GARDENfresh brings the East Coast to Chicago with Moving Pictures, an exciting summer exhibit featuring artists Troy Hagenbart and Mike Nordstrom.

Troy Hagenbart’s intimate paintings pursue a strange balance between fact and fiction. Rooted in historical context and inspired by the material world around us, Hagenbart obscures and alters the familiar. Buildings break down into abstract geometry, figures are rendered faceless, and everyday actions become haunting partial narratives. With a heavy hand, Hagenbart lays down misty strokes and chapped textures. Warm mid-tone color sharply contrasts with selective highlights to shift perceptions of foreground and background. His richly layered works blur the recognizable, challenging first impressions of the imagery. Hagenbart’s deceptively simple works raise questions about the illusions of painting versus the reality of our surroundings.

Troy Hagenbart earned an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 2007. While in Boston, he participated in several group exhibitions, acted as an assistant to MassArt’s Expression of Hope project, and created art to raise awareness about Gaucher’s disease. Hagenbart currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Mutating mice, headless guitarists, and shrinking beauties delight the eye in Mike Nordstrom’s multi-media works. Whether illustrated or animated, his characters constantly shift through time, redefining space and creating a competitive dynamic between predator and prey. With surreal storytelling and intricate imagery, Nordstrom forges a link between fine and commercial art; his works are intended for the masses but meticulously rendered. His penchant for detail borders on the obsessive-compulsive – spots and swirls, zig zags and curly cues, fireworks and hundreds of tiny stars carve shape and define shadow. These complex patterns are juxtaposed with spare backgrounds and bold blocks of color to create labor-intensive artwork with the universal appeal of Saturday morning cartoons.

Mike Nordstrom graduated with a 2005 BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. During his Illustration studies, he spent one year refining his style at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. Having shown in Edinburgh, Philadelphia, and the Chicago area, Nordstrom has also created animations for Acme Filmworks, Optic Sugar, and Soup 2 Nuts. His recent work includes projects for United Airlines, Discovery Channel, and PBS. A young professional animator for Soup 2 Nuts in Boston, Nordstrom is currently proposing his original programs to Cartoon Network.