Sentience

In “Sentience,” five Chicago-based artists embrace mediums of construction, assemblage or collage in a range of vastly differing practices. Though David Criner, Marcos Raya, Tom Torluemke, Kathy Weaver and Stacia Yeapanis each work within their own unique artistic intentions, their works share a strangeness that results from the tension of commingling imagination with the stuff of everyday life.

In his work, David Criner transforms twentieth century collage material in pursuit of an image that celebrates the present moment. The antiquated “pop” sensibility imbued by Criner's sourced matter is countered by his gestural, spontaneous mark-making, creating compositions that manage to reference the past while also feeling timeless.

Sometimes autobiographical, and sometimes socially engaged or critical, Marcos Raya's works are always a reflection of his unique vision. Though renowned as a painter and muralist, Raya also possess a proficiency for found objects, turning ordinary things into complex tableaus that are thoroughly surreal.

Tom Torluemke, a master of many mediums, here presents a large-scale painted paper installation. Torluemke is well known for his unflinching depictions of highly emotive narratives, and in this piece, objects and figures occupy three-dimensional space with the viewer, making his handcrafted creations feel unsettlingly real.

Kathy Weaver emphasizes the uncanniness of our relationships with seemingly sentient machines with the use of soft charcoals, burning and hand stitching. Her longtime use of robots as subject matter has evolved throughout her oeuvre, varying in character from whimsical to sinister. Here, Weaver employs familiar settings viewers associate with home and the Midwest to relate narratives that are far darker.

For this exhibition, Stacia Yeapanis creates a site-specific installation assembled from recycled materials. In this work, manmade media like newspaper and plastic are completely transformed into a vast, organic-looking construction, blurring the lines between the artificial, the natural and the completely invented.