[BUT] THREE’S A CROWD at Efrain Lopez Gallery

Artists: Melissa Leandro, Naomi Leibowitz, Melvin Martinez, Dan Rizzo-Orr, Mindy Rose Schwartz

Exhibition title: [BUT] THREE’S A CROWD

Venue: Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago, US

Date: September 11 – October 16, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago

Efrain Lopez Gallery proudly presents its inaugural group exhibition entitled (but) three’s a crowd, featuring works by Melissa Leandro, Naomi Leibowitz, Melvin Martinez, Dan Rizzo-Orr, and Mindy Rose Schwartz.

Curated by gallery director Efrain Lopez, this exhibition features both two dimensional mixed media as well as three-dimensional installation works that establish their intimate connection through a shared exploration of labor, material production, and texture.

The seemingly stable notions of the “handmade” and the “fabricated” are simultaneously celebrated and questioned through the pêle-mêle accumulation of varied media, spanning textiles, papier-mâché, ceramic, cinderblock, and burlap. Techniques of the photogram, fabric transfer, and macramé are woven to compose an ever-present essence of the art as assemblage in every sense. Harnessing the emotionality of the forlorn and the forgotten, the works access and respond to transnational and transcultural identity vis-à-vis the artist and the artwork as náufragos, or castaways.