On view September 11 through November 14, Nocturnes, solo presentation by Whitney Bedford will feature a suite of paintings and drawings from Bedford’s Veduta series. Bedford’s Veduta paintings offer a contemporary intervention of an art-historically significant genre of landscape painting popular from the 16th to 18th centuries, often capturing imagery of healthy and pristine vistas untouched by development, pollution and other man-made blight. Bedford’s new series of veduta paintings employ master works by artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Milton Avery, Camille Pissarro and Frederic Edwin Church as underpaintings, revisiting moonlit landscapes and seascapes that embrace the essence of the sublime.
On view September 11 through November 14, invitational exhibition “… before the dawn” explores the enduring artistic, psychological, and philosophical pull of the moon and the nocturnal sky. Simultaneously familiar and unknowable, the moon serves as both a scientific frontier and a symbol of longing, transformation, and transcendence. “… before the dawn” is presented in conjunction with Whitney Bedford's solo exhibition Nocturnes, and was curated with the assistance of gallery artist Whitney Bedford and Andrea Stang, Director of the University Art Gallery at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
In celebration of CXW, Secrist | Beach is pleased to debut "Second Star," a satellite project space opening September 17th from 5-8pm. Located adjacent to the gallery at 1801 W Hubbard St, Chicago, an abstracted greenhouse environment acts as an incubator for adaptive, interdependent structures and relationships within and between the botanical and human worlds. Gallery artist and project co-curator Stephen Eichhorn transforms his two-dimensional collage-based artworks into a three-dimensional architectural experience –– where art, plants, people, and ideas are invited to shape one another. The progressive structure will feature art objects acting as vessels for organic matter alongside plant partners, presentations to be equally considered and symbiotic.
Whitney Bedford (lives and works in Los Angeles) received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. She was awarded a Krasner Pollock Grant in 2015 and was the winner of the 2001 UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennale. She had a solo exhibition at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo, CA. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA. Bedford’s work is featured in the collection of The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; the Museo Jumex Collection, Mexico City, MX; and the collection of Francois Pinault.
Stephen Eichhorn (lives and works in Chicago) received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at the Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, OH; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; and the Chicago Athletic Association, Chicago, IL. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, Boylston, MA; the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, IL; Northeastern Illinois University Fine Arts Center Gallery, Chicago, IL; Illinois State Museum Lockport Gallery, Lockport, IL; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY.
