september 18 - November 20

"THE GREAT ESCAPE" NEW WORKS by JAMES JANKOWIAK

Opening Reception: September 18, 3-5p / Closing Reception: November 20, 3-6p

Chicago born artist and educator James Jankowiak’s current paintings and installation focuses on the role of color and familiar form as a means of communication in our day to day environment. His emotive abstract paintings and public artworks explore the intersections between color, visual rhythm, spirituality and music.

As an educator, Jankowiak has utilized contemporary painting practice and public artworks as a vehicle for social engagement with Chicago Public School students and teachers across the entire city for over two decades.

Jankowiak’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, SAIC’s Roger Brown Study Collection, the Hyde Park Art Center, Johalla Projects, Western Exhibitions and the Chicago Cultural Center.  He has also received numerous grants over the years, and is currently working on a large scale mural project for the 23rd Ward, commissioned by the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

May 7 - June 4

“a • float” - Jordan “Soup” Campbell solo exhibition

Opening Reception: May 7, 5:31-7:22p / Closing Reception: June 4, 5:31-7:11 PM

Jordan Campbell: “The sun serves as a witness to the centuries of this earth and its existence before and after us. The radiance of the sun nourished fields of corn, added depth to the complexion of skin and was able to capture the wrestling of cattle. In all of its glory and memory, the influence of the sun made its mark on a distinct American people:, Black Cowboys. If one studied the chronicles of American History, they could assume that the existence of this group of people had no significance. The half truths of the John Waynes and Clint Eastwoods would find is left no room for tales of the Bass Reeves’ and the Nat Loves.

a • float not only catapults the lives of Black Cowboys to center stage, but it also intentionally acknowledges the inventors from the 19th century until now -- the ones that have received a similar erasure from our history. For a while, I subscribed to this constant rotation of biased history. I’ve since begun peeling back the layers of Black culture, seeing how it rests within myself and understanding how it may manifest in different forms. Through my explorations as an artist, a Black Man of God, and a historian, I take the pages that have been whitewashed with the rhetoric of exclusivity and instead fill them with the pantheon of Black Folk who complete them. 

As an artist and believer, it’s my role to reflect the times and be courageously creative. The culture we have soulfully permeated is now as reflective as diamonds. Our ideas, concepts, and movements have been crystallized in spite of unwanted and undeserved pressures. In this work, I am thinking about the spirit that motivated these inventors and Cowboys alike. The historical impact of these trailblazers, but also the right-now-ness of it. “

Jordan is part of the artist collective alt_ and is currently a Takeover resident at Compound Yellow. Read more about alt_ on our Takeover page.

April 1 - APril 27

"MAYDAY" - JON VEAL SOLO EXHIBITION

Opening Reception: April 1, 7-9p

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” - Marcus Garvey

“I haven’t had an opportunity to share a complete body of work outside of collaboration since 2019. As I took time to reflect upon all that has happened, all I could say was
Mayday.” - Jon Veal

Mayday is a public challenge to the widely established narratives of written histories in favor of a collective history of the people. The latest works from artist Jon Veal invite the viewer to become a participant in both the work and the collective history of the community.

January 15 - January 29

COLLAGES - DMITRY SAMAROv

Faced with the plague outside his door, Samarov, a painter who'd worked for decades from outside in, looked into his past for subject-matter. Specifically, crates and drawers of old letters, homework assignments, failed or forgotten artwork, and varied ephemera. Ripping them up, gluing them back wrong, then scribbling all over the whole mess, Samarov is working out a personal visual lexicon unlike anything that came in his previous four decades of creative endeavor.

Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the US with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in 1st grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993.

Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab—first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago— which eventually led to the publication of his illustrated work memoirs Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Where To? A Hack Memoir (Curbside Splendor, 2014).

Music to My Eyes (Tortoise Books, 2019) is his first non-cabbie-related book. Soviet Stamps (Pictures&Blather, 2020) is the second. All Hack (Pictures&Blather, 2020) is a summation of his cabbie-related work. Old Style (Pictures&Blather, 2021) is his first work of fiction.

He has exhibited his work in all manner of bars, coffee shops, libraries, and even the odd gallery (when he's really hard up).

He writes dog portraits and paints book reviews in Chicago, Illinois. You can see more of his work than you'd ever want to at https://dmitrysamarov.com/.