eMBODY Art

Co-sponsored as part of our eMBODY series.

Lia Chavez: "The Revitalized Gaze: Nudity, Molten Bodies, and the Spectatorship of Intimacy,"  Artists Lecture, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall, Feb. 2, 4:15.

Lia Chavez is a New York based artist who is a photographer, dancer, and choreographer. Exhibitions of her dreamlike, elegant photographs, videos, and performances include Hillman plus Chavez at Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta (2010) and at Affirmation Arts in New York (2008), Detournement Venise, Parallel Worlds at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009 TINA B. – The Prague

Contemporary Art Festival, the 2009 Armory Show VIP program, Nightcomers at the 10th Istanbul Biennial, and Shot and Go: A Vision of Today’s International Photography at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Abstract:

Whether pondering mysteries of the night sky or working in my blackened studio or darkroom, I am interested in the interplay between light and dark and how together they conspire to author an experience.  Exploring links between the formation of heavenly bodies and earthly ones, I research - through movement in space - an “aurorean body” which, like many undulating forms in the heavens, cannot be precisely measured, categorized, or diagrammed. I work across a wide range of experimental photographic techniques and alternative processes, at times fusing analog with digital and old photographic techniques with new ones. There is one key exception, however: I do not use digital manipulation to achieve my results.

Judith Raphael: “On the Fly,”
Hansen Gallery exhibition Jan. 25 – Feb 29, Adams Hall.  Reception Feb. 9, 4:15; Artist’s Talk 4:30, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall.  Sponsored by CACE and the Wheaton College Art Department.   

Judith Raphael is a Chicago artist whose work has been exhibited consistently in Chicago galleries and museums as well as in museums from Boston to Seattle.  She has won numerous awards for her work, including three Illinois Arts Council Grants, an Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize at the National Academy Museum’s 179 Annual invitational in 2004.

Douglas Stapleton of the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery, says: “Judith Raphael creates a modern day coming of age story of young women poised on the cusp of adolescence.  In portraits and narrative paintings her subjects confront and compete with one another, posing in attitudes of new self-confidence as they gaze outward with watchful, searching attention.  Classical poses from art history and stances taken from sports pages and magazines suggest both the pressure and playfulness of the “rules” of growing up.  Her girls inhabit a contradictory world: an interior landscape of uncertainty deftly filtered through airy brightness and clarity.”

About her own work Raphael says, “I have been obsessed with the human condition. … I have painted men, boys and women as well. At this point the girls are broadly the symbol of my concern and hopes for the future but that feeling is for all children and by extension, the family of man.”

Riva Lehrer: “Mirror Shards: Animals & Metaphor,”
Artist’s Lecture, Cozette Lecture Hall, Adams Hall, Feb. 16, 4:15.  

Riva Lehrer is a Chicago artist whose work is regularly exhibited in Chicago Galleries including the Chicago Cultural Center.  Riva was born with spina bifida and she speaks and writes about her drawing and painting that addresses the disabled human body.   

Lehrer's current work is an exploration of the way that we learn to be empathetic through imagining ourselves as other beings, both animal and human. She will explore the role of animal symbols and concepts in understanding our connection to other beings, and discuss how disability raises specific issues in visual narrative.