Jason Lahr

Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for LA
May 24-July 6, 2013

For more information contact:

Aron Packer, Director
Packer Schopf Gallery
942 West Lake Street
Chicago, IL  60607
312.226.8984
packer@packergallery.com

Jason Lahr received his M.F.A. in drawing and painting from Penn State University and his B.F.A. in painting from Clarion University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, IN.

Lahr’s paintings combine darkly comic texts with appropriated images to create shifting narratives of working class male identity as shaped by popular culture. The images are pulled from a wide range of popular and sub-cultural ephemera while the texts that he writes are fragments that suggest their excision from a larger story and give the reader/viewer flashbulb glimpses at moments of narrative action. Centering on female characters that occupy positions of authority and male characters who are injured, inept, defeated, or perplexed by their dealings with women, the texts combine with the images to form narratives which question the expectations and assumptions we experience and create through popular culture.

Throughout Lahr’s work the visual language of digital culture is co-opted by the practice of painting as florescent grounds are interrupted by 8-bit digital fields or painted areas that appear to be low resolution .jpgs and images degrade to pixelated impressionism. In his paintings, the language of digital culture is combined with traditional painting techniques and references to illustration, print media, and graphic design to create an intertextual web which addresses the articulation of masculine identity as manifested in Generation X and which is filtered through feminism and identity politics/criticism.

This is Lahr’s second solo exhibition with Packer Schopf Gallery. His work was recently included in The Almost Metal Collective at Columbia College, Chicago, Gesturing Into Consciousness at Penn State University and will be featured in upcoming solo exhibitions at Elon University, Elon, NC and Safety Kleen Gallery One at Elgin Community College in Elgin, IL.

Selected Exhibitions include: Digital Error (solo), SoFA Gallery, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; DEATHMETALHIPPIEKILLER (solo), Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; Tectonic/Tapola/Lahr, SELLOUT Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; Open Source Deathmatch(solo), Soma Gallery, Fort Wayne, IN; Arrested Development, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN; White Male, Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; Bridge Art Fair, Packer Schopf Gallery, Miami, FL; Beastyfeast, Arlington Center for the Arts, Arlington, MA; A Knock at the Door, Cooper Union, New York, NY; Narrative, Cartoon, Zine, Strip Show; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; Fort Wayne Biennial, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; As Small as Possible, Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL; Riding With Pike(solo), Fugitive Art Center, Nashville, TN; American Eyes, Gallery Eleven50, Atlanta, GA; Biennial 21, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN; Culture of Class, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD.

A quick update about a group show that I’m currently in at Columbia College in Chicago, IL. I have 3 paintings in The Almost Metal Collective at Columbia’s A+D Gallery including Artifact Transmission–a 60” x 135” piece that’s hot off the press. The work is accompanied by an animated GIF that documents the creation of Artifact Transmission over the course of approximately four weeks.

The show is currently open to the public with a reception on Thursday January 31, 5-8pm. A full color catalog/brochure is available.  Press release after the jump…

EXHIBITION: THE ALMOST METAL COLLECTIVE

 Columbia College Chicago’s A+D Gallery Hosts Mixed Media Show includingVideo Installations, Paintings, Prints and Performance Art

 WHAT:  The Almost Metal Collective exhibition takes a visual excursion into the opinions and ideas of this group, which uses technology to create things out of the “castoffs of contemporary culture.”  The collective includes artists Krista Hoefle, Jason Lahr, Sheilah Wilson, Rudy Shepherd and works from Bridget Elmer and Emily Larned of the ILSSA (Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts).

The work in the exhibition will include oil paintings, work on handmade paper using old entertainment systems, a 3-channel, 3-monitor video piece, a multi-media sculpture of amethyst, extruding foam, expanding foam, and paper, prints and digital video pieces (in the gallery and strategically placed across the Columbia College campus).

Elmer and Larned will be at the public reception to engage the audience with questions from their State of the ILSSA Union survey. Hoefle will also be present for the Jan. 31 public reception, performing her piece “Farming,” which is part sculpture and part performance.

WHEN:  Jan. 10 – Feb. 16, 2013, Public reception: Jan. 31, 5-8 p.m.

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Ave.

