STRUCTURED: PRIMITIVE SPACES (Unit 2)
Artists Jacqueline Moses and Juan Fernandez explore the fundamental beauty in simplistic spaces.
Stripping down the photographs to bare bones, Fernandez’s work references perceptions of form, structure and order in common materials and subject matter.
Moses has been painting images derived from her travels and projecting her views for the future. She portrays what the landscape might look like if thought is given only to monetary profit with no regard for the environment and all its inhabitants.
Juan’s work has been exhibited in numerous national shows including the Rockford Art Museum, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Newspace Center for Photography, and The Houston Center for Photography. He is also represented in various collections including, Columbia College Chicago, and in The Midwest Photographers Project at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.
Currently, Jacqueline is exhibiting at Prairie State College, Evanston Art Center, South Shore Arts, Carthage College, and Printworks, Chicago. Her work is in numerous permanent collections including Rockford Art Museum.
Learn more about the artists at jmanuelfernandez.com and jacquelinemoses.com
Esoteric Prodigy: Jesus Correa (Unit 3)
Jesus Correa is a multimedia artist hailing from Rockford, Illinois. He has shown his work in public since 2003. He once lit himself on fire for a punk rock show. He enjoys making tiny fine lines with a dipping pen and India ink. He enjoys knitting and making puppets. His pieces move and are more engaging and entertaining than most gallery pieces you will ever see. He wants you to man handle his pieces, he wants you to smile or cry. He has been accused of being a sociopathic egomaniac. He is in fact a strange child trapped in a weirdo old man body.
Correa continues to perform in two fulltime bands, an outlaw country and western outfit called King of the Demons, and an odd electronic one-man band that goes by the name of los osos voladores. He performs at least once a month onstage as a comedian and storyteller, and his Ugly Old Lady Productions promotion company is beginning to gain notoriety for the variety shows and the promotional posters it has been doing for the past twelve years. Correa often hand makes small batches of recordings he has done and puts them out for the world to hear.—Jesus Correa
Learn more about the artist at jesusabrahamcorrea.com
Pulled: Fatherless and Cleon Peterson (Unit 4)
What began in Rockford as an impromptu screen print session on discarded letterpress proofs has evolved into a body of work now recognized around the world for its unique, self-coined “visual mix tape of creative shenagination.” Rockford’s very own Fatherless has consistently pushed forward with a counter-intuitive approach to not just screenprinting, but artist collaboration as well.
Cleon Peterson’s shadowy figures mete out violence in images that could just as well depict justice as they do barbarity. This work can be viewed as both a continuation and a progression of past works, in which graphically rendered scenes of sadism portray chaos as the inevitable order of things.
These printmakers push the boundaries of the art world by exploring new methods of printing and expression, often addressing social and political issues head-on – and always leaving their skilled mark.
The name Fatherless represents an effort by multiple artists combining each other’s imagery in a chaotic and detached sense, influenced by our current consumer driven social climate. A good portion of the imagery in a Fatherless print is re-contextualized from our current throw away culture, creating a finished piece that stands alone, and therefore cannot be claimed by any individual artist in the group. Members include Jarrod Hennis, Javier Jimenez, Greg Lang, Dave Menard and Benjamin Rider of the UK.
Cleon received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, MI and a BFA in Graphic Design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
He has exhibited at Boutwell Draper Gallery, Sydney, Australia, Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, Art Basel 2007 at Deitch Projects New York, NY, New Image Art Gallery, L.A., The Leonard Street Gallery, London, UK, and Monster Gallery, Sydney.
He has been featured in LA Record Magazine, Juxtapoz, and Eyes Cream (Japan), Arkitip Issue No. 0005. And has been collected by international collectors, musicians and world art leaders such as Jeffrey Deitch.
Learn more about these artists at wearefatherless.com and cleonpeterson.com
CARRIE JOHNSON | CURATOR
Carrie Johnson is the Curator of Rockford Art Museum, responsible for the overall management and development of the RAM Permanent Collection as well as the organization and production of all feature exhibitions. After starting and running a Chicago theater company for five years she moved back to her hometown of Rockford and began her career in the visual arts.
She joined Rockford Art Museum in December 2006, and was named Curator in July 2012.
In the last 3 years Johnson has facilitated a bevy of museum acquisitions. These include work by Warrington Colescott, Michiko Itatani, Shelly Mosman, Hollis Sigler, John Wilde; and a benchmark donation from Jeff Stevens of 31 works by Michael Abraham, Eric Bellis, Mark Chatterley, Julie Heffernan, Laurie Hogin, Steven Hudson, Geraldine Javier, Sherry Karver, Vera Klement, Matt Lamb, Lorna Marsh, Herbert Murrie, Jackie Tileston and Caleb Weintraub. The latest acquisition was a piece by Chicago-artist, Carlos Rolon/Dzine.
Recent feature exhibitions she has curated include Modern Metaphors, Tradiciones, Carlos Rolon/Dzine: Now and Then, Printmakers Ball and Phyllis Bramson: In Praise of Folly – A Retrospective, 1985–2015.