ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Light hand, running, an exhibition of works in Gallery Two by J. Michael Ford.

Chicago, IL, March 17, 2017 – ANDREW RAFACZ continues 2017 with Light hand, running, a solo exhibition of new works by J. Michael Ford. The exhibition continues through Saturday, April 29, 2017.

TRY TO MAKE THE PERFECT SCRIBBLE, TRY TO MAKE THE PERFECT LIFE

In unbroken succession a pipe is any thing with two holes: bleeding out the rebellious septum ring, twee flowers, a mustache and anything to clear the austerity. These little human touches are so like labor. It’s hard work and really sweaty to bend that pipe: there is no lackadaisical work. I heard you can’t bend them back to straight, ever, because human perfection is limited and repeat stress snaps joints and the human will.

Swoops, lines fill the gallery. Get on one: imagine everyone, everywhere, plugged in. Wires from here to there and one worldwide conduit straight to your ex: love is giving what you ain’t got. You’re running hands down his sides, construction stuff gaping down, getting so close you just want to […]

The eye is blinkered by desire. Could it be your face I see on my computer screen? And Lyotard wrote the god speaks no more; it offers itself up to be seen. Memphis squiggles come flesh off the display-did we realize, then, that it was a rehash of the 60s? That minimalism flattens then folds?

LOOKING FOR THE BOTTOM LINE

Had the pedantic 1671 debate between Poussinists and Rubenists concluded we would not be having this show. 350yrs on, with the rise of the flat look and the sharp bitch, voluptuousness lost purpose 100%. The line, the sketch, scratch make comeback with vengeance, in real life now. Soft boys not blunt.

Feelings are hidden in pitch like night, “the interior of human nature. In phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this night when we look a human being in the eye, for from his eyes the night of the world hangs, out towards us.”

Hanging out and the new aesthetics ask nothing from you. “Love is giving the fact that I cannot possess myself.” Then the hurt of rebuff when he just walk on by. The eye is blinkered by the most local forms, so we found flesh. And the paintings hang grimly on, SNAPs and a 3 bedroom. (PS)

J. MICHAEL FORD, (American, b.1982) lives and works in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BFA from Pratt Institute. He was included in the two-person exhibition J. Michael Ford & Kiam Marcelo Junio, curated by Edra Soto, 41L, Chicago, IL (2016). Recent group exhibitions include In the Company of Flowers, Kruger Gallery, Chicago (2016) and Our Lovely Secret Wreck, Hume, Chicago, IL (2016). He will be part of a forthcoming group exhibition at Peana Projects, Monterrey, Mexico, in 2017.