Current Art Gallery Exhibits
Galleries One and Two
Christine Forni
Natural Recall
August 6 - September 13, 2024
Artist Talk and Reception: Wednesday, September 11, 2024
2:30 p.m. - Artist Talk in the Luecht Auditorium, B170
3:30 p.m. - Reception in Gallery One, A212x
Free and open to the public
- Forni’s Statement
The exhibition Natural Recall addresses the shifting landscapes of nature and memory through methodically deconstructing and then reinterpreting relationships merging from the past to the present. The installations I create are an archive of discarded elements from other more meticulously crafted bodies of work. I capture moments of solitude with terrain using light in interaction with glass, porcelain, reclaimed minerals, and paint skins. The work merges unused remnants or overlooked relics to evoke, recall, and remember. Salvaged and mounted together like specimens, they form a “beautiful but broken” material memory of a point in time. Unlike precious specimens, these are not preserved under glass but placed vulnerably on the surface with their fragility on display. The glass layers in my sculptural paintings invite close observation and reveal unexpected margins as well as the tenacity of nature through time. Layering these elements in a complex deconstruction/reconstruction process and employing chromatic translucent shifts straying from a source’s original color allows the landscape to become mentally stratified. In this work, I use imagery collected from my environmental community drawing project, Drawing You Outside. My experience growing up in the Rust Belt—where industry and nature are often starkly juxtaposed—informs my studio practice.
- About Christine Forni
Currently based in Chicago, Christine Forni is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting and sculpture, alternative photography, drawing, and installation. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Ueno Royal Japanese Art Museum and Awagami Paper Museum, Japan; Museo Internazionale Italia Arte and Museo di Scienze Naturali, Italy; Busan Federation of Art & Culture, South Korea; Centro de Artesanía Catalunya, Spain; Academia Romana, Romania; Museo Franz Mayer and Centro Cultural de Baja California, Mexico; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Rockford Art Museum and Hyde Park Art Center, Illinois; Houston Museum of Contemporary Craft, Texas; and DeCordova Sculpture Museum, Massachusetts.
See more information about Christine Forni online or Instagram.
Epping Gallery
Ginny Krueger
Reverie
August 5 - September 13, 2024
Ginny Krueger, Arenys de Munt: Gander, 2023, Collagraph monoprint
- Krueger’s Statement
In the summer of 2023, Ginny Krueger was immersed in the culture of the coastal southeastern region of Spain, Catalunya. The essence of this warm, welcoming place was hers to capture at a professional printmaking studio called Art Print Residence.
Within the primacy of Ginny’s arrival, the sun rays on the sea, the sand hills (Arenys de Munt), and the silhouetted, Mediterranean pine trees made their immutable impact.
Found in the sun-drenched works displayed here are flowers and fruit, witnessed at the markets, on the hillsides, and spiking from the Sagrada Familia spires. Simple, colorful wedges stand in for the ornate Gothic architecture. And surprisingly, somewhat auspiciously, a band of geese migrated into this body of work as a sign of zest and levity.
Reverie is a collection of abstractions, realized amidst the expansiveness of novelty and wanderings in Catalunya. It is a saturation of fruitful experiences and, at the same time, a fanciful daydream.
- About Ginny Krueger
Ginny Krueger is an abstract painter who derives inspiration from the land and the beauty, complexity, and interconnectivity of the natural world. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Northern Illinois University in 1995. She has received the Illinois Arts Council fellowship grant and has been awarded numerous artist residencies—in Canada, Mexico, Scotland, Greece, Iceland, and Spain.
While on residency, Ginny is fortunate to immerse herself in a new land, culture, people, and language. She finds it challenging and exhilarating to experience all of this, which inevitably yields expansiveness and the forging of a novel visual language.
Wherever she is, the earth and its bounty have a claim on her. Ginny is driven to make art that is elemental and evocative, where each print is a medley, a gleaning of observation and feeling in response to traversing about.
For more information, to request pricing, or to be added to the mailing list for upcoming exhibitions, please contact Trevor Power, Art Gallery Curator.