Year: 2018

Artist’s Statement from Scott Stack:
I look for ways to be intentional. One is that lines inevitably describe space. We use lines all the time and we’re aware of them constantly as a way of describing space. We see patterns in tile floors and they recede, they do things, they turn corners. We see patterns on wallpaper. We see patterns in the natural world. When we confront symmetry, we assume life. I am using some of the code that I discover though a practice of experimentation. I find myself attracted to forms in some of their simplest iterations; lines, dots, solid geometric shapes. This allows me to empty out painting, to discover its rules and how I can break them.

 

I decided on a couple of things early on. One is that I would keep working with paint because I’ve always been interested in the idea of paint or thingness in paint, that paint has a quality that I couldn’t get in for example, Illustrator or Photoshop. I would actually paint them because it allowed variation, it allowed the presence of the hand even though it was subdued. As my paintings became flatter and the surface became finer and finer, the more and more gesso went over the edges. I just saved that because it felt like I was like compressing the surface out the sides. Particularly in the small ones where it kept that sense of thingness. I like the object quality. I’ve always thought of skinning (surface mapping) when I consider my paintings. It’s a recognition that both; paint is applied and organized before its application.

They are modern in the sense that they express that things fall apart. The paintings are referencing digital, because they are binary. They’re literally two colors. They have in the presentation of information, a digital condition. The binary nature of the paintings infers that there is something discoverable in trying to understand how the pattern is constructed. We search for a way to make sense of the pattern we are seeing by constructing space. One of the things I’m trying to do is make a painting where you can’t find the deepest space. When you find what you think is the deepest space, if you look away, the deepest space will disappear, and you have to find another one. The idea is not that this is a trick but that the same solution won’t present itself again because you have looked somewhere else or changed your position. I want whoever is viewing one of my paintings to be aware of their active participation of seeing.

As a young student in the late ‘70’s, Lindsey worked as a traditional painter influenced by magic realism at the time.  In 1977, he accepted a position as a sculptor’s apprentice to Daniel Lowery at his studio in O’Fallon, Illinois. It was in this capacity that he learned mold making, woodcarving, clay, metal casting, and iron forging.  These experiences motivated him to commit to craftsmanship in a wide spectrum of materials and gave him a vision of what would be his life’s work. Discovering stone working after arriving in Chicago was the only natural next step.

 

Lindsey absorbed and investigated everything from Bernini to Brancusi.  It was during those days, in 1984, that he met Isamu Noguchi.  After that conversation, he felt determined to combine elements of all of these materials to create a singular body of work that became something it already was.

Visual artist, film artist, composer and recontextualist, Renee’ C. Baker is a true engineer of multidisciplines. Layering movement, film projections of real and imagined things, she creates an exquisite arena of surrealistic activity within a sonic theatre. Ms. Baker is founding music director and conductor of the internationally acclaimed Chicago Modern Orchestra Project (CMOP), a polystylistic orchestral organization that grew from the plums of classical music, as well as jazz. Her compositions are crafted from her many talents with carefully constructed environments that also allow indeterminacy, experimentalism, classicism, subjectivity, and objective interpretations to co-exist. Intense but rewarding for both performer and listener/viewer, all parties are cast into unknown roles upon encounter, to be radically inside a temporary environment of limitless inhabitation.

 

Ms. Baker is a member of the world renown collective Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Critical acclaim for her graphic scores novels has come from performances in Berlin, Poland, London, Scotland and as far reaching as Vietnam. As a disruptive composer and visual artist, there are few barriers to the creative turns of this composer, conductor, artist, and instrumentalist. Pushing all boundaries, Ms. Baker reinvents herself and each ensemble with each score, effortlessly transforming the way reality is accessed for that time. An expert at ensemble development and training, Renee’ developed the Mantra Blue Free Orchestra (Chicago), PEK’ Contemporary Project (Berlin), the progenitor of Bleueblue Walkers/Bass Kollektief, Twilight Struggles (Berlin) as well as being involved in starting over 20 cutting edge new music ensembles. Among them: TUNTUI, Wrinkled Linen, Chocolate Chitlin’ Caucus, Red Chai Watch, FAQtet, Project 6, Renee’ Baker’s AWAKENING, Baker ArTet, a Butoh ensemble BODY STRATA, and Strings Attached. Ms. Baker has performed globally from Bimhuis (Amsterdam) to Symphony Center (Chicago) and was a founding member as well as Principal Violist of Chicago Sinfonietta for 26 years.

Ms. Baker has composed over two thousand works for ensembles ranging from pieces for solo instruments, ballet, opera (9), to large orchestral works that bridge the classical, jazz and creative music genres. Her ability to embrace traditional compositions as well as various creative parameters in her work has led to commissions from the Chicago Sinfonietta, numerous commissioned pieces for the Chicago Sinfonietta Chamber Ensemble, MCA Chicago, Berlin International Brass, PEK’ Contemporary Project, Joffrey Ballet Chamber Series, Krannert Performing Arts Center, Shedd Aquarium, the Arts Club of Chicago.,Symphony Center, MOFA St. Peterburg Fl, Adler Planetarium and DanceWright Project, University of Chicago Film Studies Center, Indiana University Black Film Center, amongst many others.