Chicago-based artist Daniel Baird’s work addresses ideas endemic to the Western cultural milieu, often questioning notions of technological progress by including more primitive or child-like interventions into the very construction of his sculptures and mixed-media installations.  Baird earned his MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 2011, and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.  In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at such venues as Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; Roots and Culture, Chicago; Appendix Project Space, Portland, OR; Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands; and Hungryman Gallery, Chicago.  His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL; the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; Koh-iNoor, Copenhagen; Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago; and Gallery 400, Chicago.  He is also the recipient of a number of local awards and grants, including from the Community Art Assistance Program, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for artistic merit.

www.danielgbaird.com

The Belknap’s current work is fueled by research and ventures into the realm of cosmology, astronomy, and the technologies by which these fields are made possible.  In recent years they have had solo exhibitions at such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Arts Club of Chicago; Heaven Gallery, Chicago; and the Chicago Artist’s Coalition. Their work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at Rockford University Art Gallery, Rockford, IL; A+D Gallery, Columbia College Chicago; Crane Arts, Philadelphia; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and the Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Chicago. The Belknaps are also recipients of a number of awards and grants, including a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, the BOLT residency at Chicago Artist’s Coalition, and the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship. Both Sarah and Joseph Belknap received their MFA’s from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010, 2009, respectively) and are the founders of their own design firm, Iamhome.

www.sarahandjoseph.com 

After graduating from the School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón in 2001, Bohm went on to study drawing with Pablo Siquier and photography with Gabriel Valansi. She joined the Postgraduate Artists program and Film Laboratory at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in 2009 and 2012, which was coordinated by Inés Katzenstein, Jorge Macchi, Martín Rejtman, and Andrés Di Tella. Bohm has had solo exhibitions of her work at The Mission, Houston; La Ira de Dios, Buenos Aires; The Mission, Chicago; Baró Galería, San Pablo, Brazil; and the Festival de la Luz, Centro Cultural Parque España, Rosario, Argentina. Her work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including at such venues as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires; Espacio OTR, Madrid; the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Proa Foundation, Buenos Aires; Instituto Cervantes, São Paulo, Brazil; and the Creative Research Lab, Austin, Texas, among many others. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1976, the artist continues to live and work in the Argentine capital.

www.themissionprojects.com

Jeremy Bolen is a Chicago based artist and educator interested in site specific, experimental modes of documentation and presentation.  Much of Bolen’s work involves rethinking systems of recording in an attempt to observe invisible presences that remain from various scientific experiments and human interactions with the earth’s surface.  Bolen received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012 and is a recent recipient of a Anthropocene Campus Residency in Berlin, Germany; Center for Land Use Interpretation Residency in Wendover, Utah; Joshua Tree Highlands Residency in Joshua Tree, CA and the Provost Award for Graduate Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been exhibited at numerous locations including La Box, Bourges;  MOCP, Chicago; The Mission, Houston; Galerie Zürcher, Paris; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; Salon Zürcher, New York; The Drake, Toronto; Untitled, Miami; Gallery 400, Chicago;  Depaul University Art Museum, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, and Roots and Culture, Chicago. Bolen currently serves as a Lecturer at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

www.jeremybolen.com

Dana Carter works across media often using ephemeral processes that convey the passage of time. Her work deals with the velocity of loss, the poetics of vision, word play and the slowness of the natural world. Carter moves between rituals of observation and material experimentation in the studio; a parallel to the waxing and waning rhythm of night and day. Constellations of textile, light, and video elements come together raising questions of movement and communication across a vast distance, and reveal that the atmosphere is a faulty lens.

Recent exhibitions include: MassArt, Boston (solo); Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; American Institute of Architecture, New Orleans; Iceberg Projects, Chicago (solo); Devening Projects, Chicago (solo); Center for Print Studies, Columbia University, NY; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Chicago; Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago; Cleve Carney Art Center, College of Dupage IL (solo); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; The Bioscope, Johannesburg, South Africa; Fabrica de Arte, Havana Biennielle, Cuba (forthcoming); Canterbury Museum, South Island, New Zealand (forthcoming.) Her work has been written about in the Chicago Tribune; Chicago Reader; Architect's Newspaper; Times-Picayune. Dana Carter is based in Chicago.

www.danacarter.com

Joseph G. Cruz’s work is fueled by an enthusiasm towards the History and Philosophy of Science and how seemingly disparate technologies, economies and ecologies can spin connections towards social paradigm shifts. His earnestness towards the research is not as a historian, but an attempt at extracting the vestiges lost in the methodologies of knowledge exchange. Cruz received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of Notre Dame, as well as a GLOBES Certificate in Environment and Society Fellow. Notable solo exhibitions have taken place at such venues as Chicago Artist Coalition; the Comfort Station, Chicago; and EXPO Chicago.  His work has also been included in group exhibitions at such spaces as the Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art; the Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; Cabinet Magazine Exhibition Space, New York; and the Chicago Cultural Center.

www.josephgcruz.com

This work is made possible in part by support from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of  Notre Dame.

