The lightbox works for EXPO Chicago are assembled from layering scanned fragments of original photographs, and found sources, heavily manipulated with graphic and figurative overlays. In his subtle installation of one still and one moving-image pieces, movement and narrative are suggested through illumination. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY; Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and The Kitchen, New York, NY.

Jason Bailer Losh (b. 1977, Iowa) works with everyday materials, repurposed into sculptural configurations, both formal and jocose. Accessible and familiar, these intricate assemblages recall their tactility and functionality through craft, yet allow for new connotations within each finalized, unique assemblage, often bearing a cast patina or finish. For EXPO, Bailer Losh will also feature flat works which still embrace tactility through incorporation of concrete stains, India ink and wax.

solo exhibition by Alec Egan

Two-person presentation with Chris Coy and Neil Raitt.