Matthew Rachman Gallery is pleased to announce a two person exhibition featuring sculptures by Ruth Aizuss Migdal and paintings by Nicholas Kriefall. The exhibition will be on view at Matthew Rachman Gallery 1659 W Chicago from September 22 through November 12, 2017. The gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, September 22 from 6 - 9pm. Both artists will be in attendance.

Nicholas Kriefall and Ruth Aizuss Migdal’s works challenge us to revisit initial perceptions about our surroundings and bodies. Kriefall revisits the mysterious ways of the natural world through multi-layered investigations into the sublime and terrifying. Multifarious thickness and complex layering of paint add startling magnitude, the kind arising from a considered glance. Migdal’s intimate relationship with the female body is a testament to the time spent with exploring form and substance. Her inquiries create a new empowered language about the body without succumbing it to exploitation.

Nicholas Kriefall is a contemporary American painter. His works give way to a distinct feeling of something struggling to come through to the surface. Kriefall achieves tension with his use of dense layering and rich colors. The eerie sense of instability creeping through each work describe the terror and beauty of nature’s uncertain behaviors. Kriefall pushes Romantic attitudes towards fear and awe, as described by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, to a new threshold. He reexamines the language used, making it startlingly new and finding a place for it in the contemporary world.

Kriefall has had solo shows at Hue Gallery of Contemporary Art in Wichita (2017), Metropolitan Square Building (2016, 2015, 2014) and Hoffman LaChance Contemporary in St. Louis (2011). His work has been exhibited in group shows at Soulard Art Gallery in St. Louis (2017, 2013), Pryor Fine Art in Atlanta (2014) and Old Orchard Gallery in St. Louis (2013). Kriefall is currently based out of St. Louis, Missouri. About Ruth Aizuss Migdal: Concentrating on the female torso, Ruth Aizuss Migdal is unafraid to invoke the glorious and tenacious power of the female form through a stylistic evaluation of human anatomy. Separate pieces of cast bronze components are treated as puzzle pieces, which Migdal will assemble to create new arrangements. Through processes of deconstruction and reassembly, Migdal builds layers and organic contours that transform our understanding of the female form.

In the 1960s Migdal made her entrance onto the Chicago art scene on Ontario Street, the city’s then preeminent gallery row located near the old site of Museum of Contemporary Art, where she exhibited work in solo shows at Adele Rosenberg Gallery (1962, 1966) and Michael Wyman Gallery (1974) and the Chicago Vicinity Competition hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago (1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1973, 1977). Her work has also been displayed at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Cultural Center and EXPO Chicago. Her work has been shown across the United States and abroad. Migdal is a Professor Emeritus of Art at the City Colleges of Chicago. She is currently the Sculpture Curator at Cliff Dwellers. She works and lives in Chicago.