ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Occupation, a new installation of works by Mike Schuh in Gallery Two.

Chicago, IL, February 5, 2011- ANDREW RAFACZ begins the 2011 season with Occupation, new works by Mike Schuh in Gallery Two. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. It continues through Saturday, March 19, 2011.

Mike Schuh is interested in the way we negotiate our daily lives with and around objects. He performs acts with and upon objects in order to subvert specific aspects of their given functions. Through these manipulations and productions, the artist does not aim to somehow inject meaning into objects and experiences, but rather to create catalysts for questioning the very impetus to make meaning of the world and the role of empirical knowledge in our day-to-day existences. Utilizing familiar and often practical objects, the productive acts are gestural and restrained. The result is an object that has not merely been altered by re-contextualization, but one whose essences have been reorganized.

Comprised of multiple elements in various media, Occupation revolves around different notions of what it is to occupy and be occupied. Occupation is something that both informs and results from all manner of daily activity. Be they considerations of one’s role as an agent of culture or politics, literal spatial occupation, how one occupies time or how something might occupy our psyches, occupation can exert power over someone as well as be a manifestation of one’s own power. In this exhibition, works occupy space in conventional ways as well as ways that more directly question these notions of occupation. Whether photographic, sculptural or architectural in nature, the objects created and selected to share this space ask the viewer to question their own immediate occupancy of the exhibition space as well as their position relative to the literal and figurative spaces that each piece inhabits or alludes to. Images, materials, objects and ideas are removed from their intended contexts, reconfigured and placed within this show in order to initiate a situation in which everything and everyone must contend with the simultaneity of being located, dislocated and relocated.

MIKE SCHUH (American, b. 1978) lives and works in Chicago. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Set at Golden, Chicago, in 2010 and No Sudden Moves (with Matthew Metzger) at DOVAtemporary, Chicago, in 2009. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.