I am in a show opening this weekend! The show, Symptoms Variable, opens this Friday (May 6th) at Roxaboxen Exhibitions in Pilsen: 6-9pm, 2130  W 21st Street (near the Damen stop on the pink line).

Description of show:

Eight artists expose and confront the symptoms of social phenomena in a thoroughly interdisciplinary exhibition, combining digital and craft works with graphic design and interaction. Symptoms, a vague term meaning simply “signs of evidence of phenomena,” is used to describe critical situations in medicine, politics, and economics. Variable symptoms occur sporadically, confusing diagnoses and complicating interventions. Symptoms in the exhibition indicate problems of taste, identity, economics, and culture, treatable through three imaginary medications:

AccumulofetishixTM: Manages anxiety associated with advertising immersion and hyperbolic growth. Images and merchandise form an adhesive bond upon contact with computer paint tools, subcultural icons, high school yearbooks to corporate logos.

BodaceptTM: Heals the hard to define space between the self and the other in physical space and psychological experience. Site-specific installations and projections interact with architecture and large jacquard weavings to invade and control the human body in both unusual and everyday experiences.

PlacebexTM: The Placebo category recontextualizes everyday interactions with ambient noise and decoration through interactive pieces using sound, gravel, pottery, and macaroni and cheese.

The artists are members of the 2011 Master of Arts of Visual and Critical Studies class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and will present their thesis research in a symposium on May 12 from 6-9 pm.

Participating artists include: Sara Clugage, Christine Elliot, T. Brandon Evans, Meredith Kooi, Lauren A. Ross, L.C. Parker, Jeremy Shedd, and Dustin Yager.

Artists websites: www.meredithkooi.us, cargocollective.com/laurenaross, and www.ceramicsandtheory.com

Roxaboxen Exhibitions is an artist-run gallery and performance space in the heart of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. www.roxaboxenminicastle.com