Jeff Prokash and Gwendolyn Zabicki heighten our awareness of the barriers that divide interior from exterior space, separating narratives of domestic life from those that circulate in the public sphere. They help foreground a primary concern in our collective work: the boundaries between unavailable and uncommunicable narratives.
Even in densely populated urban settings, we cordon ourselves off from the world in our homes. We hide from each other in plain sight, engaged in intimately emotional dramas. Although the light that emanates from Zabicki’s houses can suggest warmth within, it doesn’t communicate details about these dramas. Her windows never let us see inside. Prokash comes at this paradox—that the light of the home illuminates without providing insight—from a different angle. In his case, we see directly through interiors. Caught between construction and inhabitation, his model homes reveal nothing about the lives that will fill them. In the absence of homeowners, the spaces that Prokash and Zabicki present seem uncannily empty. We peer inside and find a hollowness into which we
project tension, loneliness, and isolation. When the task of filling the homes with narrative falls to the viewer, ordinary spaces become scenes of portentous anxiety.
One might suggest that the figures depicted by Nathan Vernau populate the spaces that Zabicki and Prokash construct—that they embody fears about the secret weirdnesses of unseen ordinary life. Perhaps if we could see inside, we’d catch Vernau cartwheeling across his floor. They voice what we’re nervous about stumbling upon in anonymous domestic spaces: that other people engage in role-playing fantasies of emotional release, and we’re the only ones comporting with Norman Rockwellian norms.
But they also provide a counterpoint to Zabicki and Prokash. Using established narratives of masculine identity, they suggest how hard we work to communicate meaning to one another. The distress in Vernau’s self-portraits conveys a failed desire to be understood despite constant effort. Regardless of our best efforts, we only convey part of ourselves, or try to play roles and come up short. Empty houses and lighted apartments confound our attempts to learn something about the individuals inside, but Vernau reveals the difficulty of presenting a concrete account of self, even when we do try to come out of our private spaces to speak.
Morgan Sims doesn’t help us solve this problem—that we’re stuck between not knowing and not being able to say what we mean—but he does warn us against complacency with respect to it. In the absence of engagement in each other’s lives, the project of meaning-making gets co-opted by corporate narratives, marketing copy, and readymade definitions of the good life. All of this jargon amounts to so many shards of neon, an echo of the holiday lights in Zabicki’s work. Sims compels us to shore different narratives against what is otherwise ruinous isolation.
-AJ Aronstein
Even in densely populated urban settings, we cordon ourselves off from the world in our homes. We hide from each other in plain sight, engaged in intimately emotional dramas. Although the light that emanates from Zabicki’s houses can suggest warmth within, it doesn’t communicate details about these dramas. Her windows never let us see inside. Prokash comes at this paradox—that the light of the home illuminates without providing insight—from a different angle. In his case, we see directly through interiors. Caught between construction and inhabitation, his model homes reveal nothing about the lives that will fill them. In the absence of homeowners, the spaces that Prokash and Zabicki present seem uncannily empty. We peer inside and find a hollowness into which we
project tension, loneliness, and isolation. When the task of filling the homes with narrative falls to the viewer, ordinary spaces become scenes of portentous anxiety.
One might suggest that the figures depicted by Nathan Vernau populate the spaces that Zabicki and Prokash construct—that they embody fears about the secret weirdnesses of unseen ordinary life. Perhaps if we could see inside, we’d catch Vernau cartwheeling across his floor. They voice what we’re nervous about stumbling upon in anonymous domestic spaces: that other people engage in role-playing fantasies of emotional release, and we’re the only ones comporting with Norman Rockwellian norms.
But they also provide a counterpoint to Zabicki and Prokash. Using established narratives of masculine identity, they suggest how hard we work to communicate meaning to one another. The distress in Vernau’s self-portraits conveys a failed desire to be understood despite constant effort. Regardless of our best efforts, we only convey part of ourselves, or try to play roles and come up short. Empty houses and lighted apartments confound our attempts to learn something about the individuals inside, but Vernau reveals the difficulty of presenting a concrete account of self, even when we do try to come out of our private spaces to speak.
Morgan Sims doesn’t help us solve this problem—that we’re stuck between not knowing and not being able to say what we mean—but he does warn us against complacency with respect to it. In the absence of engagement in each other’s lives, the project of meaning-making gets co-opted by corporate narratives, marketing copy, and readymade definitions of the good life. All of this jargon amounts to so many shards of neon, an echo of the holiday lights in Zabicki’s work. Sims compels us to shore different narratives against what is otherwise ruinous isolation.
-AJ Aronstein
About the artists:
Jeff Prokash lives and works in Chicago. As an artist his work primarily revolves around mankind's adversarial relationship with our natural surroundings. He was born in Wisconsin and received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2008. http://www.jeffprokash.com/
Morgan Sims creates work in print, painting, and neon. Interested in popular culture and how visual information is received, he combines or juxtaposes ideas and techniques to create new associations or meanings. Morgan received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. More of his work can be viewed at www.morgan-sims.com.
Nathan Vernau’s colorful artwork touches on themes of instability, insecurity, confusion, and a misdirection of emotions. As self-portraits, these drawings offer bits and pieces of his character, along with alternate identities or personas. He earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 2005 and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. A native Wisconsinite, Nathan now lives and works in Chicago. http://www.nathanvernau.com/
Gwendolyn Zabicki paints the urban landscape. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012, and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. She is the 2012-2013 artist in residence at the Lillstreet Art Center and the creator of The South Logan Arts Coalition. Learn more here: www.gwendolynzabicki.com and learn more about SLAC by visiting www.southloganarts.org
Jeff Prokash lives and works in Chicago. As an artist his work primarily revolves around mankind's adversarial relationship with our natural surroundings. He was born in Wisconsin and received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2008. http://www.jeffprokash.com/
Morgan Sims creates work in print, painting, and neon. Interested in popular culture and how visual information is received, he combines or juxtaposes ideas and techniques to create new associations or meanings. Morgan received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. More of his work can be viewed at www.morgan-sims.com.
Nathan Vernau’s colorful artwork touches on themes of instability, insecurity, confusion, and a misdirection of emotions. As self-portraits, these drawings offer bits and pieces of his character, along with alternate identities or personas. He earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 2005 and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. A native Wisconsinite, Nathan now lives and works in Chicago. http://www.nathanvernau.com/
Gwendolyn Zabicki paints the urban landscape. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012, and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. She is the 2012-2013 artist in residence at the Lillstreet Art Center and the creator of The South Logan Arts Coalition. Learn more here: www.gwendolynzabicki.com and learn more about SLAC by visiting www.southloganarts.org
This exhibit was made possible by the generous help and support of the Chicago Loop Alliance. For more information, please visit:
http://www.chicagoloopalliance.com/
http://www.popupartloop.com/
http://www.chicagoloopalliance.com/
http://www.popupartloop.com/