MATERIAL GIRLS: MATERIALITY IN A MATERIAL WORLD
September 24, 2021 – November 19, 2021
salonlb. | Chicago
Artists: Théo Bignon, Molly Blumberg, Rachel Hefferan, Parvin Peivandi
Curator: Scott Renfro
Exhibition Photography: Scott Renfro
Lighting Design: Scott Renfro + Scott Tobin
PRESS
NEW ART EXAMINER | Vol. 36, No. 2 | 2021
“’Material Girls’ Transform at salonlb.”
by Rebecca Memoli
BAD AT SPORTS TOP V WEEKEND PICKS
November 11th-November 24th, 2021
[salonlb.] presents MATERIAL GIRLS: Materiality in a Material World, a group exhibition featuring the works of Théo Bignon, Molly Blumberg, Rachel Hefferan, and Parvin Peivandi, on Friday, September 24th, from 6-11PM.
MATERIAL GIRLS explores the practices of Théo Bignon, Molly Blumberg, Rachel Hefferan, and Parvin Peivandi, an international cohort of material-based artists, who investigate material as a means to embody the human experience and communicate from an authentic, internal source. This is art of excess, an indulgence in craft and process. But do not confuse materiality for materialism. Materiality, “the quality or character of being material or composed of matter,” is distinct. Physicality impacts content, and subsequently meaning.
MATERIAL GIRLS: Materiality in a Material World deconstructs and reimagines domestic, intimate objects and unconventional raw material embedded with personal narratives and cultural codes, conveying feelings of sexuality, nostalgia, tension, desire, and transformation translated into material. Materiality in all its manifestations.
MATERIAL GIRLS: Materiality in a Material World runs from September 24th – November 19th, 2021.
PROGRAMMING
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[salonlb.] presents an afternoon of Papermaking and Mimosas, instructed by Chicago artist Molly Blumberg on Saturday, October 23rd. Enjoy our current exhibition, Material Girls: Materiality in a Material World, and take in the panoramic views of Chicago’s stunning skyline. All experience levels are welcome!
Come learn about papermaking techniques from Molly Blumberg, one of the artists featured in our current exhibition. Participants will watch her papermaking demonstration, as well as make their own paper to keep. When not making paper, there will be an opportunity to view our exhibit with mimosas!
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Fermented Fiber: A Guided Art + Virtue Cider Tasting
November 12th + 13th
Rachel Hefferan takes guests on a journey through her practice, pairing the unique notes found in Virtue Ciders with the visual metaphors woven into her art.
Rachel Hefferan is an artist and fermentation lover working to heighten the beauty, complexity, and necessity of microbial life. These tiny lives that came before us, exist within us, and facilitate the recycling of all basic structures in our world, deserve to be celebrated. Rachel is also an active homesteader & environmentalist. On her property she cares for sheep, goats, chickens, bees, and a large garden. Her life and artistic practice continually cross pollinate, exchanging influences between home and studio practice.
As a weaver, Rachel views the loom as a tool for discovery and play; she structures her approach to making with science practices that allow for constant revision and learning. Hand spinning, crochet, natural dyes, recycled mill ends or discarded yarns, are all important parts of her studio practice.
Théo Bignon
Théo Bignon (b. 1993, Orléans) is a French artist living and working in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), whose work investigates the intersections of desire, ornamentation and queer existence. His work has been exhibited internationally including Galerie McClure (Montréal), Villa Noailles (Hyères, France), The Hive Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Site:Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY), Bunker Projects (Pittsburgh, PA), Salon LB (Chicago) and Whatiftheworld Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa). His research and writing has been published in the journal Critical Studies in Men's Fashion and Catalyst: Casual Encounters. Théo is also one of the three co-founders and co-organizers of Abstract Lunch, a grassroots artist-run curatorial project emphasizing experimentation and play, and community engagement. He is a recipient of the 2023 Artch's grant for emerging artists. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a New Artist Society scholar, and a BA from Sciences Po Paris.
MOLLY BLUMBERG
Molly Blumberg is an artist based in Chicago, IL and Boston, MA. She earned her MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in fiber & material studies in 2020 and her BFA from the Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts in sculpture in 2012. Trained as a sculptor and a papermaker, her work is grounded in an extreme engagement with materiality. Through a playfully physical studio practice and a dedication to process based exploration, she explores how it feels to be a body. Pulling from art-historical depictions of the female body and employing feminist practices of fragmentation and reassembling, she focuses on the phenomenology of a fleshy body that is a site of constant state change.
RACHEL HEFFERAN
Rachel Hefferan is a Michigan-based artist who primarily weaves as a form of making. Her weavings are abstracted representations of microbial communities that take form as woven pattern, playful color, and many circular references. Rachel is also a hopeful environmentalist, interested in small scale agriculture and wool production. She makes artworks from her home-studio/pole barn, which shares a 16ft wall with a livestock stall. Rachel cares for Pygora goats, Jacob sheep, and Icelandic sheep. Shearing, washing, processing, and hand spinning their wool to use in weavings is part of her artistic practice – though the bulk of the materials used are second-hand cottons, wools, etc., that Rachel has accumulated from other artists over time.
![Hefferan_[Saccharomyces]_afternoon installation veiw.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9fe4774e73e75097c85dd8/1db35bb9-a2e6-4e60-bc7a-c3ab4cd5c090/Hefferan_%5BSaccharomyces%5D_afternoon+installation+veiw.jpg)
![Hefferan_[Saccharomyces]_verso_night.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9fe4774e73e75097c85dd8/593d61d9-aa4c-4f1e-b125-2628d778b08d/Hefferan_%5BSaccharomyces%5D_verso_night.jpg)
![Hefferan_[(B)rettanomyces] II and [Saccharomyces].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e9fe4774e73e75097c85dd8/05514bd8-9452-4843-8334-aabfff7f5358/Hefferan_%5B%28B%29rettanomyces%5D+II++and+%5BSaccharomyces%5D.jpg)
PARVIN PEIVANDI
Parvin Peivandi is an Iranian/Canadian artist who was born in Iran and immigrated to Canada in 2009. She studied contemporary art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. Inspired by Iranian literature and Western cultural theories, Peivandi makes art in an interdisciplinary manner in the liminal space of Iranian folk arts and Western modernism. In her oeuvre, she shows interest in expressive culture, hybrid identity, and narrative structures by using a wide range of techniques and materials such as tar, engine oil, beeswax, steel, worn-out rugs, and left-over consumer objects.
