GAIA: one last look at 'Resplendent Semblance'

As we wind down our Gaia show, we wanted to take a look back and share some of the more interesting pieces that were published about Gaia, his art, and the show at Maxwell Colette:

Fat Cap ran a two part in-depth interview with Gaia (pt.1 / pt.2) and hosts the time lapse video we made with Brock Brake of the installation process at State Street and Adams.  

Juxtapoz ran an interview with Gaia about his massive paste up on Cabrini Green.

Arrested Motion ran street shots and fantastic pics from the openings.

Wooster Collective hyped us as one not to miss.

Brooklyn Street Art, Curbs and Stoops, Sour Harvest, Fotoflow, Time Out Chicago, Flavor Pill, Gapers Block, Crackade, All City Street Art, and Aerosol Planet all showed support, and we thank them for their bon mots.

GAIA: Resplendent Semblance closes Saturday May 7th.  Your last chance to peep it in person is Friday and Saturday from 12 noon  - 5pm.  

GAIA: video round-up

The time lapse above documents the installation process for the windows we did in conjunction with the Chicago Loop Alliance's Pop Up Art Loop Initiative.  The video below speaks for itself...

And finally, this awesome video was shot by Justin Nethercut right before Gaia came to Chicago, and highlights the theories and methods behind the madness. It also has great glimpses of the paintings we are exhibiting here at the gallery, while they were in his studio in process.

GAIA 'Tiger Rabbit' print release

Tiger Rabbit  (2011)

edition of 50

hand pulled, five color screen print, on 90 lb. Stonehenge paper

signed and numbered by the artist

By Rachel Schwerin

Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit is a postmodern yin yang, harmonizing the opposing forces of an aggressive animal and a submissive animal. Tiger Rabbit unites dark and light, cold and warm, strong and weak in order to deflate the strictures set forth by contemporary Western culture. Gaia is reminding us that no thing is definitively one thing, as Western materialism promotes, but rather that everything in the universe oscillates between polar opposites.

Reclaiming traditional visual iconography, Gaia’s image transcends cultural literacy and achieves significance on multiple levels. Tiger Rabbit reflects the dynamic ebb and flow that permeates life, in which nothing is stagnant. Seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and they give rise to each other in turn. Contemporary urban culture devalues nature, but Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit invades the city of glass, steel and concrete with a breathtaking reminder of earth and life. The confrontational, full-frontal depiction of the hybrid animal implicates each passerby in the destruction of the relationship mankind once shared with both the natural and mystical worlds.

While members of Eastern society identify the tiger and the rabbit as archetypal symbols of annual transition, members of Western society would more readily associate tigers and rabbits with manufactured brands. Gaia emasculates Tony the Tiger and demonizes the Easter bunny, usurping the power vested in our familiar brands and materialistic ideals. 

Tiger Rabbit is an animal in transition, seemingly changing before our eyes. But its original state and objective end are elusive. Is it a tiger transforming into a rabbit, or a rabbit transforming into a tiger? It is at once a tiger with bunny ears, a symbol of aggression turned benign, and a rabbit with the mug of a tiger, a symbol of submission turned fierce. Gaia’s ambiguity conflates multiple layers of meaning, presenting us with an image that seems familiar and simultaneously inexplicable, reflecting the inherent duality of our complex and ever-changing systems of political and social power.

'Tiger Rabbit' is available exclusively at maxwellcolette.com.

Maxwell Colette Gallery and Pawn Works have joined forces to bring internationally lauded contemporary artists to Chicago, who are known for their involvement in the Street Art movement. The first of these joint ventures, GAIA: Resplendent Semblance, launches this month with a series of projects showcasing the artist Gaia. The events will include a show of new, large scale paintings and decollage on wood art works at Maxwell Colette Gallery, a site specific installation and show featuring additional pieces at the Pawn Works space and a massive window installation at State Street and Adams presented in conjunction with The Chicago Loop Alliance's Pop Up Art Loop initiative.

Maxwell Colette Gallery and Pawn Works will co-host an opening reception for GAIA:Resplendent Semblance on Friday, March 25th from 6 - 9 pm in Maxwell Colette's space at 833 W. Chicago Ave, suite 200.  

Keep an eye on our Flickr and our Facebook page for further details and photos of the projects, the new work, and the installations.