Rowland Contemporary
ART ★ CONTEMPORARY ART ★ SNACK ART ★ PERFORMANCE ART ★ POP ★ MINIMALIST
Chicago Art Scene
It was September 2005
when Mark Rowland returned to the Chicago art scene after a stint in the corporate world.
If Mark was known for anything, it was his ability to demystify the ominous process of building an art collection.
Armed with this knowledge, he opened a contemporary art gallery on the southwest corner of Fulton and May Streets.
This endeavor was not without success. The gallery soon became a platform for many well-known artists, including New York-based Ida Applebroog, Kelly Kaczynski, Carrie Moyer, Anders Ruhwald, Jason Karolak and Wallace Whitney.
Exhibits
In the four years of its existence, until 2009, Rowland Contemporary organized more than thirty individual and collective exhibitions of masters and emerging artists.
The last exhibitions held at the gallery were:
- • 2008 The Greatest Companions | Edra Soto |
"Coming Apart - In-Visible Cities" and "The Chacon-Soto Show: Featuring 'The Greatest Companions'"
are two exhibitions by artists Karen Lebergott and Edra Soto respectively,
which explore deviating viewpoints of identity and dislocation as mitigated through the lens of traditional systems of mapping, landscape, and pop culture.
Karen Lebergott's work focuses on the investigation of our sense of history, memory, identity, culture, and displacement through systems of mapping.
Edra Soto's work examines the role of the iconic 1970's Puerto Rican television star, Iris Chacon, through a series of paintings, reappropriated toys, and stage sets.
The exhibitions will run from November 7 - December 13, 2008, with an opening reception on November 7.
- • 2008 Coming Apart - In-Visible Cities | Karen Lebergott
- • 2008 Much More Than Previously Imagined | Tom Denlinger
- ★ 2007-2037 The Pillow and the Painting | Matthew Girson |
Matthew Girson's solo exhibition The Pillow and the Painting presents new investigations into technology and explores the artist's study of satellites and their meanings.
The exhibition includes two new works: The Sleep (of Reason Produces Monsters, I Think), 2007/2037, a 100-year long audio track that will be broadcast into outer space in 2037, and The Fall,
a large oil painting. The Sleep is a slowed-down recording of an excerpt from Maurice Blanchot's book, Thomas l'obscur, and The Fall presents the viewer with a dark canvas, with two shapes suggesting the back of a head.
Girson's work allows for the discovery of personal subjectivity and confronts viewers with subliminal absurdity and awe.
- • 2008 One is never so close [..] | Anders Ruhwald |
Anders Ruhwald is an artist based in London, known for his engagement of architectural space in his exhibitions.
In "One is never so close..." he continues his investigation of everyday forms with black glazed ceramic objects and mirrors.
The objects are designed to be recognized but not easily placed and the mirrors, which are mosaic, break apart the reflection and create a pixilation effect.
Ruhwald has received several awards and grants, including the Sotheby Award from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biennial Prize from the Danish Craft and Design Biennial,
and grants from the Annie and Otto Detlefs Foundation and the Danish Art Foundation.
- • 2008 Project Space | Nancy Ford |
Nancy Ford is an artist who explores the personal interpretation of sound fragments in daily life by translating them into concrete objects with abstracted fragments or symbols.
Her work includes sculptural objects made of painted paper mache, fragments of paper or fabric pieced together, and references a range of moods, sounds, and moments from the surrounding natural and audio landscapes.
The abstractions are not simple mutations of land-based forms but are meant to hover between sight and sound. Ford received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries such as Midway Contemporary Art, Artists Space, and Keith Talent Gallery.
- • 2007 If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now 1-3 | Boyle et al.
- • 2007 Photogenetics | Ida Applebroog |
Ida Applebroog's "Photogenetics" exhibition will be held at rowlandcontemporary in Chicago from September 7 to October 27, 2007. The exhibition will feature Applebroog's latest series of digital prints and mixed media works, as well as rare artist books from the beginning of her career. Applebroog is known for her use of technology in her artistic production, as seen in her Photogenetics series which involves creating crude sculptural figures, photographing them under different lighting conditions, manipulating the images on a computer, and printing the final result on large sheets of paper.
Applebroog's work is difficult to categorize, but continues to resonate across the breadth of the human condition, as she presents early and late stages of her Photogenetics series, digital artist proofs, mixed media works, and artist books that explore comic frame formats and storytelling conventions.
- • 2007 One Last Single Solitary Moment | Diana Puntar |
The show, "One Last Single Solitary Moment," explores post-apocalyptic themes filtered through material desires. Artist Diana Puntar uses common building and construction materials to create nonfunctioning sculptures that allude to material consumption and play with high and low culture.
The exhibition also features works by Brian Collier, who presents selections from "The Highway Expedition," exploring the collision between nature and man.
Among these works is a special exhibition called 'The Sleep (of Reason Produces Monsters, I Think), 2007/2037' from Matthew Girson.
The sound sculpture is an artwork in progress and will be completed in 2037 — on the 400th anniversary of Descartes' publication Discourse on Method — when it is broadcast into space.
Contemporary Art
For those unfamiliar with contemporary art, it refers to the art produced in the present time, typically post-World War II and encompasses a wide range of styles and mediums, including conceptual, minimalist, pop, installation, and performance art.
Although these styles differ, they all reflect and critique the cultural, political and social developments and issues of their time. For Rowland Contemporary, for example, feminism, identity and the environment were some of the recurring themes.
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Karen Lebergott, Disruption, detail, 2008
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Tom Denlinger, Around the Art Institute of Chicago: Josephson
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The Franks, No Public Bathroom Only For Customer
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Wallace Whitney, Air 2007
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Matthew Girson, The Sleep (of Reason Produces Monsters, I Think)
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Ida Applebroog, It Is My Lunch Hour
Not Confined
As contemporary art is not confined to a particular movement or style, it is constantly evolving. The work exhibited at Rowland Contemporary included modern art in the broadest sense by artists from both the United States and Europe.
Outer Space
In addition to the physical gallery at the West Fulton Market, Rowland Contemporary operated on the Internet under the name rowlandcontemporary.com.
It is this address — where you are now — that is the only tangible remnant of this remarkable gallery.
A place that provided a window to the world for over 40 great artists and their audiences. And perhaps also into outer space, when one of its exhibits is sent beyond the stars in 2037.
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