Let's Play a LoveGame
Let’s Play a LoveGame
Izzy Cho | Tavin Davis | Josh Dihle | Zhi Ding | Mari Eastman | Sam Jaffe | Max Jansons |
August Krogan-Roley | John McAllister | Jessie Mott | Trey Rozell | Cherry Tung | Yue Xu
May 27 – June 17, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 27, 2023, 6–9PM
RUSCHMAN
4148 N. Elston Ave.
Chicago, IL 60618
“My love, I swear by the air I breathe:
Sooner or later, you’ll bare your teeth.
But for now, just dance, darlin’;
C’mon, will you dance, my darlin’?
Darling, there’s a place for us;
Can we go, before I turn to dust?
My darling there’s a place for us.”
–Joanna Newsom. “Monkey & Bear.” Ys. Drag City, 2006.
How do I hold a systemic analysis and approach when each system I am critical of is peopled, in part, by the same flawed and complex
individuals that I love? This question always leads me to self-reflection. If I can see the ways I am perpetuating systemic
oppressions, if I can see where I learned the behavior and how hard it is to unlearn it, I start to have more humility as I see the
messiness of the communities I am part of, the world I live in.
–adrienne marie brown. “We Are Still Beginning.” We Will Not Cancel Us, and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. Chico: AK Press,
2020. Print, p. 68.
If mushrooms have proven to be a special kind of telepathic, latently pulsing electric signals (up to FIFTY different terms in a
nascent vocabulary, so reports NPR!) across mycelium networks that include ghost and caterpillar fungi among others in a
context defined by communication, we are left wondering what conditions predicate one’s entry into the social, and what privileges,
swag, cred, advantages, struggles, competitions, miseries, justices, and elations accompany membership in a society, per se. Plenty
have theorized that there is no prior to social relations, no escape from some sort of power differential between self and other.
And yet more have also proposed this or that interpellation by which the full prize package of agency, subjectivity, autonomy,
and social responsibility are bestowed.
Art-making has the potential of being its own kind of hyphae, a marvelous collision of biology and culture that yields new,
oblique languages by which social, national, or otherwise collective identities may be forged. It’s why fascism so readily suppresses
and aims to control art: it’s an enrapturing signal, a powerful love language. And yet art convulses between premising a coalition of
divergent perspectives and the seductively hermetic, esoteric, and introspective capacities that directs its maker away from the
crowded scene, inward into detachment.
Post Enlightenment shifts toward abolition, industrialization, and globalization have urged art toward a question of how to join up
with and embed itself within the social, rather than maintaining a removed vantage from which to observe the thrumming populace.
Pop Art in particular located an entry point by which art might access and share in the basic units of popular culture: a panoply
of cartoon critter mascots, dizzying repeated floral patterns, and a vernacular of spectacular code signs suggestive of upward
economic and cultural mobility. In their hyper simulation, the means by which signifiers are being conveyed populate an ongoing
artistic dialogue concerned with evolving tastes and fashions, spikes in consumption, diversified manufacturing, and the media-driven
narrative-building that articulates an aesthetics of modernity. Through Pop and other mid-century attempts to lower divisions
between Art and Life, class, kitsch, plant, animal, mineral, high, low, abstraction, and representation were all enlisted into an
ongoing dialogue that examines how a society appears to itself—in parody, earnest, or both.
RUSCHMAN is pleased to have gathered together artists and artworks that confront the ethics of a society with the burgeoning
aesthetics of community, drawing together what is shared and appreciating what is different across an intergenerational, global
coterie of contemporary makers. As scholar and educator Dr. Elsa Barkley Brown noted in her 1990 address “What Has Happened Here”
(reprinted in Routledge’s 1997 anthology The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory), “...[I]t is precisely differences
which are the path to a community of intellectual and political struggle… Learning to think nonlinearly, asymmetrically, is, I
believe, essential to our intellectual and political developments.” These painting and painting-adjacent exploits propose pathways
to put the party back in party politics—a distinct enlivening of our collective struggles and achievements, an optimism oriented
toward fast approaching horizons.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
August Krogan-Roley,
Court,
2023, Acrylic on canvas, in artist frame, 24h x 24w in.
