• NEW FORMALISMS 2:
  • Curated by Abraham Ritchie
  • Featuring Samantha Bittman, Todd Chilton, Steven Husby, Melissa Oresky

  • January 13 - February 11, 2012
  • Opening Reception: Friday, January 13 (7-10PM)

  • The follow up to the 2009 exhibition "Beautiful Form" at 65GRAND, "New Formalisms 2" continues to explore painters making strongly geometric work. As stated in the title, this exhibition indicates new directions in formal painting.

  • All four artists, Samantha Bittman, Todd Chilton, Steven Husby and Melissa Oresky, maintain an intense attention to the formal aspects of painting: the application of paint or other media to the support, and the method by which this is achieved. While this is a similarity in their general approach to artmaking, each artist also expresses and follows his or her own specific interests, whether that is the interaction of color, the role of the handmade or the tension between flatness and depth. The results are exquisite artworks that both carry on and complicate a modernist approach to painting, while showing the enduring importance and appeal of aesthetics. In this, "New Formalisms 2" proposes that instead of the common narrative of a single Modernism that neatly and linearly ends, there are in fact Modernisms that mutate, grow and live on, yielding startling new results within formalist rigor.

  • Samantha Bittman received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is represented by Thomas Robertello Gallery and in 2011 presented a solo exhibition there, "Perceptual Notions." Todd Chilton received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery and recently had a solo exhibition there, "Angled." Steven Husby received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He recently presented a solo exhibition at Julius Caesar, "RUBICON." Melissa Oresky received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2011 she presented a solo exhibition at the Elmhurst Museum of Art, titled "Tangled Ground."

  • Abraham Ritchie received his BA in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his MA in New Art Journalism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is an active critic and writer in Chicago.