12 Openings/Part 11

Opening Reception of 12 Openings/Part 11
Sunday August 4th, 2 to 6pm

We are excited to invite you to the 11th installment of an exhibition titled 12 Openings, a yearlong experiment in collaborative curation with unpredictable results. We are thrilled to announce our 11th participating artists and their titles:

Sara Rouse:
"Like a Gardener, Like a Garden"

Description:
Johari's window, a table used in cognitive psychology, breaks self-awareness into four quadrants including "Open Arena," "Blind Spots," "Facade," and the "Unknown." Thinking about knowledge and self-awareness through this lens, I ask myself how to picture what is hidden or that which is both unknown to the self and unknown to others. In response to the unfolding quality of 12 Openings, I've indulged in this question, in looking, and in feelings of anticipation. My project, "Like a Gardner, Like a Garden," is an interchangeable arrangement of drawings hung on a clothesline. The images respond to the unique site of Compound Yellow and ask what lies between words and pictures that are held temporarily together.

Bio: Sara Rouse is an installation artist working to disassemble what it means to witness and to know. She uses elements of drawing, sculpture, and writing to replicate experiences with unknowable images and feelings that are beyond words. She is intrigued by the hubris, vulnerability, and violence embedded in the expansion of knowledge, its history, and ultimately, its limitations. She struggles with abstraction and representation to replicate the grasp of looking, the anticipation of revelation, and the exponentially expanding question of what is hidden and what is unknown.

Rouse earned a B.F.A. in Painting & Drawing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an M.F.A. from the University of Chicago. She has exhibited at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, EXPO Chicago and in Hyde Park Art Center’s Ground Floor exhibition.

Miguel Ramos:
"The Blood Is On Your Hands"

Description:
I come from a restricted background, oftentimes as a child I was taught to fear the dark and stay far away from the sight of the unknown, but as I grew those are the same qualities that I was drawn to. My work spans the ideas of life and death, capturing the essence of the macabre, tragic, horrific and giving it a platform to be beautiful.

I oftentimes also see people view these offbeat ideas in the same manner as I was raised, staying far away from the strange and unusual qualities in life.

My installation challenges that, it's an interaction between the viewer and the art, it's a performance, it's a freak show, it's a game of dare. Its a chance to claim a piece of art, while still giving into the unknown.

Bio: Miguel A. Ramos Jr. was born in Waukegan, IL and raised in Round Lake Beach where he attended Round Lake Senior High School. He has been using is creative outlet to exhibit in a number of ways around his school, he has been apart of countless art shows, has made murals for the school property, and has even gotten to be awarded the Overall Departmental Award In Excellence of Art. Aside from traditional art, he also has a background in performance, spoken word, prose writing, and makeup artistry.