Artist of the Week: Ryan Travis Christian
Artist of the Week: Daniel Hojnacki
Daniel Hojnacki recently received his BA in photography from Columbia College. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. His work is currently on view in the group show Limits of Photography at the Museum of Contemporary Photography until March 25th.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger what would you say? Mixed-media photography-based work that incorporates a lot of painterly elements, and “I print on a lot of tape.”
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I use an obscene amount of tape that is digitally printed upon with the photographic process. With the masking tape I can use the image as a giant sticker pasting it to any surface. I can rework the ink while it sits on the plastic surface, using polyurethane and other spray mediums to print the image multiple times in variations of tonal ranges on multiple layers of scotch tape. Then being able to peel away the layers again to reveal what happens underneath. It becomes a very tedious process that has a lot of exciting elements to it that I’m still developing control of while relying a lot on chance and wishful pondering to push the work further.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I’ve been reading about and looking at a lot of abstract painting, sublime, monochrome works of Robert Ryman and Kazamiri Malevich, almost an opposite or distraction from photography. Right now the aspects of time are really influencing things right now. How things natural/unnatural decay, grow and can subtlety un-noticeably change. The nature of illusion in art through materials, I’m most drawn to work that has a magic trick-like process to it. Also a recent obsession with clouds and the movement of light.
How did your interest in art begin? Maybe a photography class in high school, and the books of Dan Eldon and David Hockney, but I can’t be all too sure where the interests began. Seems more like it came in many different forms through poetry, painting and music.
How has your work developed within the past year? It’s been a frustrating and exciting year figuring out my materials and why I find them so fascinating. My workflow is carried by one accident or happening which leads to another and another. Things that I want to try and control and it’s been that way for the last year or so. Taking it one step at a time in efforts to continue the development of some kind of body of work.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? Probably the most satisfying thing is “How the hell is he doing that?” I love creating the illusion of what is physical and what is not. Also to give the viewer a sense of temporality in my work through the materials I choose to use. That the photographic process doesn’t need to be so permanent or fixed, and how that responds to my choice of imagery.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I am currently exploring a variety of new ways to work with my materials through experiments with the digital printing process of photography and painting. My latest works in progress are tending to maneuver away from the actual photographic image, into abstraction and formal studies of my materials. Also, continuing a project never posted on my website or anywhere outside of a botany class in college, I will be working with the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park in Tennessee this June to continue a documentary project on invasive plants and species I started in 2010.
What artists are you interested in right now? I’m always looking at Spencer Finch, and Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, the new work of Laura Letinsky, along with a recent interest in the beautiful work of Nazafarin Lotfi, who currently is exhibiting at Tony Wight Gallery here in Chicago.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? First thing that comes to mind was a large exhibition held for still life painter Giorgio Morandi I saw in Italy visiting my brother in February. He has a legacy in Italy, and I’d never saw his work before. It was an enormous collection of beautiful pieces, and it just made me realize how much I’ve yet to see and learn.
What’s your favorite thing about Chicago? My favorite thing about Chicago is the possibilities for artists here, and the large number of such eclectic arts organizations, big and small, that are willing to and want to promote, teach, and exhibit in the arts community at any level of their career.
Artist of the Week: Ethan Gill
Artist of the Week: Daniel Shea
Daniel Shea is an artist living and working in Chicago. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently pursuing his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Daniel showed with LVL3 at MDW Fair in April 2011.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I try to make things as bleak as reality.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? For my sculptural and installation-based work I tend to use a lot of found materials that suggest a complicated, often mythologized past. I combine these with their available, industrial counter parts, literal or metaphoric. I’m interested in objects that exist between past and present or project dread.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Lately, Appalachian folklore, Walter Benjamin, Robert Gober, and Malevich.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I’ve been working on a project, tentatively titled Anamnemon, that examines the mythology construction of post-industrial ruin. I’ve been traveling to two locations in Illinois, which are interesting both in their specificity (their relative industrial/historical lineages) in addition to their ability to function as anonymous sites. The work has thus far taken on a reconfiguring of found materials from these sites, collages that deal with the exterior/interior dialectic that ruins produce, and a series of straight photographs made at these sites. The work is really new, so I’m excited about it, but I also have no idea where it’s going.
What is one of the bigger challenges you’re struggling with these days, and how do you see it developing? I’ve been getting stuck a lot. I have many ideas, they just aren’t rooting themselves in interesting forms. I’ve been staring at the wall, reading books, thinking, etc. It’s fine, but not great.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I saw Christian Patterson’s new work, Redheaded Peckerwood, and his handling of various documents combined with original photographs was depressingly good.
