"Surveillance & Spirituality":
New works by Gabriel Villa

Also this month's Project Wall Space: Cole Pierce

Gabriel Villa’s work is multifaceted and has evolved conceptually since moving to Chicago and has adopted new imagery, themes, and formal strategies and intensified from the use of newfound images.

For the past nine years Villa has lived and worked in Chicago producing an idiosyncratic body of work that builds upon previous work but whose diversity and powerful imagery are direct results of his adopted home. Each of Villa’s images represents either his ongoing transformation into a new, unknown identity, a dual symbol of psychological oppression and a personal memory, a lingering catholic symbol or an icon of the Chihuahua desert.

Thematically, Villa is socially conscious, mostly expressed as empathy for those marginalized for their economic or racial reasons. Surely his work operates between figuration and abstraction, leaving more questions unanswered than answered, but his increasingly powerful combination of signs symbols with his figures and abstraction opens many avenues to interpretation, positive or negative, simple or complex.

His most recent public art work was erased by the city of Chicago by the request of Bridgeport alderman Jim Balcer. This sparked issues of censorship because the mural was commissioned. For more info: http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34234

For this show he will recreate some of the work that was lost plus show more of his new work.

Gabriel Villa’s work will be featured in the upcoming solo exhibition, Spirituality and Surveillance: New Works by Gabriel Villa at Antena (formerly known as Polvo), Chicago, IL Fall 2009. Also in the Fall 2009, a Solo exhibition entitled, El Arte Es La Salvacion/Art As Salvation: A selection of works by br Gabriel Villa at Governor’s State University, Visual Arts Gallery, University Park, IL.  Three-person exhibit, STRATA: A Glimpse Into South Chicago, featuring works by Duk Ju L. Kim, John Salhus & Gabriel Villa at Almquist Gallery North Shore Country Day School, Winnetka, IL Winter 2010. Gabriel Villa was recently nominated for a 3Arts Arts Award in the category of Visual Arts. Villa’s most recent project is the self published, The Art of Gabriel Villa. This 100-page book focuses on Villa’s paintings and drawings created from 1990-Present. Color plates of Villa’s paintings and drawings are featured, essays by writers including Fred Camper from The Chicago Reader and Christian Gerstheimer, curator from the El Paso Museum of Art. Villa received his MFA from the University of Delaware and a BFA from Corpus Christi State University-Texas A& M. Gabriel Villa was born and raised in the El Paso, Texas/ Ciudad Juarez border region. Villa currently lives in Chicago, IL. For further information please go to www.gabrielvilla.net

See photos from the opening HERE: http://picasaweb.google.com/lapsus05/GabrielVillaColePierceAntena#

Opening Friday August 7 from 6pm-10pm
August 7- September 5, 2009

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only