GARDENfresh is excited to present long time Chicago artist Mike Lash.  Lash’s new work is a marked departure from his well-known figurative based paintings.  While he maintains his wry sense of humor without losing the base banality he is known for, the new work is less focused on image and concentrates on ideas and concepts.  While some works still have recognizable objects, he pushes towards a more abstract and conceptual pictorial space.  Most works, executed on paper, are text-based.
 
The exhibition is comprised of several different projects such as “Lies for Leo”, a book he created, in commemoration of the birth of his neighbors baby, depicting misinformation adults commonly teach their children and “Euclid” a hand written storybook about geometry. The work pushes the viewer to expect the unexpected, functioning between the boundaries of hard science and inner angst.  Lash’s materials possess a “ready-made” quality but still maintain the immediate gesture of his rendering style.
 
Lash has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, including but not limited to Chicago, Mexico City, and Paris. As he states in one of his two-foot square paintings:
 
“Historically art illuminates the truth or proliferates lies.  I’m not sure which this one does.”
 
Project Space
In the project space we are pleased to present the solo work of long time GARDENfresh member Holly Holmes. She is better known in Chicago for her collaborative work as Burtonwood and Holmes. Her installation Distress marks a new chapter in her practice as she returns to exhibiting solo works.
 
Holly’s paintings are allegories of apocalypse and destruction, brought on by excess, waste and the rapid change of our environment. Her landscapes utilize naïve or awkward spatial relationships, creating awkward images that in some cases fight with each other to evoke scenes that are otherworldly. At first glance the paintings present the “look” of co-existence, a façade of nature in idyllic harmony. Upon closer inspection the paintings suggest a struggle between utopian impulses and dystopian reality. It is here in the middle that she manufactures images of anxiety and distress