Everyone knows and everyone knows that everyone knows and everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows and so on.

Anaïs Daly executes an adept kind of continuity drift, one in which what we know and what we are given to know at the beginning is unclear at the end. In a series of mixed media paintings she provides the substrate for formal language, with meaning grounded in symbols drawn from the history of painting. Anaïs builds upon this base with an inquisitive structure that puts those foundational symbols together in a manner that causes their meaning to begin to unravel, making it difficult for each to contain its full sense and context. Anaïs picks apart syntax by pulling together a web of fragmented representations; the body, the land, the hand, the beast, the column. What is formally familiar in these works acts to obfuscate meaning, which has been manipulated by Anaïs in the process of developing a method for using language to do more than describe the world. Under her direction description is agile and compositions comprised of many parts confront the limitations of ever becoming a whole.

Andrew Barco begins with a misunderstanding, and moves forward from the site of the error without attempting to resolve what has been misunderstood. Drawing from common knowledge and operating as an authority through the use of academic voice, Barco takes advantage of the conceptual disorder instigated by a polysemantic relationship. From this point he constructs objects in response to a world defined by an unstable history and fortified by his misinterpretation. In this instance two mechanical objects that exemplify the word drone become one—a Predator Drone and a Hurdy-gurdy. The resultant machine is a drone that drones. Barco uses the structure of a Predator drone, the design and purpose of which is remote operation that allows distance between the user and the execution of actual violence. Inside this structure is the mechanism of a Hurdy-gurdy, an instrument that requires the expertise of a present operator to make an ancient sound. This object created from his misinterpretation gives an opportunity to consider the history and application of both objects on a new scale.

Anaïs Daly is an artist, mother and teacher living and working in Chicago. She is a recent recipient of a teaching fellowship at the University of Chicago, A 7 week residency at the Banff Centre and a residency at Acre, Chicago.  Her work has or will appeared at Heaven, Chicago, IL, The Hills Esthetic Center, Chicago, IL, Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada, The Chicago Exposition 2014, The Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, IL, Dova Temporary, Chicago, IL, Johalla Projects, Chicago, IL among other Chicago locations.  Her work has also shown nationally in multiple venues in New York, Miami, Boston, and Atlanta.

Andrew Barco is an object, installation and performance maker based in Chicago, Illinois. His work is concerned with the often strange and improbable ways ideas and habits can be transmitted across cultural landscapes and through time.   With an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Andrew’s work uses craft and industrial histories, quirky and edgy relational gestures, and philosophical inquiry to create affective and thoughtful encounters.  His work has been featured in group exhibitions in Durham NC, Baltimore MD, Hartford, CT, and Chicago, IL, New Orleans, LA.  Solo exhibitions include: “Imminence: A Life” at Threewalls, in Chicago, IL (2014), “Oblique Negotiations” at the Fivesevendell Project Space in Boston, MA (2010) and “Passion for the Real” at West Village and “Sonnets to Orpheous” at Transom Gallery in Durham, NC (2007).

Kate Bowen is an artist, curator, and teacher living and working in Chicago. She is the Video Programming Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and Exhibitions Director for ACRE. She is a lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Art and a Teaching Artist with Picture Me and After School Matters. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2011.

ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects.