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Feint/faint

Friday, June 09, 1995–Friday, July 14, 1995

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Artists: Leslie Bellavance, Phil Berkman, Michiko Itatani, and Paul Krainak

Feint/Faint is a project by artists Leslie Bellavance (Wisconsin), Phil Berkman (Illinois), Michiko Itatani (Illinois), and Paul Krainak (West Virginia), which consists of a collaboratively conceived merger of aesthetic and civic interests. Feint/Faint questions the conditions of identity that circulate within communities claiming to serve everyone impartially.

The installation involves artifacts, documents, and events that consolidate the ritual space of cultural judgment and the opportunity for civic action. As part of this project the artists invited UIC’s Blood Bank to conduct a blood drive at Gallery 400 during the exhibition. The blood drive became the literal and figurative manifestation of the commonality and independence of organizations and of the individual with regard to social contact and a social contract.

Feint/Faint investigates reciprocity among social arenas and between community and subject. The efficient and anonymous (or realistically selective and strategic) circulation of blood via the blood bank is seen in relation to the subject’s trafficking of identity in negotiating various communities ’ demands for allegiance.

ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES

Leslie Bellavance Head Shot Leslie Bellavance (born 1954) is an artist whose work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe. Her work has been recognized by numerous grants and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship. She is currently on the faculty of the Department of Visual Art in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She has also been active in program development and as a curator for alternative art centers such as West Hubbard Gallery in Chicago, Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, and the Walker ’s Point Art Center in Milwaukee. She has written and lectured extensively on contemporary art. Her articles, essays, and reviews have been published in such journals as Sculpture Magazine and the New Art Examiner. Bellavance received a BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and an MFA from the University of Chicago.

Phil Berkman Head ShotPhil Berkman (born 1946) is a Chicago-based conceptual artist and a founding member of N.A.M.E., an artists’ cooperative and alternative gallery space that served as an avant-garde hub for Chicago, showing painting, sculpture, performance, and video work through the 1970s and 1980s. Berkman ’s work mainly deals with the recontextualizing of everyday objects by using them as signs for a greater message. He displays these works both within galleries as well as public art pieces. Berkman is a part-time instructor of Contemporary Art and Installation at Columbia College. He has also worked for many years as a gallery guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, organizing a series of tours of Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1978 project Circus, or the Caribbean Orange. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Randolph St. Gallery, Chicago; San Francisco Art Institute; Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade de São Paulo; and the Galerie Nationale du Canada, Ottawa.

Michiko Itatani Head ShotMichiko Itatani (born 1948) is a Japanese-born painter who has worked as a professor of painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1979. A practicing painter for over thirty years, Itatani compares her process to her passion for writing fiction, unfolding a narrative over a series of work. In her often large-scale paintings, Itatani explores psychological, cultural, sociopolitical, and historical realms to help her envision the complex realities of the twenty-first century. Her work has been seen in more than one hundred solo and group exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally since 1973. Her work is included in public and private collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Olympic Museum, Switzerland; Villa Haiss Museum, Germany; Musée du Quebec, Canada; Museu D’art Contemporani (MACBA), Spain; and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea. Itatani is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has received the Illinois Arts Council Artist’s Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Itatani received a BFA in 1974 and an MFA in 1976 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Paul Krainak Head ShotPaul Krainak (born 1950) is an artist, critic, and chair of the art department at Bradley University. Working primarily as a painter, Krainak draws influence from modernism, urban planning, and geometric form, as well as mid-century painterly abstraction. He has exhibited widely in the U.S. including the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Fay Gold Gallery in Atlanta; the Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha; Artist Image Resource Center in Pittsburgh; Semaphore Gallery in New York City; and NEXUS Gallery in Philadelphia. He has lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czechoslovakia; the Academy of Art in Bratislava, Slovakia; the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Bejing, China; and the School of Fine Art in Nanjing, China. His work is represented by Ingrid Fassbender in Chicago. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Afterimage, New Art Examiner, Dialogue, Sculpture Magazine, and Art Papers, where he is the St. Louis editor. Krainak received an MFA from Northern Illinois University in 1978.

PRESS RELEASE

Leslie Bellavance, Phil Berkman, Michiko Itatani, and Paul Krainak: Feint/faint

Gallery 400
Chicago, Illinois
June 9–July 14, 1995

Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 1995, 5–7pm
Blood Drive: Friday, June 16, 1995, 9am–5pm

Feint/Faint is a project by artists Leslie Bellavance (Wisconsin), Phil Berkman (Illinois), Michiko Itatani (Illinois), and Paul Krainak (West Virginia), which consists of a collaboratively conceived merger of aesthetic and civic interests. Feint/Faint questions the conditions of identity that circulate within communities claiming to serve everyone impartially.

The installation involves artifacts, documents, and events that consolidate the ritual space of cultural judgment and the opportunity for civic action. As part of this project the artists invited UIC’s Blood Bank to conduct a blood drive at Gallery 400 during the exhibition. The blood drive became the literal and figurative manifestation of the commonality and independence of organizations and of the individual with regard to social contact and a social contract.

Feint/Faint investigates reciprocity among social arenas and between community and subject. The efficient and anonymous (or realistically selective and strategic) circulation of blood via the blood bank is considered in relation to the subject’s trafficking of identity in negotiating various communities ’ demands for allegiance.

PRINT COLLATERAL

Postcard: Feint/faint

MEDIA COVERAGE

Greenberg, Jason. “Faint/feint.” New Art Examiner, Sept. 1995, p. 43.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT

Feint/faint is supported by the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

Leslie Bellavance, Phil Berkman, Michiko Itatani, and Paul Krainak

Feint/Faint, 1995
Installation and participatory events