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March 18 to May 7, 2016 

Opening reception
Friday, March 18, 5-8pm

In Gallery 1 

ROBYN O'NEIL
The Lost Show 

For our second show of 2016, Western Exhibitions unearths a grouping of never-seen-before drawings by Robyn O'Neil. The catalyst for this show came from a tweet by O'Neil in January 2015 that read “Just realized my favorite show I've ever had is everything we kept in the flatfile during I WANT BLOOD” (her first solo show here at Western Exhibitions, in 2013). The “Lost Show” is sandwiched in between two drawings. One is straight from her studio, representing her current direction. The other is a drawing she made in 2000 while in grad school, and it clearly presages everything she's made since. O'Neil's show opens with a free public reception from 5 to 8pm on Friday, March 18 and will run through April 30.

The “Lost Show” will consist of a group of transitional drawings made after the completion of her magnum opus Hell, a large triptych featuring the last appearance of her mysterious sweatsuit-clad men who have populated her epic and emotional drawings from the prior 12 years, and before she embarked on the series of moody, colorful (for her), almost abstract, landscape pastel drawings debuted at  Western Exhibitions in 2013. The drawings in this second show at Western Exhibitions portray expressionistic scenes populated by ominous clouds and land masses, disembodied floating heads, monks, ears, mysterious female figures, faceless busts and other enigmatic characters.

Robyn O'Neil has had solo museum exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center; the Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin; the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; and the Frey Art Museum in Seattle. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the US and internationally including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; American University Museum in Washington, DC; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tampa, Florida. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. O'Neil has participated in gallery shows in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Shanghai, NYC, Los Angles, Miami, Chicago, and Seattle. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Irish Film Board Award for a film written and art directed by her entitled “WE, THE MASSES” which was conceived at Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School. O'Neil lives and works in Los Angeles.

See more Robyn O'Neil work here

Listen to Robyn O'Neil's podcast, ME READING STUFF, now in iTunes and one of the highest rated arts & literature podcasts around, an entry point into O'Neil's studio and work through the poetry and literature she loves.
 
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In Gallery 2

ONSMITH + NUDD Metaphysical Meatloaf
 
Western Exhibitions is curdled with quivering anticipation to present a survey of prints, zines, illustrations, sacs and ephemera by ONSMITH + NUDD, a collaboration initiated by the cartoonist Onsmith and artist Paul Nudd in 2008.

The collaborative work of Onsmith & Nudd tightens the cleavage between the seemingly disparate worlds of underground comics and contemporary painting. Onsmith & Nudd reject the notion that these approaches to making things differ in any meaningful way, instead opting for a strategy that focuses on an end-product that resembles, above all other things, an artificially-thickened quasi-cultural pureé. Everything they plumb from the depths of the diseased and impacted Western cultural colon-womb, from films of questionable artistic merit to “metaphysical German meatloaf”(1), becomes fodder for their cartoon-heavy narrative and figurative conglomerations. Onsmith the cartoonist, a documentarian of modern isolation and purveyor of grim humor, and Nudd the painter of gunk, pox and plasmic filth, have sculpted out of beef-clay a body of work that autonomously bottles and sells its own pungent nectars. The proof, as well as all of the hairs, toenails, and used band-aids, resides in the vats of pudding that comprise this retrospective style exhibition.

The visual cornucopia that the artists refer to as Onsmith Dog Stew & Monkey Nudd Wine consists of more than a few of their favorite things: banana splits, fishing lures, misshapen faces, horse flies, totem poles, spots, battered heads, and beehives, and comes in a variety of different forms: silkscreened prints, lithographs, collage, drawings and sketchbook pages, relief prints, postcards, studio detritus, commissioned illustrations, koozies, and zines. This exhibit contains pretty much everything they have ever made.

ONSMITH + NUDD's collaborative work has been shown at Spudnik Press, Anchor Graphics and Columbia College, all in Chicago. Their illustrations have been published in “Black Eye” by Rotland Press, they've presented work at various books fairs including CAKE in Chicago, Comic Arts Brooklyn and the New York Art Book Fair. Their 2013 lithographic triptych “Beyond the Valley of the Spoils” was written about in Art in Print. Onsmith, an accomplished comic book artist whose work has been disseminated by dozens of publications, lives and works in Chicago. Paul Nudd, a painter, drawer and printmaker who is represented by Western Exhibitions, lives and works in Berwyn, Illinois.

See more ONSMITH + NUDD work here
 
(1) Phrase coined by Jean Arp to describe German Expressionism
 


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Western Exhibitions | 845 W Washington Blvd, Chicago, IL 60607
For images and more information, please contact
Scott Speh | (312) 480-8390 | [email protected]