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Night Car Play by Marzena Abrahamik, Jonathan Michael Castillo and Tom Van Enyde
April 26 @ 6:00 pm - 6:30 pm CDT
Join us for the opening of Night Car Play by Marzena Abrahamik, Jonathan Michael Castillo and Tom Van Enyde
Mana Contemporary Chicago
2233 S. Throop St. Chicago IL 60608
6th fl.
Project statement:
Marzena Abrahamik – Girl Play
Girl Play explores the intersections of femininity, cannabis culture, and visual representation, proposing a speculative framework through which the figure of the female stoner emerges as both subject and symbol. Operating within fantasy and icon-making, the work draws on the constant political battle that revolves around the mutable sociopolitical conditions surrounding cannabis and women’s autonomy— subject to juridical reinterpretation and cultural anxiety.
Jonathan Michael Castillo – Car Culture
My work is focused on people, place, the communities and groups that people form, the social issues that affect populations and how people navigate larger systems of government and bureaucracy. Utilizing photography, video, installation and handmade paper my projects operate as both social documentary and socially engaged art. Portraiture and photographs of interior space feature prominently in my work alongside material explorations of coded meaning when I utilize video, installation and handmade paper. Topics such as immigration, labor, economics, debt, government systems and how those subjects overlap are prominent themes in my work. My practice is motivated by personal connections to many of these themes; that affect me, my family and my friends, but also out of larger concerns regarding how more fair and just systems can be brought into existence for our communities.
Tom Van Enyde – At Night
About the artists:
Marzena Abrahamik (b. Poland, raised in Greece) is a visual artist, driven by photography’s ability to change our visual sensibility. She is visually inspired by personal histories, attachments to unachievable and necessary-for-survival fantasies, to further investigate communal formations and transformations. Abrahamik works through photographic series where images are anchored in historical events with formal interests in lighting, color and gesture that connect individual images into unimaginable bodies of work. Abrahamik’s approach to structuring and conceptualizing has been defined by her immigration history.
Recent exhibitions include At the Chicago Cultural Center, Film School In Lodz, Johalla Projects, Heaven Gallery, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Soccer Club Club, and Aperture. Abrahamik is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholar Award, Kosciuszko Foundation Graduate Studies and Research Scholarship Program, and IAS Artist Project Grant. Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography and Haas Library.
Jonathan Michael Castillo is a visual artist, photographer and educator based in Chicago. Hewasthe 2019-2021 recipient of the Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues. Jonathan was included in the 2021 Hyde Park Art Center’s Ground Floor Biennial in Chicago and was a finalist for the WMA Commission in Hong Kong. His work has been featured with The New Yorker, Wired,The Chicago Tribune,CBS: Los Angeles, andBrazil’s G1 Globo. He hasbeeninterviewedon the BBC’s“World Update”andLos Angeles public radio stations KPCC and KCRW. Jonathan was recently commissioned to create a large-scale permanent installation of his work at O’Hare International Airport as part of the Terminal 5 expansion project.In 2023he was commissioned to make work for the city of Chicago’s City wide Planing partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Planning and Development.Exhibitions include those at the Art Institute Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center,Photo LA 2020, the Center for Creative Photography,Aperture Gallery, House of Lucie, Filter Photo Gallery, Ralph Arnold Gallery and the California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks. Jonathan is represented by Samuel Maenhoudt Gallery in Belgium.His education includes a BFA from California State University Long Beach and MFA from Columbia College Chicago.
Tom Van Eynde was born in 1947 in Berwyn, Il. He attended Columbia College and Chicago & Governor’s State University where he earned a degree in Photography, with an emphasis in still photography, photo history & museum practices. He was the Assistant Curator Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, during the early 80’s. He has also been the photographer for museums and galleries, as well as artists for over 40 years.
