‘The Word is Art’ Opens at Chicago’s Johnsonese Gallery

Saturday, 19 August 2006 11:10

Chicago, IL – The Word is Art, featuring artworks that incorporate text, will be open September 9^th through September 30^th at the Johnsonese Gallery in Bucktown. Featured will be painter Brian Graves, pop painter and printmaker Doug Goessman, and ceramic tile muralist Jason Messinger.

Graves is also an educator, and his work reflects the blackboard of his day job.  His technique of applying multiple layers of text is reminiscent of a palimpsest, a technique often favored by gallery director Johnson.  In Graves’ work the text remains legible and retains its meaning, but the work also becomes a beautiful, pure abstraction.  His current work focuses on geographic place names.

The idea of abstraction on the edge of identification also permeates Messinger’s tile murals.  The work hints at language, symbol, map, comic strip, or hieroglyph.  Designed to allow for multiple arrangements, the murals exhibit a circular narrative, open-ended to interpretation.  The viewer is complicit in both setting the sequence and constructing the meaning.

Goessman is known as a pop artist because of his regular use of contemporary cultural icons, like the Kool-Aid Man and the Energizer Bunny.  But with Goessman these icons take on new and often unintended roles.  The works retain a whimsical quality while still challenging the viewer to re-think the impact of these icons on society.

Visit The Johnsonese Gallery, specializes in progressive contemporary art.: web site www.johnsonese.com