What’s your favorite thing about Chicago? Because there is no substantial art market, there are slew of interesting curatorial and gallery projects run by artists with ambitions outside of the market. Shout outs to LVL3, Acre Residency, Document, Peregrine Programs, Hornswaggler, Harold Arts, Jettison Quarterly, and MDW art fair. Anthony Elms wrote this amazing thing about Chicago.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I work out at a Crossfit gym which is a cool cult I belong to. I play in a punk band which is part of another great cult worth checking out. I read a lot of books, watch Netflix and smoke weed with my roommate, shit like that.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why? Facebook.com, Gmail.com, and Tumblr.com, because I’m a 21st century idiot.
Favorite music? Lately I’ve been make playlists in my studio of early Juicy J/Triple Six Mafia and French black metal. They are both primitive and raw and sound like murder, so it takes me places. I never stop listening to Cro-Mags and Death in June.
What were you like in high school? Punk, man.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? I’m in grad school, and we recently had open studios. A guy came into my studio and saw some photos on my wall and asked if I was a photographer, and I said yes. He then spent a moment looking at a sculpture on the floor before pointing to it and saying “that’s not a photograph.” This is a “best reaction” story.
I am the Queen
Sunday, December 4th, 2011
Doors at 5:30pm, screening at 6:00pm 
A film by
I am The Queen takes a look at the often unobserved life of Chicago’s Puerto Rican transgender community. This film documents the Cacique Pageant, the first annual transgender/drag pageant held in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. I am the Queen follows Bianca, Julissa, Jolizza and Alayna as they prepare for the Cacique Pageant and negotiate being a teenager and transgender in a predominantly Latino neighborhood of Chicago. The film exposes the restructuring of the family unit experienced by pageant participants who are often distanced from their biological family only to find kinship among others in their community. Q&A following the screening
LVL3 will be featuring work by artist:
Kate Steciw,
Beth Stuart,
and
Fraser Taylor
More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in innovative culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a platform for established and emerging galleries to promote the work of cutting-edge artists. NEXT is dedicated to the exhibition and advancement of today’s art. NEXT is the catalyst for the exchange of information and experimental ideas aimed at today’s educated collectors.
NEXT includes works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations—galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world.
Fair Hours:
Friday, April 29, 2011 11:00am – 7:00pm
Saturday, April 30, 2011 11:00am – 7:00pm
Sunday, May 1, 2011 11:00am – 6:00pm
Monday, May 2, 2011 11:00am – 4:00pm
222 Merchandise Mart Plaza Chicago IL 60654 *free tickets available upon request info@lvl3gallery.com
Artist of the Week: Heidi Norton
Heidi Norton is an artist living and working in Chicago, IL. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Spain and London.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I would say that I paint plants and photograph them. Then I watch them grow out of the paint into their second life or sometimes death and photograph them again.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Chromophobia by David Batchelor, spider plants, house paint in grey and peach, trash, perception, the artificial vs the natural, beauty as cliché, my parents’ youth, vintage books on gardening, Vilem Flusser, Spacemen 3.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I recently did a solo display of images in conjunction with Monique Meloche Gallery at the James Hotel. I also just did a group show in an alternative space (William H. Cooper warehouse) with the Andrew Rafacz boys (Matt Stolle, Zach Buchner, John Opera, Andrew Falkowski), Welcome to the Neighborhood, a show renegotiating modernism and materiality in a warehouse full of trash and junk. As far as work is concerned, more Whitescapes and Blackscapes, more still life with 3-d sculptural objects constructed from new age-y trash.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Plants, paint, fruit, spray paint, mirrors, books, film, photos, whiskey, sand, shells, rocks, wax, horns. I construct plexi and wood shelving units, arrange objects (sometimes painted and sometimes not), and then photograph them. 
What is one of the bigger challenges you’re struggle with these days, and how do you see it developing? As an artist who primarily uses photography, I’m tired of justifying photography as a medium. I’m not sure why this is still a relevant debate. A symposium like SMOMA’s, “Is Photography Dead” is a waste of time and further perpetuates these notions. If anything, photography is more relevant than ever.
What artists are you interested in right now? John Opera , Robert Irwin, Sheree Hovsepian , Barbara Kasten , Baroque still life painters, Paul Otterbridge, Callahan, Anthony Pearson, Robert Irwin, Kate Steciw , Rashid Johnson, Josef Albers, various modernist photographers, Rachel Harrison, William Pope L.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Two: William Eggelston at ARTIC (here’s a review I did of the show) and Marina Abramović at MOMA.
If you had one wish what would it be? To be a self-sustaining artist.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I teach photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I jump off cliffs into bodies of water, I watch bad reality TV, I walk in the woods, I explore.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? Can I pick outer space? I guess that’s not the world. So a field of lavender in the forest of Berlin while Leonard Cohen plays in the background.
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