Unseen Things are Still There: Alexandra Antoine, JB Daniel, Kate Ingold, Esau McGhee, and Elsa Muñoz | February 27 - April 9, 2022
February 27 - April 9, 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 27, 2022, 3:00-6:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, April 2, 2022, 2:00-3:00 PM
Artist Talk In-person and via Zoom
Exhibition Catalogue available for purchase
Curated by Joanne Aono
Read the Exhibition Review by Kerry Cardoza of Newcity
The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to announce the opening of Unseen Things are Still There, a group exhibition featuring the art of Alexandra Antoine, JB Daniel, Kate Ingold, Esau McGhee, and Elsa Muñoz. Curated by Interim Gallery Director, Joanne Aono, the exhibtion will be featured in the Freeark Gallery and the Sculpture Garden.
STARS AND DANDELIONS
Deep in the blue sky,
like pebbles at the bottom of the sea,
lie the stars unseen in daylight
until night comes.
You can’t see them, but they are there.
Unseen things are still there.
The withered, seedless dandelions
hidden in the cracks of the roof tile
wait silently for spring,
their strong roots unseen.
You can’t see them, but they are there.
Unseen things are still there.
- Misuzu Kaneko
Whether masked by layers of material, possessing an embedded story, or encased in symbolism and metaphor, the artworks in Unseen Things Are Still There contain imagery and concepts that remain, despite concealment or supposed absence. Alexandra Antoine combines printmaking, collage and beadwork while incorporating stories of African Diaspora and tradition. JB Daniel’s installation in the sculpture garden continues his participatory “Help Each Other” project. The signs are taken to unknown destinations, where the art’s future is undetermined. Kate Ingold’s embroidery creates a web over a tattered discarded bed quilt while her felt-covered broken figurines of geese continue this quest for tenderness and repair. Esau McGhee’s non-rectilinear constructions are collaged abstractions of a distant future where Race is not real. Elsa Muñoz’s intense dark oil paintings depict a persistent inner light during the “dark night of the soul.”
Art can lead to discovery, enabling the mind to uncover stories, to make associations; the eyes to reveal layers, to find meaning; and the experience to lead to further questions. Whether masked by layers of material, possessing an embedded story, or encased in symbolism and metaphor, the artworks in the exhibition Unseen Things Are Still There, contain imagery and concepts that remain, despite concealment or supposed absence.
Alexandra Antoine’s series, I followed the drinking gourd…, combines printmaking, collage, and beadwork while incorporating stories of African Diaspora and tradition. Layered atop screenprint patterns of produce representing her culture and agrarian life, are personal photographic images and text of memories with an embellishment of sequins sewn into the surface, recognizing her Haitian roots. The colorful imagery of food contrasts with the black and white photos, while her writings further pull us into the reveal. Antoine’s art is a love story to her ancestry inviting us to share in her adventure.
The Riverside Arts Center’s Freeark Sculpture Garden features JB Daniel’s installation of his participatory Help Each Other project. Begun during the Covid pandemic, Daniel initially installed single signs throughout the Chicago area. As the project grew, others requested signs, so the artist created packets of ten signs with a “Please Take One” sign for others to install in their yards, connecting to more communities. To date, there are thousands of signs throughout the United States and beyond. Where the signs end up is most often a mystery. As Daniel restocks the supply of signs in this installation, the unknown encounters with his art project fuels our imagination.
Kate Ingold exhibits pieces from her series, Damaged Goods _Small Repairs, exploring tenderness and repair. In Night Quilt, hand-embroidery creates a web over a tattered discarded bed quilt. Like a black widow spider, the haphazard threads give both a sense of strength and aggression to the fragility of the cloth. While a bed cover can be symbolic of comfort, it can also represent a place of fear and hiding.
The poet Misuzu Kaneko committed suicide at a young age when she divorced from her abusive husband and was not permitted to keep her beloved daughter.1 Ingold’s Five Geese, for Misuzu Kaneko consists of felt-covered broken figurines. The tactile wool stretched across the hidden fragments tied with silk thread, further entraps the metaphorical birds.
Esau McGhee’s non-rectilinear constructions are collaged abstractions for a distant future when the conversation is of an enlightened time. He writes, “The dialogue will be in line with the understanding that Race, inherently is not real.”2 His layers of material are intuitive reactions to separate stages of developing the art. Often beginning with a printed substrate; a screenprint or found paper, McGhee adds his gestural grafitti markings to the surface. After accumulating and pondering these stacks, he cuts them into pieces, adding layers of various elements, creating a texture of color, pattern, and shapes. The collages extend to the framing, consisting of multi-toned woods fabricated to the polygon shaped art.
Elsa Muñoz’s intense oil paintings depict a persistent inner light during the “dark night of the soul.”3 Inspired by Kaneko’s poem, Muñoz created these paintings thinking about the unseen sun in the night sky. The subtle layers of color in the blackness, combined with the emotive brushstrokes create a mysterious quality of light and texture. Intimate yet powerful, her paintings reflect her ancestral beliefs in curanderismo, Mexican folk medicine, and desahogamiento translated as “undrowning,”4 in processing profound grief. Muñoz’s experiences in life and mastery of paint capture this luninous feeling of hope.