Izzy Cho,
Charms at Rest,
2023, Screenprinted hanji, belting, buckles, paint, risograph confetti, salt, bowl, and hardware, Dimensions Variable
Izzy Cho,
Charms at Rest,
2023, Detail View
Sam Jaffe,
Camouflage the Body with Clowncore,
2023, Recycled yarn, pom poms, quilt batting, thread, and wood on masonite, 16 1/2h x 13w x 2d in.
Sam Jaffe,
Camouflage the Body with Clowncore,
2023, Angled View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Jessie Mott,
Like Queer Animals (Le feu a cul II),
2021, Gouache, watercolor, ink, and acrylic on paper, 16h x 12w in.
Jessie Mott,
Like Queer Animals (Tender),
2021, Gouache, watercolor, ink, and acrylic on paper, 16h x 12w in.
Jessie Mott,
Panther,
2021, Gouache, watercolor, ink, and acrylic on paper, 16h x 12w in.
Jessie Mott,
Like Queer Animals (Le feu a cul),
2021, Gouache, watercolor, ink, and acrylic on paper, 16h x 12w in.
Zhi Ding,
Untitled,
2022, Oil on linen, 7h x 8w in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Josh Dihle,
Bavarois,
2023, Oil on carved walnut, 18h x 14w x 2d in.
Josh Dihle,
Bavarois,
2023, Angled View
Max Jansons,
The Vase that Sees All,
2021, Oil on linen, 15h x 13w in.
Trey Rozell,
Propped Props,
2023, Oil on canvas; 6 pieces, 96h x 96w x 12d in.
Trey Rozell,
Propped Props,
2023, Detail View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Yue Xu,
A Letter to Rabbits,
2023, Spray paint on air filters, Diptych; 23 1/2h x 51w in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Izzy Cho,
Transformation Incarnation,
2023, Hanji, laser cut acrylic, spray paint, and MDF, 37 3/4h x 27 1/2w x 1 1/2d in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Josh Dihle,
Fledermaus,
2018-23, Rocks, crystals, PopSocket, metal bell, plastic pegasus, fossil, shells, and casein on carved walnut, 18h x 14w x 1 1/2d in.
Josh Dihle,
Fledermaus,
2018-23, Detail View
Tavin Davis,
Flowers and Clouds,
2022, Oil on canvas, 24h x 30w in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Mari Eastman,
The Guitar Player (from the series: Other People's Parties),
2008, Pen on paper, 11h x 9w in. (artwork) / 13 1/2h x 10 1/2w in. (framed)
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Cherry Tung,
Strangers in the Museum (Black-tailed Jackrabbit),
2023, Ink, watercolor, and gouache on silk, 19 1/2h x 14 1/2w in.
Cherry Tung,
Strangers in the Museum (Banner-tailed Kangaroo Rat),
2023, Ink, watercolor, and gouache on silk, 7 1/2h x 12 1/2w in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Tavin Davis,
Flowers and Clouds,
2023, Oil on canvas, 50h x 60w in.
Tavin Davis,
Flowers and Clouds,
2023, Detail View
Yue Xu,
Stop Asking If I Am Fine, No. 2,
2023, Metal duct connectors, resin-covered air filter sheets, spike mat, acrylic paints, watercolor on paper, 14h x 11w x 4d in.
Yue Xu,
Stop Asking If I Am Fine, No. 2,
2023, Angled View
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
John McAllister,
bearing lilt lustery,
2019, Oil on canvas, 22h x 18w in.
Zhi Ding,
I saw a glimpse of you in one summer night,
2023, Oil on linen, 5h x 7w in.
Let's Play a LoveGame,
2023, Installation View
Yue Xu,
Which are her favorite flowers, peonies or roses?,
2021, PVC glue, acrylic paint, and airbrush on air filter, 20h x 16w in.