INFO: (312) 369-8668 or jcuevas@colum.edu

COST: Free and open to the public

Columbia College Chicago is an urban institution that offers innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to more than 11,000 students in more than 120 undergraduate and graduate programs. An arts and media college committed to a rigorous liberal arts curriculum, Columbia is dedicated to opportunity and excellence in higher education. For further information, visit www.colum.edu.

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A fea things on the horizon: Visiting Artist talk at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Gesturing into Consciousness group exhibition at Penn State University, and solo exhibitions at Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago (May/June 2013) and Elon University in Elon, NC (Aug/Sept 2013)…

A few quick updates for what is shaping up to be a busy year ahead:

-In November I’ll be a Visiting Artist for Ian Weaver’s painting class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Ian is an awesome artist and swell guy, so I’m looking forward to spending some time with him and his students.

-In December I’ll be participating in the CONTEXT pavilion at Art Miami through Packer Schopf Gallery.  I’m very happy to have received a research grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) at the University of Notre Dame so that I can get the work and myself there for a few warm days in cold, cold December.

-In January I’ll be part of the show Almost Metal Collective at Columbia College in Chicago.  Apparently, I’ve agreed to do a really big painting for the show (60” x 135”).  Hmmm.  Better get crack-a-lackin’.

-I’ll have my second solo exhibition with Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago at the end of May.  I’m 90% sure that it will be called Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for LA.  We’ll see…

-Finally, in August/September 2013 I’ll have a solo show at Elon University in North Carolina…I’m thinking it may be mostly works on paper.

-There are a few other things percolating at the moment, but it’s too early to share them.  So take a look at some studio shots in the meantime:

Orbit

acrylic on panel

12″ diameter

2012

Elegy

acrylic on paper

24″ x 18″

2012

Days Gone By (studio view)

oil and acrylic on panel

45″ x 45″

2012

Hot off the press…

Internecine

Acrylic on panel

2012

20” x 16”

And a detail…

Here’s a nice article that Notre Dame did about Robert’s Graphic Design USA awards, one of which was for Words for Paintings.

And a couple of new paintings in progress at The Mullet (my studio on campus):

Studio view…

 20” x 16” text painting…

45” x 45” painting…

I’m very pleased to announce that my book Words for Paintings has received an American Graphic Design Award from Graphic Design USA for Robert Sedlack’s amazing work.  Throughout the process of working on the book, I was constantly impressed by Robert’s vision and innovation.  He truly created a book that embodied both my writing and studio practice.  I am thrilled that his hard work has been recognized at the national level.  The award certificate was accompanied by a letter which read, in part: “For nearly five decades, Graphic Design USA has presented national design competitions that spotlight areas of excellence and opportunity for creative professionals. The American Graphic Design Awards is the original and flagship, open to everyone in the community: advertising agencies, graphic design firms, corporations, institutions, publishers and more. It honors outstanding work across all media: print and collateral, advertising and sales promotions, corporate identity and logos, internet and interactive design, packaging and point-of-purtchase, broadcast and motion graphics.”  There were more than 8,000 entries.

Just finished a new painting “Hole in the Sky.”  It’s oil and acrylic on canvas over panel, 60″ x 45.”  See it in person at Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago on September 9, 2011.

The past few months have been super busy.  Firstly, and most importantly, in April I accepted an Assistant Professor of Painting position in the Department of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Notre Dame.  I’m super excited to be able to work with amazing colleagues and students and am blown away by the level of support and enthusiasm offered to new faculty.  It’s awesome.  Here’s my office and what will become a 2nd studio, on the roof of Riley Hall of Art & Design:

In May, I headed to a 3 week residency  at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium with fellow Packer Schopf Gallery superstars Steve Seeley and Curtis Readel.  It was a trip that was amazing in every way.  We did a bunch of collaborative editions and helped each other with our own prints.  I did my first edition ever which resulted in the screenprint Thrown Hand Horizon.  Here’s a shot of the APs and edition:

Working on a one off split fountain:

And finally, hanging with Rubens:

Not shown: our daily bike ride into town, through the Goblin Forest.

On the exhibition front, I was in the group show Epicus Doomicus Articus with Steve and Curtis, Scott Stulen, and Dominic Paul Moore, as well as a group show of artists who reference metal bands at OhNo! Doom in Chicago.

Finally, I’m wrapping up a new painting for the September 9th opening at Packer Schopf Gallery  here’s a preview, but it’s from a month ago so it’s muuuuuuch further along:

Coming soon:  portfolio updates and new paintings.