October 21st & 22nd / 12-8pm
"No Weepholes"
Featured Artists: Etiti Ayeni, Sonya Bogdanova, Carlos Chaug, Noah Kashiani, Sally Traxler-Lavengood, Ryan Michel, Kiwan Mitchell, Liv Sciford, Nü Panther Studio
CONNECTION TO PILSEN:
Parlour and Ramp has been a Gallery and community event space in Pilsen for more than 5 years. We are a multi-use space consisting of a gallery where we show the work of local and international artists and a studio space for 8 Pilsen-based artists. We host free community events once or twice a month such as Craft Shows and Art of Science talks. We have participated in multiple Pilsen Open Studios and love being a part of Pilsen's amazing art scene! We are a volunteer based collective whose goal is to support up and coming artists who are entering into the Chicago Gallery scene and help them gain exposure and experience.
GALLERY MISSION STATEMENT:
Parlour and Ramp is a community studio and gallery space which aims to support early to mid career artists from Pilsen and neighboring areas. The aim of the gallery is to feature local artists and to introduce outside artists to Pilsen’s booming art culture by fostering collaborations between local and non local artists. Parlour and Ramp is also a community space where local groups host their meetings and where organizations from all around Chicago host events such as Science talks, healing circles, comedy shows, and more.
ARTIST BIO/STATEMENT:
Sonya Bogdanova works in the space between sculpture and painting to understand the icon's afterlife. She connects icons from the natural world with those of the manufactured, to approach a deep vision of disputed human history. Bogdanova is interested in devices that conceal a system's workings. Her objects, made of common things like clay, pigment and refuse, serve as passageways to hidden transformative places. Skeptical of established political narratives, she makes sculptures and installations that transmit suppressed knowledge, feelings, and behaviors.
Bogdanova is a Russian-Jewish immigrant who came to the US after the collapse of the USSR. Based in Chicago, she has shown in the US, UK, and South Korea. Selected exhibitions include the Chicago Cultural Center, Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Ignition Projects (Chicago), Gallery 400 (Chicago), G-CADD (Granite City, IL), No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab (Chicago), Random Access Gallery (Syracuse, NY), and Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (Gimpo, South Korea). She was an artist-in-residence at Holly & the Neighbors in 2021 and at Jiwar Foundation in Barcelona in 2015. Bogdanova holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a professor and educator at SAIC, Wright College, CAPE, and Marwen in Chicago.
Statement:
A good product is underhanded. No pussyfooting, no room for doubt. Leave them doubting, but you stay on the level. Leave them with a tight-lipped smile, never letting on how deep you are. It does not matter what you leave behind; reward is the North Star. You only answer to the director. The director needs you bad, not for what you leave behind but for what you are. The director puts you places. No one understands how you ended up there. The director (and let’s face it, your will) put you between the brick and the drywall. It is rotting.