The Sexy Brutale
The Sexy Brutale
Oct. 16 — Dec. 31, 2020
Chris Bogia, Anna Kunz, Alex Paik, Léon Wuidar
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
The Sexy Brutale,
Installation View
Léon Wuidar,
24 mars 16,
2016, Oil on canvas in wooden artist frame, 19 3/4h x 11 3/4w in.
Léon Wuidar,
Avril 02,
2002, Oil on canvas in wooden artist frame, 23 5/8h x 31 1/2w in.
Léon Wuidar,
16 mars 11,
2011, Oil on canvas in wooden artist frame, 31 1/2h x 23 5/8w in.
Anna Kunz,
Fog,
2020, Acrylic on canvas, 66h x 60w in.
Alex Paik,
Partial Hexagon (X),
2020, Graphite on vellum, 10h x 18w in.
Alex Paik,
Partial Hexagon (House),
2020, Graphite on vellum, 10h x 18w in.
Alex Paik,
Partial Right Triangle,
2020, Graphite on vellum, 10h x 18w in.
Chris Bogia,
Sun Standers,
2017, Yarn on wood, lacquer, veneer, steel, grass cloth wallpaper, jute rug, vase, fresh flowers, 69h x 84w x 30d in.
PRESS RELEASE
The Sexy Brutale is an annual masked ball held at the elaborate casino mansion of a wealthy man swathed in mystery.
The Sexy Brutale is a video game made in 2017, wherein the player must navigate a repeating 12-hour time loop to solve the murders and thus prevent the deaths of the visitors attending the aforementioned ball.
The Sexy Brutale is commonly categorized as an adventure-puzzle (or a puzzle-adventure).
The Sexy Brutale is the inaugural exhibition at RUSCHMAN’s new gallery location in the Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago, with works by Chris Bogia, Anna Kunz, Alex Paik, and Léon Wuidar.
***
I am beyond humbled to include these four artists in the first exhibition of the new gallery. Each of them construct vibrant visual languages of form and color, developed over years of fearless looking. Patterns are sought out, repeated, readdressed, shifted, possibly solved. And the loop goes again, except this time (like last time), something has been learned. Questions are asked again, but the syntax has changed. Edits are present, and they’re intentionally noted.
Léon Wuidar’s paintings are masterful, tender puzzles of architecture, space, color, and light, all delicately compressed within a compositional framing device that echoes an actual framing device. They are certain in brushstroke and certain in layout, yet they also belie revisions and shifts through visible underpainting, left to be found by the keen investigator. In Anna Kunz’s compositions, the edges bleed and are always left to chance. Clues are just as often discovered, as much as they are dropped. When a painting is finished, it’s often not through a solidifying moment, but one that breaks things further apart. Chris Bogia’s sculptures are like physical and psychological interiors; a selection of cared-for items, memories, traumas, and loves, all balanced together, very much actively propping one another up. Alex Paik’s graphite drawings on vellum have persisted for years alongside colorful and exuberant paper constructions. The drawings follow a logic, however, it’s a logic that takes a turn toward the magical. Folded forms are broken down and drawn out onto a flat surface, but instead illustrating how those forms might come back together, the drawings become roadmaps for other impossible objects. In finding new ways to look at something, the same information set can yield wildly new avenues toward further inquiry and understanding.
***
With each new beginning, or each new loop, comes an opportunity to start with something learned; an opportunity for gratitude.
Thank you to all the artists in this show willing to participate in a new chapter.
Thank you to Léon Wuidar for dedicating decades to a painting practice I’ve come to admire and find endlessly fulfilling. Thank you to Julie Senden and Rodolphe Janssen for several years of dialogue around this practice, for sharing the physical paintings with me when Matt and I were last in Belgium (someday we’ll all be allowed to travel again), and for your enthusiasm.
Thank you to Anna Kunz for all the studio visits, all the painting, all the questions. Thank you for everything you’ve done for Chicago painters, and for letting me have your trust.
Thank you to Chris Bogia for supporting all the queer artists and evolving a method of faggy abstraction that has been a joy to watch, and a thrill to get to share here in the Midwest. Thank you to Sara Salamone and the folks at Mrs. for your kindness and support.
Thank you to Alex Paik for over a decade of friendship, for letting me write my first catalogue essay about your work however many years ago, and for continuing to be a part of my life.
Thank you to Josh Dihle and Abby Monroe for all of your help with the new physical gallery space, and for allowing me to be a tenant in such a gorgeous building.
Thank you to Javier for the beautiful construction work inside the space.
Thank you to my partner Matt Morris for not only holding my hand physically and emotionally through every major decision involving the opening of this gallery, but also every show I’ve ever put together, every smart thing I’ve ever said, and any good thing I’ve ever done. If any of you reading this like anything I do, or have done, your really have Matt to thank.
Thank you to every collector who has ever trusted me to connect them with important art and artists.
Thank you to everyone I’m not mentioning here. It…would be a long list to name you all. But I hope you know who you are. And if you don’t, I hope I find time soon to let you know how much I appreciate you.
Here’s to another loop, and another puzzle-adventure. Let’s do this one justice.