Monaco is pleased to present two exhibitions opening Friday, June 26: Kismet and Contingency. Kismet opens in Monaco’s Main Gallery and features work from artists Devin Balara, Aimeé Beaubien, and CHIAOZZA. The exhibition is curated by Meghan Grubb and Jessica Hunt. The Monaco Project Gallery features Contingency, a collaborative exhibition by Meghan Grubb and Jessica Hunt. Exhibitions run through July 26. Gallery hours are 12 - 4pm every Saturday. Event information forthcoming, please check our website: monacomonaco.us, or social media: @monacomonaco for details.
KISMET Dispersed throughout a warm if somewhat bare habitat, idiosyncratic plant-like and creature-like forms playfully insinuate a post-human world that may not be so apocalyptic after all. Working with the assumption that mass extinction, inclusive of humankind, is inevitable, Kismet invites us to wander into the speculative space of what is destined to come after us, outgrowths that adapt, reorganize, and flourish on a post-anthropocene planet. The works on view form an amalgam of fragmentary, fanciful legacies of disruption and extraction, reverberations from a prior interval of time. Some things are meant to be, or so we are told.
Kismet features works from artists Devin Balara, Aimeé Beaubien, and CHIAOZZA. The exhibition is curated by Meghan Grubb and Jessica Hunt. 50% of artwork sales from Kismet will be donated to the Loveland Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing opportunity and healing to communities of color, especially Black women and girls.
CONTINGENCY At once casually familiar and deeply unsettled, Contingency ushers the viewer into a modestly furnished dwelling-like interior space. Meticulously assembled, the room proposes a mundane sense of urgency, as if the space itself is dipped in the overlapping and perpetual sirens of a five-alarm fire, the sounds of which pulse long enough to fade to a dull background buzz in your eyes and ears. It's a state of constant stress, a world in flames, a constitutional crisis, a seedy strip club, a global pandemic, your living room.
Contingency is the product of collaboration between artists Meghan Grubb and Jessica Hunt.
50% of artwork sales from Contingency will be donated to the Loveland Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing opportunity and healing to communities of color, especially Black women and girls.
BIOS
Devin Balara is an artist originally from Tampa, FL. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN and a BFA from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, FL. She has spent the last four summers managing the metal studio at Ox- Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI. Devin has been a resident artist at Monson Arts in Maine, the Wassaic Project in NY (Mary Ann Unger Fellowship recipient), Vermont Studio Center (full fellowship recipient) and Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC. She was the recipient of a 2014 Oustanding Student Achievement award from Sculpture Magazine. Devin has had solo exhibitions at Comfort Station in Chicago, IL, William Thomas Gallery at The University of Georgia in Athens, GA, and Ortega y Gasset Projects Skirt Space in Brooklyn, NY. Group exhibition highlights include Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, Spring Break Art Show in New York City, Torrance Shipman Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, Monaco in St. Louis, MO, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL, Goldfinch Projects in Chicago, IL, and Alone Time Gallery in New Orleans, LA.
Aimée Beaubien is an artist living and working in Chicago. Her cut-up photographic collages and photo-based installations explore collapses in time, space and place, while engaging the complexities of visual perception. Solo and two-person exhibitions include oqbo galerie, Berlin, Germany; Gallery UNO Projektraum, Berlin, Germany; Virus Art Gallery, Rome, Italy; SIM, Reykjavik, Iceland; The Pitch Project, Milwaukee, WI; BOX 13 Artspace, Houston, TX; Johalla Projects, Chicago, IL; TWIN KITTENS, Atlanta, GA; and Demo Projects, Springfield, IL. Group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Bikini Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, IN; and UCRC Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, Art on Paper, and Art Papers. Beaubien is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL where she received her MFA in 1993.
CHIAOZZA (pronounced “CHOW-zah”) is the collaborative studio of artists Adam Frezza and Terri Chiao. Based in New York City since 2011, the duo’s work explores play and craft across a range of mediums, including painted sculpture, installation, works on paper, public art, and set design. They have exhibited in solo shows at Wave Hill in The Bronx, NY; Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA; Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY; Owen James Gallery in New York, NY; Cooler Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; CY Fiore in New York, NY; and Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY, along with numerous group shows in the U.S. and internationally. The studio has installed public artworks in New York City and Gainesville, FL. Together, Frezza and Chiao have been artists-in-residence at Villa Lena (Tuscany, Italy), Kökarkultur (Kökar, Finland), Starry Night (Truth or Consequences, NM), The School of Making Thinking (Delancey, NY), The Lloyd Library (Cincinnati, OH), BRIC Media Arts (Brooklyn, NY), and Shell House Arts (Roxbury, NY). In 2017, they installed an acre-spanning sculpture garden with 32 large-scale works for the Coachella Arts & Music Festival in Indio, CA.
Terri Chiao (b. 1981) received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History & Architectural Studies from Brown University (’04) and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (’08). Before starting CHIAOZZA, she worked as a designer at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, as a designer at 2x4, and as a freelance designer focusing on small-scale architectural projects. Her work, “A Cabin in a Loft,” has been featured in numerous publications worldwide.
Adam Frezza (b. 1977) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art at Flagler College (’01), a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (’04), and a Master of Fine Art in Drawing and Painting from University of Florida, Gainesville (’07). Since 2007, Frezza has been an independent practicing artist in New York City. He has completed artist residencies at The Corporation of Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and Lower East Side Printshop (NYC). His work is featured in The Viewing Program at The Drawing Center (NYC) and in New American Paintings (Issue #74).
Meghan Grubb is a visual artist based in Saint Louis, Missouri. Her practice explores a range of subjects including wilderness structures, daylight rhythms, recursive spaces, and un/natural disasters. The resulting physical work ranges from immersive installation to sculptural objects – each outcome disclosing unease between humans and the physical spaces that we inhabit. Grubb's work has been exhibited at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Oslo, Norway), the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Heaven Gallery (Chicago), the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (Saint Louis), and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art (Grand Rapids, MI). She has completed residencies at Wassaic Project (NY), ACRE (Chicago), Vermont Studio Center (VT), Paul Artspace (Florissant, MO), and has received the American Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship (2012-2013), Regional Arts Commission Artists Fellowship (2015), Creative Stimulus Award (2015), Alice Cole Award (2015), recent nominations for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2014) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2015 and 2016), and Regional Arts Commission Support Grant (2015 and 2018). Grubb is a founding member of Monaco, and received her MFA Art + Design from the University of Michigan in 2012, and her BA History + Studio Art from Wellesley College in 2005.
Jessica Lynn Hunt is a visual artist born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where she presently resides. Her practice explores interpersonal relationships and individual experiences through the use of sculptural form, digital photography, and installation. Her research focuses on how we create, maintain, or destroy our relationships with others, and how certain experiences come to define who we are as people. Hunt received her MFA in 2018 from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and currently teaches sculpture at John Burroughs School. She is the Assistant Director for the Bonsack Gallery in Ladue, Missouri. Hunt has exhibited work both regionally and nationally. Her public sculpture Bound is currently installed at the Scovill Sculpture Park in Illinois. Most recently, she received the Regional Arts Commission Support Grant in 2019. She is represented by Var West Gallery in Milwaukee.
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