ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Postcard Trouble, a group exhibition of new works by Jeremy Bolen and Bobby Burg.

Chicago, IL, January 20, 2010 – Andrew Rafacz continues in January with new photographs by Jeremy Bolen and new paintings by Bobby Burg. This is the artists’ first exhibition with the gallery and continues through Saturday, January 30, 2010.

As a child, Jeremy Bolen lived a fairly peripatetic lifestyle, moving from one place to another, feeling generally rootless. The only centering experience came in the form of a vacation cottage at a Northern Minnesotan resort where his family would spend the summer months. This led to the photographers latest project, investigating the loss of American Ideals and cultural deterioration as a whole by photographing resorts primarily in Upstate New York and Pennsylvania.. From the 1970s on, the Borscht Belt region was left behind for cheap flights, central air conditioning, and the all-inclusive resort and cruise experience. These photographs display not only the desperate search for idealism that the environments represented, but also the seemingly new environments these left behind spaces create as the resorts begin to mirror their surroundings.

For the last few years, Bobby Burg has been interested in the Romantic ideals of childhood and how they are filtered through the creative process as an adult. Simultaneously layered with sentimental gestures and irony, Burg’s paintings are at once playful and off-kilter. He employs figure and line and many layers of paint to create works whose meanings shift, whose surfaces may be very accessible while referencing a deeper, more complex relationship to the world.

In Postcard Trouble, both Bolen and Burg investigate the past to look to the future. Their investigation proves that although you can never go back, your memories can be made richer.

JEREMY BOLEN (American, b. 1977) lives and works in Chicago. He received his B.F.A. in photography from Columbia Chicago in 2002. He had a solo exhibition, Leftover and Leaving: Abandoned Resort Towns, at Rainbo, in 2008. He was the guitarist and lead vocalist of Chin Up Chin Up. He now performs as Vacations with Bobby Burg. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.

BOBBY BURG (American, b. 1977) lives and works in Chicago. He received his B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. He has had solo exhibitions at Rainbo and Square Records in 2008 and was part of the group exhibition INVOKING at Bucket Rider Gallery in 2006. He has been/is a member of the bands Joan of Arc, Make Believe, and the Love of Everything. He is also currently performing as Vacations with Jeremy Bolen. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.