Chicago Artists Coalition presents for no space, a HATCH Projects exhibition by Barbara Diener, Carla Fisher Schwartz and Leander Knust, curated by Sharmyn Cruz Rivera.

Barbara Diener, Carla Fisher Schwartz and Leander Knust present an array of sculptural situations and immersive scenarios, taking the audience on a rendezvous that revels in the tracing of elusive spaces. Using sculpture, video, and photography, the artists in for no space traverse virtual and actual space to find meaning and potential in notions of landscape and place. The work exhibited relies on compositional strategies to mirror the unobtainable past of objects and places, while subsequently befogging their origins.

Barbara Diener's photographic project depicts human deep-seated need to find a home, the yearning to belong and our attachment to memories of familiar domesticity. Her work depicts intimate spaces through uncanny imagery that reveal the fragility of desires and beliefs. Carla Fisher Schwartz questions the hyperreality in which wireless society subsists today. Her sculptures highlight modes of navigation through virtual mapping systems and constructing mythologies that unveil the poetics of place and connectivity. Leander Knust's practice incorporates important yet abstract notions of origin and purpose, nature and artifice. Knust enacts alchemical processes to excavate and exhaust the potential of found materials, willing his objects to reveal their intricacy, provenance and faults.

Collectively this HATCH Project cohort meditates on the significance of points of origin, the pursuit to find them, and how their representations are inflected by nostalgic historicism.

Artist Bios

Barbara Diener was born in 1982 in Germany. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art in photography from the California College of the Arts and Masters in Fine Art in Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL, Hyde Park Art Center, Hyde Park, IL, David Weinberg Gallery, Chicago, IL, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, Invisible Dog Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Lilllstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL, Riverside Art Center, Chicago, IL. Pingyao Photo Festival, China, The Arcade, Chicago, IL, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA, Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT and Project Basho, Philadelphia, PA among others. Diener’s photographs are part of several private and institutional collections including the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

In 2013 she was selected to participate in two highly ambitious and competitive artist residency programs, the Fields Project in Oregon, IL and ACRE in Steuben, WI and she is currently participating in the residency program HATCH Projects 2015-2016 through the Chicago Artist Coaltition. Diener is a winner of Flash Forward 2013, the recipient of a Follett Fellowship at Columbia College Chicago and was awarded the Albert P. Weisman Award in 2012 and 2013. In addition Diener received an Individual Artist Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Events in 2015. Diener is currently working as the Photography Collection Assistant at the Art Institute Chicago and teaches Photography at Oakton Community College.

Carla Fisher Schwartz is a visual artist and educator based in Chicago, IL. Through print media, sculpture and video installation, her studio practice examines the relationship between the mapped image and contemporary notions of exploration, virtuality, and the simulated environment. Her art has been exhibited throughout the United States, including the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Hyde Park Art Center, the McKendree University Art Gallery, and the Kala Art Institute. Schwartz is currently an artist-in-residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition. She received her MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, and her BA in Studio Art with a minor in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Leander Mienardus Knust is an artist, musician and maker based in Chicago. His sculptural works invite us to question relationships to the material world while remaining honest to their personal histories. His music, often employed to reflect ideas behind physical works, combines disparate elements to produce new potentials and expand genre convention. Leander is a co-founder of Fat City Arts, a non-profit, community driven project space and venue located in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. He has exhibited work and played shows throughout Chicago's bustling DIY arts and music scene, including spaces such as the Archer Ballroom, the Archer Beach Haus, Slumber Room, Kruger Gallery, Pinky Swear, and the Plant. Leander currently works for Archistoric Products building and restoring lighting fixtures and further supports his practice through commissions for custom stringed instruments, furniture, and arts related fabrication projects. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.

Curator Bio

Sharmyn Cruz Rivera is a Puerto Rican curator based in Chicago. Her curatorial endeavors and research revolve around sound art, video, contemporary dance, performance art, and human geography. She started as an independent curator and art writer for The Fractal, a multidirectional project focused on cultural commentary and art criticism. She holds a MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a dual BA in Art History and Modern Languages from the University of Puerto Rico. She was a curatorial fellow for the SAIC MFA Show in 2012 and a 2013 summer participant at Never The Same at University of Chicago, a project that documents Chicago’s history of socially engaged art. Sharmyn is currently a program assistant at LAMPO, an organization that promotes and supports artists working in electronic and electroacoustic music, free improvisation, sound art and other new forms. She is also a 2015-2016 HATCH Curatorial Resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition mentoring six artists and curating three exhibitions with accompanying programing. Recent projects include INSIDE VOICE: a sound art program at Threewalls and Home Channels at [Open House] as part of Platforms: 10 years of Chances Dances.