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Blowout: New Works by Kim Piotrowski
August 22 – October 4, 2008, Armstrong
Opening Reception Friday, August 22 5-7pm
Chicago-based artist Kim Piotrowski will be showing new works on
paper at McLean County Arts Center this fall. Piotrowski
previously lived and worked in Bloomington-Normal and served as
Executive Director of the MCAC from 1997 to 1999. Her upcoming
exhibition, BLOWOUT, will be on view in the MCAC’s Armstrong
Gallery August 22 through October 4, 2008.
An opening reception for the artist will be held on Friday,
August 22 from 5pm to 7pm.
Kim Piotrowski will present an Art Talk at MCAC on Saturday,
September 27 at 2pm.
These events are free and open to the public.
Over the past year, Piotrowski has produced a series of abstract
works that evolve from and revolve around the ideas and issues
that crowd her mind each day; from contemporary painting to
graphic arts, from current events and popular culture to
personal experiences. Piotrowski unifies the series with a
consistent ‘portrait’ orientation of the paper and a central
sepia-toned abstract form. In effect she re-creates blown up and
deconstructed versions of vintage photographic portraits.
Mimicking the alchemy of photographic process, Piotrowski uses
contemporary synthetic materials such as Yupo paper, Sharpie
pens and various acrylic inks to create abstract portraits that
simultaneously investigate formal issues related to painting –
color, line, and form – and convey the personal, societal, and
political issues that surround, bombard and indeed define us.
Piotrowski’s explosive organic forms are pinned to flat planes
of unworldly colors and her aggressive marks teeter gratingly
next to delicate line work. This surgical exploration of
abstraction produces uneasy balances and tensions within the
works. Vestiges of representational images, now obscured and
transformed into abstracted collisions of color, shape and line,
allow Piotrowski to suggest a subject or address an issue in a
manner that creates a new experience for the viewer. The
intended signs or metaphors she buries in these blown out
abstractions may lead us to contemplate our own convulsed
portraits in an increasing conflicted world.
Piotrowski studied painting at the State University of New York
at Buffalo and completed her BFA at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. Recently she has had solo exhibitions of
her work at the Union League Club, Skestos Gabriele Gallery, and
the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. In 2007
she was an Artist in Residence at Ox-Bow in Saugatauk, Michigan
and in 2002 she received a Visual Artist Grant from the Illinois
Arts Council.
BLOWOUT: New Works by Kim Piotrowski is generously sponsored by
Alexis & Mike Kalish and Rodney & Sarah Litwiller.
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