The Evanston Art Center is pleased to invite the public to the opening of four exhibitions featuring the work of Jelena Berenc, Chris Hyndman, Carlos Melian and Hiromi Tanaka.
The artists will be present during the event.
Sign up via Eventbrite to meet the artist in-person!
Time slots to view the exhibitions are 12:00pm - 1:00pm; 1:15pm - 2:15pm; 2:30pm - 3:30pm. Registration is required, as a limited number of visitors will be allowed in the gallery space at the same time.
The safety and security of gallery staff and visitors is essential. ALL visitors are required to wear masks and take their temperature upon entry using provided gloves, and share results with an EAC staff member. Please adhere to 6' social distancing requirements when in the gallery space.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
First Floor Gallery
Jelena Berenc is an Information Realist. Seeking the unknown, seeking information, comprehending and recreating it, is what an Information Realist does. As Realists before her, Berenc is representing truthfully the world around. However, instead of focusing on the physical observations from a close proximity, her focus is on global concepts and facts that explain the workings of the Universe. To put it simply, instead of painting an apple, Berenc's pieces are about what the apple is, the consciousness that is perceiving it, and how and why the apple is to Be. Berenc received her BFA and MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Chris Hyndman makes paintings that focus on color and texture, structured surfaces, and the function of pattern and digital tools in staging contemporary identities. Chris’ work has been featured in New American Paintings, Manifest’s International Painting Annual, and solo exhibitions at Bluffton University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, and Susanne Hilberry Gallery. This fall, his paintings will be included in the 2020 Midwestern Biennial at the Rockford Art Museum and Form & Seek: Never Normal at Wasserman Projects in Detroit. Chris is a faculty member in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University where he has been teaching since 2001. He lives and works in Chicago.
Carlos Melian was born in Havana, Cuba, and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Florida, a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Science, Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana / Champaign. Melian worked as the Dean of Libraries at Northeastern Illinois University, and although he continued actively making art, he temporarily ceased exhibiting. Since his retirement in June 2017, Melian has been working every day in his studio. He has exhibited at Jack Olson Gallery at Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL), Zolla-Lieberman Gallery (Chicago, IL) and more.
Second Floor Gallery
Hiromi Tanaka was born and raised in Tokushima, Japan. Her paintings are impacted by the nature of her childhood memories, a wildflower field, cherry blossom, Japanese garden and more. She has been painting since she was a little girl, but her interest in fashion made her open a fashion boutique in her early 20's. Despite her business success, she wanted new challenges so she moved to New York in 1990 and started painting again. She stayed in the city for a few years, moved to San Francisco and then moved to Chicago to study at SAIC (1994 to 1997) where she received her BFA. Since graduating, she has been living and working in Chicago.