ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Lyric, a solo exhibition by Danny Giles in Gallery Two.

Chicago, IL, April 16, 2016- ANDREW RAFACZ presents Lyric, a site-specific solo installation by Danny Giles. The exhibition continues through Saturday, May 21, 2016.

With Lyric, Danny Giles transforms the gallery space into a haptic stage and a wishful projection of resistance against state power. In this immersive installation, the artist takes the ubiquitous Chicago PD “POD” (Police Observation Device) box as a point of departure to question state surveillance and the possibility for subversion of a regulated public space. Giles has fabricated a version of the panopticon as a literal and poetic inversion of the original, turning the box upside down and allowing the flashing colored lights to provide the backdrop for ecstatic performance. The darkened gallery becomes a surrogate street corner and an uncanny elsewhere, conflating inside and outside as well as public and private space. Accompanying the sculpture are several dancers, keeping the beat to their own sound tracks played through headphones, employing another ubiquitous street technology. Lyric takes its cues from recent headlines of police violence in Chicago and beyond and makes nods to Beyonce’s “Formation” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” music videos in its inversion of an iconic symbol of police authority and embrace of the power of individual and collective lyrics as agents for soulful resistance.

DANNY GILES (American, b. 1988) lives and works in Chicago. He received his MFA from Northwestern University in 2013 and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2011. Giles has exhibited and performed at The Socrates Sculpture Park (NY), Smack Mellon (NY), Threewalls (Chicago), Roots and Culture (Chicago), The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (Evanston, IL) and Fernwey Gallery (Chicago). Recent group exhibitions include Spears (Chicago, 2015); Terrain Biennial (Oak Park, IL, 2015); and Listening and Making Sound, the Great Poor Farm Experiment (Little Wolf, WI, 2015). His work is currently on view in Chicago and Vicinity at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago. He has had residencies at Skowhegan in 2013 and ACRE in 2014. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.