ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce A Prairie, a solo exhibition of new work by Daniel Shea in Gallery Two.

Chicago, IL, April 5, 2014- ANDREW RAFACZ continues the spring 2014 season with A Prairie, a solo exhibition of new photographs, painting and sculpture by Daniel Shea. The exhibition continues through Saturday, May 17, 2014.

Daniel Shea’s exhibition A Prairie consists of works that speak to the potential of mythologizing an historical narrative. Examining the construction of this mythology specifically in southern Illinois, the artist creates a fictional narrative, grounded in reality, through stilted monuments.

The exhibition contains photographic extracts from two books, Blisner, Ill. and Blisner, IL which examine what has happened in a single Rust Belt town during the process of deindustrialization. In addition to these photographs, A Prairie presents a new sculpture of a stoplight cast in concrete and a wall painting.

Encompassing a cinematic chronology that begins in rural pastures and ends with a symbol of infrastructure and the drive to order, A Prairie condenses the mythology of early industrial America to its most salient elements. The work questions the perceived robustness of human progress against the backdrop of an inevitable entropy.

DANIEL SHEA (American, b. 1985) lives and works in New York, New York. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He published his first monograph, Blisner, Ill. in conjunction with a long-term residency at Columbia College Chicago and a book release at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and will publish the follow-up book in September 2014 through fourteen-nineteen books. He recently completed a residency at Light Work in Syracuse, NY. He has exhibited at The DePaul Art Museum, The Museo de Arte Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela, MDW Art Fair, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Asia Society in Beijing, and Gallery 400, among others. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, The Fader, New City and Esquire Russia. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.