SOMEODDPILOT & ANDREW RAFACZ are pleased to announce Public Works II, a group exhibition of new work by Sonnenzimmer, Seripop, Dan Funderburgh and Mike Perry.

Chicago, IL, August 6th, 2010 – Someoddpilot and Andrew Rafacz have partnered to present Public Works II, the second installment of an annual design show that endeavors to map the ever narrowing space between fine art and commercial design. The gallery will have a reception for the artists on Friday, August 6th, from 6 to 9pm. The exhibition continues through September 3rd, 2010. The show’s run will be punctuated by Friday evening events with a rotating cast of notable speakers.

Last August Andrew Rafacz opened its West Loop doors to a summer flood of design heads, art students and collectors who made Public Works Chicago’s most celebrated design show of 2009. Time Out Chicago called Public Works an “”awesome art and design exhibition””; Flavorpill touted it as “”a chance to see great, tastemaking design and to explore its broader relationship to commerce and community.”” New City ranked it “”best design show of 2009″”. In 2010 the artists of Public Works II uphold the show’s mantra beautifully: “”Art makes work, work makes art””. Both in their art and their attendant values these artists work tirelessly to sustain cultural entities. They blanket space with meaning and convert square footage into bold proclamations. The music world reaps the rewards of Sonnenzimmer’s subtle, painterly gig posters while the apparel industry appropriates Mike Perry’s electric zine hallucinations into backpacks and Nike dunks. Both Dan Funderburgh and Seripop explore the limits of spatial adornment, Dan through the design of delicately intricate wallpaper that balances Moorish mosaic with American op art, and Seripop via enormous street poster collages, a medium they have evolved from their monstrous rock posters and describe as “”the ‘skin’ of a city, growing and shedding organically””. The show is a reminder that there is no saturation point for our graphic declarations. Our environment is shaped by our passing, its structure set in relief by the marks we leave on it.

DAN FUNDERBURGH was born in Seattle and grew up in the midwest, eventually receiving a BFA from the University of Kansas with a focus in illustration. After moving to New York in 2001 Dan established a partnership with the now Brooklyn basedwallpaper studio Flavorpaper where his designs are screen printed and distributed. The wallpapers have been featured at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Pulse Miami and are a part of the Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent collection. Occasional collaborations with companies like Brooks, Furni, and Gravis have allowed the work to live off the wall as bicycle seats, furniture, and luggage. Dan’s personal and gallery work includes letterpress prints, sculptures and installations that play off of historical ornamentation. An acute appreciation for both the baroque and utilitarian, Dan’s work often combines the language of ornament with shapes of tools and household objects. A 2009 FEAST grant green lighted a project in which local streets and dumpsters were decorated with neighborhood specific wallpaper. Dan has been a guest speaker at Pratt, Parsons School of Design, and the Museum of Art and Design as part of American Craft’s In Print/In Process lecture series. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY where he’s preparing for his first international solo show in Cairo, Egypt.

MIKE PERRY works in Brooklyn, NY. Making books, magazines, newspapers, clothing, drawings, paintings, illustrations and teaching whenever possible. His first book titled Hand Job published by Princeton Architectural Press hit the book shelves in 2006. “”Mike Perry’s compendium of hand-drawn type points to the continued relevance of the human touch in modern communication.”” -American Craft, October/November 2007. His second book titled Over & Over was released fall 2008. He is currently working on two new books. In 2007 he started a magazine called Untitled a… that explores his current interests. The fit issue came out summer 2010. He has worked with clients from Apple, New York Times, Dwell Magazine, Target, Urban Outfitters, eMusic, and Nike. In 2004 he was chosen as one of Step Magazines 30 under 30, in 2007 as a groundbreaking illustrator by Computer Arts Projects Magazine, 2008 he received Print Magazines New Visual Artist award and the ADC Young Guns 6. Doodling away night and day, Perry creates new typefaces and sundry graphics that inevitably evolve into his new work, exercising the great belief that the generating of piles is the sincerest form of creative process. His work has been seen around the world including a recent solo show in Minneapolis, MN titled “”Lost in the Discovery of what Shapes the Mind.””

SERIPOP is the nom de guerre of visual artists and musicians Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum, who started collaborating in 2002. Based in Montreal, Seripop has earned international attention for its stylistically distinct, silkscreened street posters. In 2005, Lum and Desranleau began experimenting with sculptural print installations which merge notions of city politics and visual perception. The duo has been speaking and exhibiting their work at various art institutions including Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the University of North Texas, Denton, USA. In addition to Seripop, Lum and Desranleau play in AIDS Wolf, a noise-rock band and Hamborghinni, a drums and electronics project.

SONNENZIMMER is a Chicago-based art and screen print studio owned and operated by Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher. The couple merges backgrounds in typography, printmaking, graphic design and fine art to create hand-crafted posters, books, and music packaging for a wide array of projects and clients. Working closely with Chicago’s bustling free jazz and improvised music community, Sonnenzimmer has found a place where experimentation and abstraction are not only respected, they are demanded. This freedom has allowed them both to work through countless ideas and styles of execution, helping to shape their visual language, one that is simultaneously quiet and bold. The graphic art that Butcher and Nakanishi produce draws heavily on their respective fine art practices and vice versa. There is a seamless cross pollination between the two disciplines, one that calls into question the lines that divide them. For this exhibit, both Butcher and Nakanishi are combining the graphic nature of screen printing with paintings to create a distinct body of work, that embodies the ethos, “Art makes work, and work makes art.”