2018 EVANSTON + VICINITY BIENNIAL: ARTIST HIGHLIGHTS

EMILY RAPPORT

Emily Rapport is a Chicago-based painter.  From her studio in Ravenswood, she paints many scenes of Chicago’s urban landscape. Her landscape paintings typically depict “vacant lots, El tracks, neighborhood houses,”[1] and many other features of the urban landscape that are often overlooked.  She paints these scenes to explore “beauty and resonance in daily life.”[2]  In her 2018 painting House with Red X, Rapport shows an abandoned or condemned house with a red X on its front.  House with Red X, as well as many of her other paintings, shows a “strong sense of locality” as well as “a larger American landscape and culture.”[3]

"House with Red X"

 

SHAWN DECKER

Shawn Decker is a composer and teacher whose sound creations are the “intersection of music composition, the visual art, and performance.”[4]  His sound installations create sound through a combination of electrical and physical means, creating a connection between the “natural (and unnatural) worlds.”[5]  Quartet is a sound installation that uses a microprocessor to create a series of clicks that creates an ambience around the piece and in throughout the gallery it’s exhibited in.  This unnaturally generated sound mimics the sound of crickets in the natural world.

"Quartet"

 

CHUNBO ZHANG

Chunbo Zhang is a Chicago studio artist who works in mixed media, printmaking, and drawing.  Zhang started her arts education in China, and she moved to Atlanta to “expand her education in fine art.”[6]  She moved back to Beijing for a while, and now live in the suburbs of Chicago.  Her works focus on “cultural differences (East and West), gender, identity, and nature.”[7]  Zhang’s Treasure Series is an example of exploring the differences of the East and the West.  This series of lithographs and watercolors shows American foods combined with bowls from the Ming and Qing dynasties to present a “cultural mix of traditional and modern contradictions.”[8]  Treasure Series: Deep Dish Pizza is a watercolor that depicts a very American food, the deep dish pizza, juxtaposed with a crust made of porcelain that represents a Chinese bowl.

"Treasure Series: Deep Dish Pizza"

[1]https://emilyrapport.com/about/

[2]https://emilyrapport.com/about/

[3]https://emilyrapport.com/about/

[4]http://www.shawndecker.com

[5]http://www.shawndecker.com

[6]http://www.bofineart.com/about-2017132461.html

[7]http://www.bofineart.com/about-2017132461.html

[8]http://www.bofineart.com/printmaking1.html

Posted By
Anthony Carlsen