FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Open and Shut

January 12- February 17, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, January 12, 5:00 - 8:00 pm

Skestos Gabriele Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a new group exhibition, Open and Shut, featuring the work of Alejandro Cesarco, Petrova Giberson, Joseph Grigely, Janice Kerbel, Mai-Thu Perret and Allen Ruppersberg.

The exhibition concerns recent developments in contemporary art that utilize the textual devices of literature, history and correspondence as strategies. Several of the exhibiting artists arrive at art making from past or continued studies in textual criticism, English literature, poetry, art history, cultural anthropology, proofreading and even economics. Their diverse fields of research result in artworks that inherently come off as well read, which is fitting considering that most of these works must be well, read.

Distinct from the work of conceptual artists past, who delegated text to serve as documentation of a given experiential endeavor and also unique from the spatial and sculptural investigation of text by others, the artists in Open and Shut employ text both as a foundation and also as a conclusion, albeit an open one.

Consider Martha Rosler’s Library project, not included in Open and Shut but a valid gauge of similar tendencies. The project features a touring exhibition consisting of a collection of over 7,600 of the artist’s personal books, which are available for on-site browsing, reading and even photocopying. The artwork democratically entails no more than a vast source of references, be they drama, exhibition catalogs, criticism or other. Rosler’s Library forecasts a field of visual art that enlists reading and writing as a viable action, putting aside, if just for the moment, more established pictorial investigations.

The artworks in Open and Shut invite a new range of interpretations from the variable duration of a text in a gallery context to the narrowing of any gap between scholarly departure and creative construction. One of the tasks of the viewers to Open and Shut is to explicate in words artworks that have already inherited such a capacity.

Open and Shut is organized by Maxwell G. Graham, Masters Candidate in Modern Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ezara Hoffman
New Paintings

In addition to Open and Shut, Skestos Gabriele Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Chicago based painter, Ezara Hoffman, in the project space.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday, 11:00am - 6:00pm, Saturday 12:00 - 5:00pm.

Please contact the gallery for more information at 312.243.1112 or info@skestosgabriele.com.