The Art Center Highland Park Exhibition Opening

Impact Color Impact Black & White

Exhibition Dates: August 9-October 2, 2019 - Opening Reception: August 29, 5:30-7:30pm

How do we measure the impact of Color or Black and White on the viewer? A bold sense of color can elicit a certain response, while a black and white photograph may take us to another time and place.TACHP Galleries will be filled with these concurrent themes in one exhibition, highlighting the dichotomies between color and black and white in terms of art, and inviting dialogue about these themes in the greater context of our society as a whole.

Our guest jurors and featured artists, Rhonda K. Brown, Cesar Conde, and Sheri Rush might not expect to find themselves linked thematically for their various bodies of work in a single gallery exhibit, but for this exhibit they ‘come together’ as exactly what TACHP Galleries curator Caren Helene Rudman had proposed for this next show, which opens on August 9 (soft opening), with the public artists’ opening on August 29.

Brown’s bold paintings, often of women of color, Conde’s series called, “Professionals Wearing A Hoodie,” and Rush’s large abstract panels push the boundaries of the theme literally and symbolically. Furthermore, as jurors, they selected 67 pieces of work from over 150 pieces submitted by artists throughout the country. The range of how color technique is used (even in the case of the lack thereof) directs the content of the work, often representing how color evokes tone, feelings and emotions. While other work questions systems of power, and presumptions. Together, this thought provoking exhibition helps to expand our ideas from color theory to race, from form to intention.

Guest jurors and featured artists Rhonda K. Brown, Cesar Conde, Sheri Rush, also bring their own cultural heritage, experience and maturity to this exhibit, insuring that the conversations around and about this exhibit won’t stop at the work in the gallery. We hope to welcome a broad conversation about our society and American culture during this time of much debate, where issues are anything but ‘black and white’ and color both unites and divides.

Rhonda K. Brown has been living and creating art in Chicago since 1995. A native Clevelander, Brown hails from a family that opened the first for-profit African American gallery in the country, Malcolm Brown Gallery in Shaker Heights, Ohio in 1980. Growing up with art all around inspired her to complete a bachelor of fine arts with a double major in painting and drawing and art history from The Ohio State University. Thereafter, she interned at the Cleveland Museum of Art during its 75th Anniversary year and then completed her master’s degree in art history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. Brown’s expressive colorful paintings confront the viewer. Her abstracted human form, palette, and expressive lines communicate solemnity and boldness equally. Brown’s work appears in private collections throughout the country and has been featured in Samella Lewis’s International Review of African American Art, Oprah at Home Magazine exhibitions, and architectural interiors. https://www.rkbfineart.com

Cesar Conde is a Filipino-American artist based in Chicago. He believes in the power of art to create social change and mirrors current events to record history. He tackles issues across color lines and communities with the belief that we can create empathy to affect actions for the good of humanity. Conde has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, most recently in Purdue University, The Field Museum, Museo de Arte Moderno in Turin, Italy. He is part of the 17th annual juried exhibition at Freeport Art Museum in Freeport, IL. https://cesarcondeart.com/

Sheri Rush is a Chicago based painter whose practice includes photography and collage. She received a BFA in painting from Texas Christian University and a MFA in painting from the University of Chicago. Rush’s work explores the ineradicable nature of memory and recollection, and the contemporary diminishing experience of the sublime. Sheri Rush has been making paintings for over thirty years. Her exhibitions consist of those in Texas and throughout the Chicago and Illinois area, including the 2018 Midwestern Biennial at the Rockford Art Museum and a solo show at the Hyde Park Art Center. Her artwork is in many private and corporate collections. https://sherirush.com