A state of emergency.
A state of shock.
A state of being.
Disturbed Awakening is a group show curated by Nick Cave that explores three artists most personal and pressing issues. The ones that we wake up to each morning and push or pull our decision making regardless of how directly it is attached to the moment at hand. Featuring Katrin Schnabl in collaboration with Anne Guitteau, Carley Brandau and Shihui Zhou.
Opening: Saturday, Sept 7, 2-5 pm
Continuing through: September 7 - November 15 (viewed through Facility’s storefront gallery windows)
Facility
3616 North Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago
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Katrin Schnabl, in collaboration with Anne Guitteau.
GYRE is the amplification of the vortical structure that makes up plastic on a molecular level. This knitted environment provides a way of exploring this unique dimensional space through the sensory capacity of our bodies, and to open up conversations: about the materials themselves, about repurposing the plastic coverings that most often are intended to be immediately thrown away, about the invisibility of the environmental crisis of this disposable culture and these relationships to fashion as a reflection of deeper cultural shifts.
GYRE (8’ x 8’ x 8’) 2018; post-consumer high density polyethylene (aka drycleaner bag), PVC.
Carley Brandau
Changing circumstances challenged my pre-existing realities. As a result, fear and shame emerged from the depths of my subconscious. The reality was always there, but I could not see it. With an accumulation of new knowledge and narratives, what I had previously accepted as truth was suddenly uprooted, as was my grasp on myself. As I extracted the old perception, I turned to language as a means for shedding and redefining this newly displaced truth. Through sculpture and language, I materialize the blockage that obstructed me from the place of fear and shame. I magnified and transformed it into a display: a physical, built structure whose scale requires confrontation. My process became about reconsidering what and for whom a word represents, the limits of language as communication, and the need for reparation. Legibility shifts throughout this work as I continue to struggle with confrontation.
This work is driven by two statements. One is by my family, white, who claims that race was not a factor in the 2016 election for them. The other is the idea that white supremacy was built by white people, and white people need to fix it. So my question is: How will white people challenge the structure, when so many of us can’t see that we’re white?
Land of the ______ (dimensions variable) 2018; industrial felt, linen thread, wood.
Shihui Zhou
An exploration of Human Intersubjectivity, Shihui Zhou collects and captures the status of people’s everyday life; connections made between multitudes of people and activities illustrated through the garments we wear and the forms we occupy throughout our journey and self-discovery. The curtain, clothes and the absence human forms instantly create discussions or even conflicts between the unborn and the born, private and public, interior and exterior, the past and memories, relationships and individuals. The whole dimension become a complex, monumental sphere, both familiar and mysterious, yet intriguing and touching.
Human Intersubjectivity (12' x 10' x 8') 2018; found garments, fabric, grommets, steel rods.
About The Artists
Katrin Schnabl is an artist, educator and curator working at the intersection of fashion, performance, and installation. Known for her eponymous line of fashion, as well as designing for acclaimed dance companies and performance artists, German-born Schnabl investigates garments as sensory environments. The process of imbedding meaning through pattern-cutting techniques further informs much of the artist’s installation work. By placing her hand-cut and sewn assemblages into unexpected locations, she heightens our perception of garment as a membrane that filters information between individuals and their shifting contexts and interactions. Her current body of work builds on the exploration of these sensory interactions through spatial dynamic surfaces. Schnabl is Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has also served as Sage-Endowed Chair of Fashion in the Department of Fashion Design.
Anne Guitteau is a Chicago-based knitwear designer and artist. Her work explores the complex relationship between fashion, form and function, blurring the line between garment and sculpture. Combining traditional techniques and alternative materials, she lets her shapes form organically and playfully. Her work has been featured on the cover of the Chicago Tribune style section, and has been exhibited in the Sullivan Galleries’ 2014 Graduates Show, and the 2015 BFA Show. Making her mark as knitwear consultant to fashion labels, her contributions have been featured in prominent fashion publications including Harper’s Bazaar, WWD, Elle Magazine, and shown on the runway during New York Fashion Week and at The Walk, SAIC’s annual fashion show.
Carley Brandau was born in North Carolina to a family of builders, stuff-collectors, artists and musicians. She received her Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Sculpture from the University of North Carolina Asheville in 2013. Before entering the Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment program at SAIC in 2016, Brandau was working at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center in Asheville, NC, and maintaining her independent studio practice. Driven by material exploration, her experiences from growing up in the south, and the political climate, her work is a haptic and somatic exploration of the limitation of our hands, bodies and language.
Artist Shihui Zhou was born and raised in China, where she attended Tsinghua University in Beijing for her bachelor degree in Design. Traveling to the United States for graduate study, Zhou worked closely under Americian visual artist Nick Cave at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She moved to New York for the artist residency in Textile Arts Center shortly after her graduation in 2018. Zhou is now living in Brooklyn, NY, USA. She has a series of shows scheduled for 2019 both in the States and overseas, and just finished ChaShaMa’s Artist residency in upstate New York.
About Facility
Facility is a place. It’s a multi-disciplinary creative space. And it’s home to Nick Cave Studio, Faust Associates and $oundsuit$hop while also serving as a creative hub for other artists, artisans, designers and architects. Additionally, Facility plays host to myriad pop-up special projects such as exhibitions, performances and fresh retail experiences.
Facility is a philosophy. It believes that art and design can create peace, build power, and change the world ... that by fostering an environment and community built from your dreams you will wake up daily within your destiny.
Facility is an action agent. It reaches deep into our communities, employing the collective powers of art and design as a means to empowerment and social change. Facility Foundation provides scholarships and opportunities for young, promising and emerging artists, collaborations with fierce, like-minded established artists and partnering with outside, organizations and institutions to galvanize their outreach programming.