ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Baudrillard’s America, an exhibition of new painting in Gallery One.

Chicago, IL, June 20, 2015- ANDREW RAFACZ continues 2015 with Baudrillard’s America, a group exhibition of new painting by Larissa Borteh, Jay Davis, Ted Gahl, Richard Galling, Andrew Holmquist, Noël Morical, Josh Reames, Adam Scott, & Wendy White. The exhibition continues through Saturday, July 25, 2015.

Addressing the ongoing, incessant argument over the end of painting at the end of meaning situated at the end of history, Baudrillard’s America presents painters working today in a variety of modes that fold dead or dying visual syntax into something uniquely reanimated. Working both as abstractionists and image-makers, these artists contend with the excess of our visual bandwidth by accepting, altering, and sublimating all of its available elements. Not content solely with a hieratic or demotic language, they instead combine and contradict without irony or hierarchy.

The title of the exhibition is taken from Baudrillard’s strange, iconic 1986 text that explores the titular country and its culture. Moreover, it is a book of and about contradictions. It is as much about the writer as what is written, a stranger in a strange land coming to terms with something at once familiar and alien. Using this as a starting point, the exhibition explores painting that is taking on the exhausting, confounding contemporary sprawl of our visual culture and rather than reacting against it, is folding it into a more radical language that sublimely betrays diplomacy. The screen is left on while other actions manifest themselves, disregarding any ontological hierarchy. And the painter is still in the picture, perhaps a more shadowy figure than ever, but still ever present, contending to stay in the frame.

LARISSA BORTEH (American b. 1988) holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Chicago.

JAY DAVIS (American b. 1975) holds a BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

TED GAHL (American b. 1983) holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He lives and works in Connecticut and New York.

RICHARD GALLING (American b. 1985) holds BFA from Art Center College of Design and a MFA from Yale University. He lives and works in Milwaukee.

ANDREW HOLMQUIST (American b. 1985) holds a BFA and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Chicago.

NOEL MORICAL (American b. 1989) holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Chicago.

JOSH REAMES (American b. 1985) holds a BFA from the University of North Texas, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

ADAM SCOTT (American b. 1970) holds a BFA from California State University Long Beach, and an MFA from the School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago. He lives and works in Chicago.

WENDY WHITE (American, b. 1971) lives and works in New York City. She received her M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 2003. She lives and works in New York.