Linda Warren Projects kicks off the 2017 fall season with “Open Source,” an exciting solo exhibition of new works and installation by Chicago-based artist Chris Silva. Showing for the first time at LWP, Silva will present an assortment of 2D collage sculptures and paintings in Gallery Y and a large-scale multi-sensory, multi-media, video animation installation in Gallery X. Featured in Gallery O is “Go Figure,” a curated group exhibition of female artists from the gallery’s roster. Loretta Bourque, Megan Euker, Lora Fosberg, Paula Henderson, Michiko Itatani, Judith Mullen and Jennifer Presant come together to examine, through their particular artistic lens, the human figure.

Gallery O - Loretta Bourque, Megan Euker, Lora Fosberg, Paula Henderson, Michiko Itatani, Judith Mullen, and Jennifer Presant, Go Figure “Go Figure” presents seven of LWP’s female artists whose works examine the figure. The artists not only embrace figuration through painting and sculpture, but also are pushing the conversation regarding topics that explore what it means to be human today.

Over the course of her 44-year career, Michiko Itatani has pondered the on-going question about human existence within the larger context of the universe. Using the body as a point of entry to the cosmos, Itatani’s “bodies” series, from the 1990s, depict androgynous figures floating within the picture frame at the moment “Hi- Point Contact” occurs, an engineering term that describes a momentary touching of two elements. Similarly to Itatani, Judith Mullen explores our humanity within the context of our natural environment. By intertwining elements of the natural world with the man-made, Mullen creates sculptural figures that seem to accumulate discarded material, which speaks to the fragility and strength of modern life and unpredictability of the natural world.

Rather than looking outward, artists like Loretta Bourque, Megan Euker, and Jennifer Presant look inward. Embedding their works with poetic narratives that are deeply personal, they place the figure in complex psychological landscapes. Figures emulate our profound human longing for connectivity and understanding. Beyond the personal, Paula Henderson turns to gender-specific cultural constructs like social media and advertising, which inform our understanding of the self, of the body, and most importantly the “other.” Throughout her practice, Henderson’s body parts repeat patterns over and over again that both mirror and challenge the authority of such cultural enterprises. Lora Fosberg will present a series of small paintings that celebrate our torturous human nature. For Fosberg, nature and human nature are interchangeable - funny, sometimes critical, but always amusing. The small figures are always at odds with “nature.”