Opening at Packer Schopf Gallery
Nancy Mladenoff / Jen Blazina / Adam Fung / Jim Bachor
Reception Friday, November 7th    6 - 9 PM



Hello and welcome to Winter ...oops... I mean Fall. But we did have some snow on Halloween.. and I think some flurries even before that.... dang!

So to this week's Friday night reception.....

Nancy Mladenoff - Girl Bands
Jen Blazina - Outdated
Adam Fung - Observatory
Jim Bachor - Jentaculum (gen-TACK-u-lum) n. First meal of the day in ancient Rome

Nancy Mladenoff will be in from Madison, WI. In Girl Bands, images and portraits are part of a larger body of work based on personal histories of women in such areas as music, war, science, dance, sports, and nature. This body of work was started with Nancy's last show here dealing with many of the other subjects.... but we thought we'd focus here. Colorful, active, fun, and serious all at the same time.

Across the gallery is Jen Blazina from Philadelphia, PA. In Outdated Jen casts obsolete objects in glass: various cameras, rotary telephones and typewriters. Cast glass has a translucent and transcendent aura, and through printmaking she often adds her family history into elements of the work. Blazina is a master print maker. This gives a personal and nostalgic take, and is done softly and poetically.

A former Chicagoan and midwesterner, Adam Fung joins us from Ft. Worth,TX. Adam's work is the abstract element in the show. After investigations in Texas and New Mexico, Fung metaphorically mined the earthworks, night skies, observatories, and national parks he traveled this past summer. The intensely colorful paintings are composed of a series of lines, forms, and textures and the multitude of layers act as means to conceal, overlap, and reveal. The paintings succumb to inertia, hesitating to arrive at a finished point, and act as a new vantage point or plan for something new.

Expanding my interest in competing mediums, we add Jim Bachor. A master in mosaic, Jim posits the mash-up of the archaic and the contemporary. The main focus of the show is a series of 6 cereal boxes from the 70's, with typical subject matter from actual mosaics and frescoes produced during the height of the Roman Empire to round out the visuals: think columns, lobsters, grapes and vines. He's currently well known for filling potholes around the city with the word "pothole" spelled out in mosaic, along with stars and colors from the Chicago city flag. On our concrete gallery floor, Jim will recreate a faux-pothole. To show the city isn't mad at him, they allowed him to finish his new mosaic installation at the Thorndale Red Line EL station!

So let's see... figurative and abstract painting, check! Cast glass sculpture and Pop Roman style mosaics, check! Competing mediums, time periods, and social and conceptual agendas, check!

All set then. We hope you are as excited as I always am....

Best, Aron



Packer Schopf Gallery    942 W. Lake St Chicago, IL 60607    www.packergallery.com

Exhibition Run: November 7 - December 13     Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00am to 5:30pm

Contact Aron Packer at [email protected]    Phone: 312.226.8984    Fax: 312.432.1235