Two solo exhibitions (that meet in THE MIDDLE)
HATCH Project artists Amanda Greive & Erik Peterson
Curated by Jessica Cochran
Opening Reception featuring Amanda Greive: April 13, 6-9pm
A Meal in the Middle with Greive + Peterson (Invite Only): April 22, 5pm
Opening Reception featuring Erik Peterson: April 27, 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: April 13-May 3

Middle class. Middle child. Middle management. We want to know, can the middle be exciting? Extraordinary? Fantastically inefficient?  Our exhibition, THE MIDDLE, is an irreverent take on the two-person show: over the course of three weeks, one solo exhibition will move into another solo exhibition. Beginning with one artist, and ending with another, we are most interested in the dialogue that happens when the exhibition space gradually turns over from artist to artist.

A durational exhibition is a particularly engaging model for showing the work of Amanda Greive, a realist painter of allegorical still lives and interiors, and Erik Peterson, who creates situation-specific installations which often implicate the audience in unexpected ways.  While each artist has different studio outcomes, both share an acute awareness of the ways in which the viewer forms knowledge through the perception of images and objects. In other words, mining the everyday, Greive and Peterson deliberately re-order the visual world, placing reality into new aesthetic dimensions.

As the exhibition shifts, viewers will have opportunities to consider a common subtext that each artist explores from seemingly opposite ends: food. Greive depicts food in a highly metaphorical and subjective manner by way of symbolic still life paintings. Peterson, on the other hand, explores the production and consumption of food within a site-specific framework that acknowledges the gallery’s location in the Fulton Market meatpacking district.

THE MIDDLE showcases works by Amanda Greive and Erik Peterson
Curated by Jessica Cochran

Over three weeks, the exhibition will feature two separate public receptions (April 13 + April 27 from 6-9pm) to mark each artist’s solo show, as well as an event in the middle (April 22 from 5-8pm), to highlight and engage the gradual changeover of the space. The “middle” event will consist of meal organized by a local artist, which will be conceptualized in response to the ways in which both artists situate food within broader investigations of the visual world.  At the meal, invited guests (artists, friends, curators) will have the opportunity to experience both Greive’s and Peterson’s work in a communal and social setting.

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Amanda Grieve graduated with a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2008, and has exhibited her work both locally and nationally. She has exhibited her work at the St. Louis Artist’s Guild, Woman Made Gallery, and the Louisville, KY, Visual Arts Association. Most recently, she had solo shows at the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria and Lincoln Land Community College, and the Buchanan Center for the Arts. Much of her work is deeply rooted in symbolism, having been influenced by Italian Renaissance and Dutch Baroque artwork. In her art-making process, the portrayal of relationships symbolically through the interplay of objects in still lives or through figural work has been a priority. She relies heavily on the use of allegory in her artwork and as a vehicle for the exploration of the human condition.

Erik Peterson is an artist and interdisciplinary game designer living in Chicago. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he graduated with a B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis (2004) and a M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2010). His work has been shown nationally at the Orlando Museum of Art; University of Nebraska, Omaha; University of Arizona; and locally at Columbia College’s A+D Gallery, Swimming Pool Project Space, and Happy Collaborationists. Using tactics in which sculptures become props, performances become objects, and audiences become performers, and vise versa, Peterson’s work disentangles the everyday from its own banality, revealing its inherent absurdities and tragic wit. Additionally, Peterson is the Creative Director of Qeej Hero, a Hmong-American karaoke-style video game, and Founder of Hyde Park Kunstverein, a community museum that exhibits solo contemporary artist projects. (www.eriklpeterson.com)

Jessica Cochran is a Chicago-based curator, administrator, writer and instructor. She is currently Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at the Center for Book and Paper Arts, and was previously Director of the O’Connor Art Gallery at Dominican University and Director of Marketing and Programs at Art Chicago and NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art, where she organized the Converge Chicago: Contemporary Curators Forums.  Working with mostly emerging and mid-career artists, she has produced exhibitions for the Contemporary Arts Council, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Poetry Foundation, among other venues.  Her writing has appeared in catalogs, as well as Newcity, Curating Now and the Studio Chicago Blog. She served on the Junior Board for Threewalls, and currently teaches arts administration and contemporary art at Dominican University and Columbia College.  She is a juror for the 2012 Fred A. Hillbruner Artists’ Book Fellowship at SAIC.

CAC Gallery Hours are Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm or by appointment [312.491.8888/cortney@chicagoartistscoalition.org]