The five artists in this exhibition explore disparate themes with diverse forms of art. Yet they share a commitment to visual accomplishment and clarity of purpose, in addition to creating art containing aspects not immediately apparent. Layered with material or meaning, unseen things are still there.
–Joanne Aono, Curator
1David Jacobson, Are You An Echo? The Lost Poems of Misuzu Kaneko, (Chin Music Press, 2016) 18-20.
2McGhee, Esau, Artist Statement (2022)
3Press, Joshua, “The Dark Night of the Soul: Understanding Amidst the Absence of Meaning,” Web blog post, The Aperion Blog, October 18, 2018.
4Dalea, N. (2021, May 25). Elsa Muñoz undrowns her community with every painting. Chicago Reader.
https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/elsa-munoz-undrowns-her-community-with-every-painting/
Alexandra Antoine | Hibiscus, 2021, Screenprint and mixed media on paper, 19 x 12.5 inches,
Alexandra Antoine is an interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural apprentice based in Chicago. Her art is influenced by Haitian culture, traditional artistic practices of the African diaspora, and her interests in portraiture, food, farming and physical labor. She has held solo exhibitions at boundary, Chicago Art Department, and Rootwork Gallery in Chicago. Group exhibitions include Southside Community Art Center, Haitian American Museum, Stony Island Arts Bank, and Acre in Chicago as well as Flux Factory (NY) and Arts in Embassies Program, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Antoine has completed residencies at Spudnik Press, Hyde Park Art Center, and Urban Growers Collective in Chicago in addition to Acre (WI), Ox Bow (MI), and Fabric Workshop and Museum (PA). She received a BFA in Fine Arts and Arts Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
JB Daniel | Help Each Other, 2021, Corrugated plastic and metal, dimensions variable
JB Daniel is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist living and working on the south side of Chicago. In addition to his studio work and public art projects, Daniel runs Mosnart, an artist exhibition project space and residency in Pullman. His Chicago area solo exhibitions include Cultivator, NAB Gallery, and Harper College. Daniel’s group exhibitions include Evanston Art Center, Bridgeport Art Center, and Lipa Gallery in Chicago, South Shore Arts (IN), as well as venues in France. His art has been reviewed in The Chicago Tribune, The Art Newspaper, Bad At Sports, DNA Chicago, and was featured on Chicago Tonight. He has received a Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Individual Artist Grant and was distinguished as a Pullman National Monument Artist in Residence.
Kate Ingold | Detail, Night Quilt, 2017, tattered, discarded quilt embellished with vegetable-dyed silk embroidery thread, 79 x 65 inches
Kate Ingold is an artist and poet, living in Pasadena, California. Touching on aspects of loss and repair, her work often begins with “damaged goods” - torn and discarded hand-sewn quilts, broken porcelain figurines, vintage publications, as well as her own photographs. Her solo exhibitions include Brentwood Art Center (CA), Illinois State Museum, Terrain Biennial (IL), in addition to Mana Contemporary and Mosnart in Chicago. Two-person and group exhibitions include USC Fisher Museum of Art (CA), Roy Boyd Gallery, Hofheimer Gallery, Carlos and Dominguez Gallery in Chicago, and The Blockhouse (Cuba). Ingold’s art has been reviewed in Art Ltd Magazine, Forbes, Newcity, and Art Talk Chicago. Her poetry and essays have been published by Poetry Society of America, Journal of Ordinary Thought, and Bad At Sports. Her work is in the permanent collections of the USC Fisher Museum of Art, the Illinois Art Museum, and a number of private collections. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Esau McGhee | Detail, Clouds on the Horizon, 2021/2022, Collage of screenprint and ink on paper, handmade frame of birch, poplar, and purpleheart, 36 x 41 x 2 inches
Esau McGhee’s interdisciplinary artistic practice is a critique of image construction found in landscape. Utilizing photography, found objects, collage and sculpture the works physically embody conventional strategies of representation, class and race construction. His Chicago area solo exhibitions include Goldfinch Gallery, Harper College, Elastic Arts, and the Union League of Chicago, as well as the Viewing Station (NY). Group exhibitions include Chicago’s Cleaner, Heaven, and Glass Curtain Galleries, the Chicago Artists Coalition, Jenkins Johnson Projects (NY), Art League Houston (TX), Holsum Gallery (MO), and Eastside International (CA). McGhee has curated numerous exhibitions for Tiger Strikes Asteroid-Chicago, where he served as Director. His art has been reviewed by Newcity Art, Sixty Inches From Center, and Inside Within. He obtained a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Northwestern University.
Elsa Muñoz | Apparition - Vino Para Hablarme, 2022, Oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches
Elsa Muñoz is a Mexican-American artist born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She credits her interest in both nature and healing to her experience growing up in an underserved and often unsafe community with little access to green spaces. Since receiving her BFA in oil painting from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Muñoz has had eight solo exhibitions including the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Union League Club of Chicago, SugarCube Gallery (CO), and Zygman Voss and Dubhe Carreno Galleries in Chicago. Group exhibitions include Glow (Chicago), La Luz De Jesus Gallery (CA), Brandt-Roberts Galleries (OH), and Gold Gallery (MA). Her art has been reviewed in Newcity Art, Chicago Reader, Sixty Inches from Center, and CBS News. She is a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation For The Arts Achievement Award. Notable collections include the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), North Park University (Chicago), and numerous private collections.
