2014: Miami Dutch @ Queer Thoughts

Above: "by land or by sea" from Miami-Dutch at Queer Thoughts on January 24, 2014.

Miami-Dutch
"When Was The Last Time You Did Something For The First Time"
January 24 - February 23, 2014
Queer Thoughts
1640 W. 18th Street
Chicago, IL

http://miami-dutch.org/

http://qtgallery.net/

"They sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. I try to evade, but struggle; I bind myself tight to listen in passing. I grip the rudder forcefully, but with my strength it breaks. We part ways, but it is probably for the best. Signed, sealed, delivered; my translation is clear. Or am I dreaming? So what?   

So, the space of possibility was given me one day like a loud fart I will let. Neither the space, nor the possibility, I didn’t know exactly what they were, and I didn’t feel the need to think about it. I am an Earth-bound emancipated teenager (don't fucking tell me what to do - you, above all). Water, air, land - Mind, body, nation.  We breathe an esperanto, a Mischsprache.

It is from this body that they draw something to remake reality; something to remake themselves in reality, and to make for themselves a reality. An Order that would break the adverbial body and her discreet geometries, the unsoundable abyss of the face, the inaccessible plan of the surface. We silently arranged ourselves into a circle of bare feet, and sang the song of dust: an ode to the body abyss. Now I’m the father-mother, the twin-tailed, triple-goddess hour of death, [stop] sixty minutes of birth, sixty minutes of body. I am all of the above! But at least there is one thing, which is something, only one thing, and I feel it."

Quotation above from: http://qtgallery.net/pages/Exhibitions/MiamiDutch.html

Above: Untitled, 2014, from Miami-Dutch at Queer Thoughts on January 24, 2014.

Above: "neither the space, nor the possibility" from Miami-Dutch at Queer Thoughts on January 24, 2014.

Above: "in good hands" from Miami-Dutch at Queer Thoughts on January 24, 2014.

Above:
Images (1-4) January 24, 2014;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

2014: Sebastian Black & India Donaldson @ Queer Thoughts

Above: India Donaldson, left, Sebastian Black, right, at Queer Thoughts for their opening reception on March 1, 2014.

Sebastian Black and India Donaldson
March 1 - April 1, 2014
Queer Thoughts
1640 W. 18th Street
Chicago, IL

http://qtgallery.net/

http://malrauxsplace.com/

"Someone told me that the really good knockoff designer handbags are so good because they are made in the same factory as their authentic counterparts. You see for a short period of each workday, a drowsy seeming functionary in an office perched above the factory floor reaches across his desk, past his tidy little lunch items, and presses a button which quite literally stops the clock. Down below everything goes on as before. The tailors sew. The foremen pace. The floor manager hums an indiscernible melody. But none of this activity is inscribed or noted anywhere, except in the newly alert eyes of the functionary, which dart to and fro and miss nothing.

It is important to note that this process produces not two, but three species of handbag: the authentic made on the clock, the knockoff made off the clock, and the curious hybrid which is begun on one side of this critical schism and finished on the other. Though it is general practice to incinerate this mutant category, sometimes a bag is rescued and smuggled out of the factory. This bag is called a synthetic, not because it mimics an authentic bag, like the knockoff, but because it constitutes the rare physical example of sublation (aufeheben), a kind of calcified hyphen in the real-knockoff dialectic. In so doing, the synthetic undermines the atomistic nature of the categories real and knockoff, and illuminates how the meaning of each is predicated on the existence of its opposite. Obvi then they are the most expensive of the three bags, and I even saw a guy selling ashes that he claimed were scraped from one of the factory incinerators.

Me and India own a few of these bags but we prefer to call them Authentix, a term we feel more concisely captures their peculiar ontological vibe. We like to sit and look at them, for occasionally they come to life and they sing to us. At these moments we listen and understand that what we are hearing is some strange new hymn emanating from the vibrating nothing between the tuning fork prongs of use-value and exchange." - Sebastian Black

Quotation above from: http://qtgallery.net/pages/Exhibitions/Black_Donaldson.html

Above: "Authentix Sportsbra" left, "Authentix Parka" right, at Queer Thoughts on March 1, 2014.

Above: 18th Street in Pilsen, Chicago, on March 1, 2014, as seen while driving to the opening reception at Queer Thoughts.

Above: "Saudade" digital video at Queer Thoughts on March 1, 2014.

Above: The mostly young, mostly dark-clad crowd at Queer Thoughts on March 1, 2014, in spite of the weather.

Above:  "Authentix Parka" silk organza and cotton batting from Sebastian Black and India Donaldson at Queer Thoughts.

Above: Queer Thoughts, a/k/a QT, gallery exterior window on March 1, 2014.

Above:  "Authentix Sportsbra" wool felt, from Sebastian Black and India Donaldson at Queer Thoughts.

Above: The 1700 block of 18th Street at 10:00 PM on March 1, 2014.

Read more:

"The 15 Hottest Artists of the Summer" by Rozalia Jovanovic, Michael H. Miller, Andrew Russeth and Dan Duray, Gallerist, July 27, 2012:
http://galleristny.com/2012/07/the-15-hottest-artists-of-the-summer/

"10 Chicago Art Exhibitions to See This Winter" by Alicia Eler, Hyperallergic, January 14, 2014:
http://hyperallergic.com/102901/10-chicago-art-exhibitions-to-see-this-winter/

Above:
Images (1-9) March 1, 2014;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.