Spaces Into Places

Lloyd Dobler Gallery is pleased to announce the beginning of their fall season with Spaces into Places. This group exhibition features works by John Fekner, Don Leicht, Object Orange, Ben Polsky, Kyong Park, Caroline Voagen-Nelson as well as a special slide show of the 11 Spring Street Project organized by the Wooster Collective in the forms of drawing, photography, collage, and video.

Lloyd Dobler Gallery is located on the fringe of Wicker Park in Chicago, a post-industrial neighborhood that has been nearly completely gentrified in the past two decades. Once known for its Polish and Hispanic populations, as well as its small factories, it is now known as the neighborhood where the Real World was filmed, the hippest, trendiest area of Chicago where Marc Jacobs has decided to open his only store. When the idea for this show surfaced, it was mainly going to be about gentrification, but eventually it met with a larger overall theme of seeing how artists responded to their post-industrial city. So, each artist/collective has a different way of reacting to their certain situations, whether it is gentrification, decay, their shrinking city. Spaces into Places is an exhibition of response. The artists within this show are actively responding to their environments and what is happening in their urban communities throughout the country.

Between the years of 1976-1985, John Fekner stenciled phrases around the five boroughs of New York City. These included Broken Promises, Remains of Industry, NY & DK 4ever, amongst others. He sought out places where industry had failed or been abandoned, where renewal was much needed, yet overlooked. There is a famous image of Ronald Regan standing in front of a Broken Promises stencil, pledging to renew the area of the South Bronx. Fekner? collaborator, Don Leicht, has also contributed to this project, amongst others.

Object Orange is a collective as well as an artistic movement. Based in Detroit, they paint the facades of derelict and decrepit houses in the area a bright Tiggerific orange, a Disney color found at any Home Depot. Detroit is a city that is shrinking; the suburbs grow as the urban area becomes increasingly abandoned. Object Orange strives to bring to light, as many other Detroit artists do, the conditions of their city. They draw attention to these abandoned houses overnight with their painting, often the houses are destroyed in the coming days after they are painted. The city looks upon the newly lacquered buildings as vandalism instead of a public outcry for help.

Caroline Voagen Nelson? contribution is a photographic collage, built with images from demolished urban and natural landscapes. Working with the active renewal of Chicago? near west side, this piece includes pieces of Gold Coast skyscrapers to the demolished housing project Cabrini Green. The mysterious and pleasing shape created does not cancel out the worry that comes with the displacement of so many people and the gentrification that will rise from the rapid construction in Chicago.

The dislocation of industry is an idea that Ben Polsky has been working with in his artistic practice. His extremely detailed ink drawings display the idea of ruin and neglect, and what happens when buildings are left to their own devices. Working in Newark, NJ (a veritable site of urban decay and attempts at revitalization), Ben continues to seek out and document these particular conditions in his drawings. Ben has work in many private collections and has been published in Harper's literary magazine.

Kyong Park is an artist and curator working in Detroit and New York City. He is part of the team of curators on the Detroit part of the worldwide Shrinking Cities exhibition. Park has focused on the urban crisis in Detroit for many years. His video in Spaces into Places (Detroit: Making It Better For You) is a narrative piece about the corporations plan to take over Detroit, making it the site it is today.

The 11 Spring Street Project, orchestrated by Wooster Collective (www.woostercollective.com), took place in late 2006. Street and graffiti artists from all over the world were invited to participate before the building was turned into condos. After the public was invited in for a weekend, the owners turned the inside of the building into a time capsule, keeping the artwork on the walls intact.