'Object Reflection' at Volume Gallery

Opens 24 July '15

OBJECT REFLECTION features objects by designers Felicia Ferrone, Jonathan Muecke and Jonathan Nesci presented along side artworks by Monica Bonvicini, Martin Boyce, and Joe Pflieger. The dialogue developed between the works in OBJECT REFLECTION is based on a shared material quality that engages the viewer to question functionality, orientation, and meaning.

Felicia Ferrone was born in Chicago and graduated with a degree in architecture from Miami University, Ohio, after which she moved to Milan. Ferrone’s expansive reach is informed by her early experience as an architect in Milan, where she was first taught to “blur boundaries.” In a series of positions with some of Italy’s most notable design luminaries, among them Antonio Citterio and Piero Lissoni, she developed her belief that all aspects of design are interdependent, that nothing exists in a vacuum but always in relation to the environment, objects, and systems that surround it.

Her award winning work is included in the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection, is a recipient of a GOOD DESIGN Award, and her work is widely exhibited and published internationally. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was an Instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for many years. Producing and distributing her own work under her brand, fferrone, she also does commissioned work for clients, of which Boffi, Volume Gallery, and Covo among others.

Jonathan Muecke was born in 1983 in Cody, Wyoming. He works from his studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota since his graduation from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010 where from 2009-10 he was the Florence Knoll scholar. In 2006 he received a Bachelors of Architecture from Iowa State University followed in 2007 by an internship at the architectural office of Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland. In July of 2010 the jury of the Design Parade 5 (Hyéres, France) assigned him the Veuve Clicquot Award. In 2011 he had his forst solo exhibition, comprised of eight projects at Volume Gallery, Chicago. His field of work circulates around the periphery of design.

Jonathan Nesci and his company HALE have created a wide range of products and has received recognition from leading design publications such as Wallpaper, Dwell, Metropolitan Home, Surface, and Art + Auction. HALE has won the annual Wallpaper Design Award for the “Library Bookcase,” a minimalist shelf sculpted in aluminum.

Jonathan’s designs have been viewed in numerous exhibitions including New York’s ICFF, Paris’ Pavillon des Arts et du Design, Design Miami, Design Art London and Milan’s Salone del Mobile.

Monica Bonvicini studied art in Berlin and at Cal Arts, Valencia, CA. Since 2003 she holds a position as Professor for Performative Arts and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She lives and works in Berlin.

She emerged as visual artist and started exhibiting internationally in the mid-1990s. Her multifaceted practice—which investigates the relationship between architecture, power, gender, space, surveillance and control—is translated into works that question the meaning of making art, the ambiguity of language, and the limits and possibilities attached to the ideal of freedom. Dry-humored, direct, and imbued with historical, political and social references, Bonvicini’s art never refrains from establishing a critical connection with the sites where it is exhibited, the materials that comprise it, and the roles of spectator and creator. This approach, which has been at the core of her production since her first solo exhibition at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991, has formally evolved over the years without betraying its analytical force and inclination to challenge the viewer’s perspective while taking hefty sideswipes at socio-cultural conventions.

Bonvicini has earned several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Biennale di Venezia (1999); the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2005); and the Rolandpreis für Kunst for art in the public from the Foundation Bremen, Germany (2013). Her work has been featured in many prominent biennials, including Berlin (1998, 2003, 2014), La TriennaIe Paris (2012), Istanbul (2003), Gwangju (2006), New Orleans (2008), and Venice (1999, 2001, 2005, 2011, 2015). She has had solo exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), Modern Art Oxford, England (2003), Secession, Vienna (2003), Staedtisches Museum Abteiberg (2005, 2012), Sculpture Center (2007), the Art Institute of Chicago (2009), the Kunstmuseum Basel (2009), Frac des Pays de la Loire (2009), the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel (2011), Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malága, Spain (2011), and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2012), Kunsthalle Mainz (2013).

Martin Boyce’s sculptures, photographs and installations poetically investigate the intersections between art, architecture, design, and nature. Since the beginning of his career, he has incorporated a palette of shapes and forms that frequently recall familiar structures from the built environment – a phone booth, a chain-linked fence, a ventilation grill, to name a few – yet presents them in a way that is entirely new. Collapsing distinctions between past, present, and future, Boyce’s works seem to exist in their own autonomous world, untethered to any fixed time or place.

Winner of the Tate’s 2011 Turner Prize, Boyce was born in Hamilton, Scotland in 1967 and currently lives and works in Glasgow. He attended the Glasgow School of Art, where he received a BA in Environmental Art in 1990 and an MFA in 1997. In 1996, he also studied at California Institute for the Arts in Valencia, CA.

His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, among other institutions worldwide.

Joe Pflieger (American, b. 1977) lives and works in New York. Pflieger received a MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and a BFA in Painting and Printmaking form University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. His work has recently been exhibited at The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include Famous Adults as Children, Famous Children as Adults, curated by Jose Lerma at Monya Rowe Gallery.