(Re): Media at Packer Schopf Gallery Gets Reviewed!!

My show got recommended and reviewed in New City this week.


Here it is:

RECOMMENDED
For several decades, photographers have been exploring the aesthetic values and virtues of scenes of environmental degradation; now some of them are doing the same with the contemporary battlefield, including Krista Wortendyke. In her brightly colored, graphic and digitally altered photo-collages of the killing fields, Wortendyke serves up great clouds of red, orange and yellow fire filled with shards of black metal, around which aircraft buzz and soar, and beneath which soldiers scurry in the midst of their doom machines. Neither glossy propaganda glorifying boys with their toys, heroism or bracing adventure; nor grim denunciations of willed destruction, Wortendyke’s photo-works are spectacles of grandeur to be contemplated with or without whatever moral judgments viewers happen to bring with them. By placing her scenes in backgrounds of elegantly interrelated rectangles of earth and sky tones, Wortendyke lets us know that she intends to sublimate warfare. (Michael Weinstein)

Site Under Construction

www.kristawortendyke.com is currently under construction.
Check back soon for a spanking new site!!!
See below for the images from (re): media at Packer Schopf Gallery

(re): media series - new work

Here are the images that are currently part of (re): media at Packer Schopf Gallery

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Statement:
Although most of us have never experienced war, we are surrounded by its imagery. This project is an exploration of the way that imagery and information from movies, videogames, the newspaper, and the Internet come together to form our perception of what war is. Explosions are war’s most universal and most spectacular signifiers. We are never falling short of this imagery. I have made use of these magnetizing images to show not only how the lines between fiction and non-fiction blur, but also to show how a mediated experience can become indecipherable from a real experience.

(Re): Media at Packer Schopf Gallery

Hope you can join me for the opening of
(Re): Media - New works by Krista Wortendyke

July 10th - August 15th
Artist Reception: Friday July 10th, 5-8pm

Packer Schopf Gallery
942 West Lake Street
Chicago, IL 60607
T 312.226.8984 E packer@packergallery.com

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11:00am - 5:30pm
www.packergallery.com

Short-O-Matic

Here is what my artwork would look like on boardshorts.
Would you buy these?

I kinda love them.

Involving Violence
School 33 Art Center
February 20 – April 11, 2009

Curated by Lasso's Karin Patzke and Carrie Ruckel

Artists include:

Ramsey Barnes, Gerecho Delaney, Matthew Freel, Brook Halvorson, John Morris, Diane Ramos, Marilee Schumann, Alan Lerner, Regina Mamou, Sari Maxfield, Joe Sikora, Jason Stec, Krista Wortendyke


Opening Reception: Friday, February 20, 2009 | 6 – 9 pm | 7pm gallery talk

Gallery Talk with Involving Violence Curators and Artists

Saturday, Feb. 21 | 2 – 3pm

Please join the curators of Involving Violence along with participating artists from Baltimore and Chicago for an in depth discussion about the exhibition's content and how issues Involving Violence effect individuals, communities, and society as a whole. This event is free and open to the public.


ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Involving Violence features thirteen artists, mostly from the Chicago and Baltimore areas, whose work addresses issues of violence and hostility that disrupt daily life. As consumers, Americans are constantly bombarded with glamorous and violent images in the media and popular culture. Aggression manifests itself in many different situations and the show avoids creating a hierarchy of violence by juxtaposing images and objects that approach the subject in a variety of ways.

The artists featured in the exhibition explore issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gun violence, police brutality and sexual assault. From combative sports to law enforcement to self-defense, this exhibition explores the proximity of violence to our daily lives and the difficulty in distinguishing if and when acts of force are necessary. Involving Violence hopes to draw attention to these situations and engage the viewer by questioning the actions and motivations of ourselves and others.

This show was first presented by Lasso in September 2007 in Chicago, and has been relocated to Baltimore with additional artists from the Mid-Atlantic to create a dialogue between residents of the two cities. Lasso hopes to continue a vibrant exchange of ideas in Baltimore at School 33 Art Center concerning the many present issues of cruelty that abound in the United States.


ABOUT THE CURATORS

LASSO is an informal collaboration between Chicago based artists and curators Carrie Ruckel and Karin Patzke. Currently, Lasso is a part time venture, proposing group exhibitions to other art spaces, but from 2007-08, Lasso Gallery was originally located at the Butcher Shop, a mixed-use exhibition space in Chicago. Prior to founding Lasso, Ruckel and Patzke collaborated on various projects for venues in Chicago including the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and Elastic Vision Gallery. Through their curatorial practice, Lasso engages the art community in contemporary social and cultural issues through exhibitions, lectures and events.

School 33 Art Center
1427 Light Street | Baltimore, MD 21230 | 410-396-4641
Gallery Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10 – 4 pm | Thursday 10 – 7 pm | Saturday 12 – 4 pm

A Plea...

To all the Republicans that are in a state of disappointment today, please think about this.
Our new leader does not seek to take your money and give it to the guy who doesn't have a job and isn't looking for one, although, inevitably that will happen in some cases. He does not wish to make everyone of the same stature. He wishes to help reward the people that are the gears of your country. The people that wake up everyday to make the world you live in the way it was yesterday or maybe better. These are the people that come together to serve you. We are all served by one another. The people we are talking about are the people that serve you your coffee in the morning, work security in your office buildings to keep you safe, the people that work at the counter of your banks diligently taking your money and moving it into some safe place, the people that create your culture, the people that teach your children, beautify your world, write the articles that you read and the people that work in the background of your life so that you have less to worry about.

Tell me why these people that often have two, three, and four jobs deserve less. How can you say that the value of their work is less, that they are not worthy of the opportunities that you are, that when they are sick they don't deserve to have someone take care of them?

As as a nation, as a united country, as a place where we can be proud to be citizens and proud to don the American flag, we have to be aware of each other's worth.

Think really hard about this...
We all contribute to making this country what it is.
Can you say that the head of any big corporation deserves to have more opportunity and have a better life than the person that teaches your children to read?

Review of Who Get's What: A Political Show

This is a review from New City on September 19th.
The show is down, but thank you to everyone who got out to see it.

Review: Who Gets What: A Political Show/David Weinberg Gallery
Photography, River NorthNo Comments »
RECOMMENDED
Does postmodern photography, drenched in irony and fascination with culture at the expense of flesh, bring anything to the table as political artists begin to play their hands in earnest? The five photo-artists in this political show strive mightily to break through the confines of cultural criticism with varied success. Krista Wortendyke does the best by mixing lush color photographs based on appropriated images from movies, video games and newspapers in suites and assemblages depicting striking battle scenes and magnificent explosions, creating a garish romance of war that shows us how we have been seduced into ignoring the unpleasant realities of carnage. Second place goes to Sonja Thomsen’s iridescent bubbly color studies of crude oil that show the aesthetic side of what the world is fighting over and remind us—again with the postmodern staple of absence—that we should stop and smell the gasoline. Wortendyke’s and Thomsen’s images do not cut to the quick, but they prepare us to make the stab. (Michael Weinstein)
Through October 18 at David Weinberg Gallery, 300 West Superior, (312)529-5090.