Carrie Gundersdorf’s paintings and drawings use various modes of abstraction and observation to explore how individual experience can limit and expand our perception.  Her work connects the field of art to the scientific exploration of the edges of empirical knowledge of the universe and the capacity for discovery and wonder.  While attempting to observe and understand what remains out of reach, the pursuit ultimately reflects back on her, the observer and artist.

Carrie Gundersdorf  (American, b. 1973) has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Julius Caesar, Chicago; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; and Gahlberg Gallery at the College of Dupage, Glen Ellyn, IL.  She has also participated in group exhibitions at 106 Green, New York; Rare Gallery, New York; Regina Rex, New York; Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles; Proof Gallery, Boston; the Loyola Museum of Art, Chicago; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago, among others.  Her work has been discussed in Art Review, Artforum, Artnet, Art on Paper, Bad at Sports, Chicago Tribune, and Time Out Chicago.  Gundersdorf was the recipient of the Artadia Award and the Bingham Fellowship from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.   She has a B.A. from Connecticut College and a M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

www.carriegundersdorf.com

Jason Lazarus is a Chicago-based artist, curator, writer, and educator who received his MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2003. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Recent major exhibitions include Black Is, Black Ain’t, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Love to Love You, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; On the Scene, The Art Institute of Chicago; Not the Way You Remembered, Queens Museum of Art, New York; Image Search, PPOW Gallery, New York; and Michael Jackson Doesn’t Quit, Part 3, Future Gallery, Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Chicago Works: Jason Lazarus, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Live Archive, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; and THTK (Toronto), Gallery TPW, Toronto. Lazarus is a also co-founder and co-editor of Chicago Artist Writers, an online art criticism platform that asks artists and art workers to write traditional and experimental criticism that serves non-profit, temporary, and alternative arts programming in Chicago.

www.jasonlazarus.com

New Catalogue is a project started by Jonathan Sadler and Luke Batten concerned with organizing images and utilizing design to comment on large and small histories. In 2012, the artists worked with composer Judd Greenstein, and designers Neil Donnelly and Mary Voorhees Meehan to create a large-scale installation paying homage to Carl Sagan’s contributions in creating NASA’s Golden Record, which contained images and sounds from earth and was attached to the Voyager Spacecraft. The year 2012 was the 25th anniversary of the launch. The artist simultaneously collected interviews with the communities of Scottsdale and Phoenix to create content for a new Golden Record. The exhibition catalog included a vinyl LP record. The work to be presented as part of Cosmosis is an extension of this earlier project.

Sadler and Batten live in Boise, Idaho and Chicago, Illinois, respectively. Despite this distance, the artists continue to work fluidly together. Texting, Instagram, and mail art keep their practice alive and fertile. The duo first exhibited their work at Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery in Chicago in 2003, and since has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Prague Biennial; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

www.newcatalogue.net 

Trevor Paglen's work deliberately blurs lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us.  Paglen's visual work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Modern, London; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the 2008 Taipei Biennial; the 2009 Istanbul Biennial; the 2012 Liverpool Biennial, and numerous other solo and group exhibitions.  He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. His most recent book, The Last Pictures is a meditation on the intersections of deep-time, politics, and art.  Paglen has received grants and awards from the Smithsonian, Art Matters, Artadia, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the LUMA foundation, the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, and the Aperture Foundation.  Paglen holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley. The artist currently lives in New York.

www.paglen.com

Jefferson Pinder, a Chicago based video/performance artist, seeks to find identity through the most dynamic circumstances. His experimental videos and films feature minimal performances that reference music videos and physical theatre. Pinder’s work provides personal and social commentary in accessible and familiar format. Inspired by soundtracks, he utilizes hypnotic popular music and surreal performances to underscore themes dealing with Afro-Futurism, physical endurance and blackness.

His work has been featured in numerous group and solo shows including exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, Showroom Mama in Rotterdam, Netherlands, The High Museum in Atlanta and the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. Pinder’s work was featured at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery exhibition Recognize. His action-packed endurance performance Ben-Hur was featured at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.  And in December 2014, he worked with a team of performers to create a visceral work titled Thoroughbred that featured four performers running on remote controlled treadmills.  At present, Pinder is preparing for a solo exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, in April 2016.

Jefferson received his BA in Theatre from the University of Maryland, and studied at the Asolo Theatre Conservatory in Sarasota, FL. In 2001, Jefferson returned to the University of Maryland to receive his MFA in Painting and Mixed Media. In 2011 he moved to Chicago where he is an Associate Professor in the Contemporary Practices Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

www.jeffersonpinder.com

Through interdisciplinary, New Media and traditional art-making processes, Sagan’s work explores the connections, parallels and paradoxes that exist between art, science, technology and culture. His more recent inquiries and experiments deal specifically with the installation format as medium through which scientific imagery and data archives can be aesthetically and kineaesthetically accessed and interpreted. The artist’s work has been included in exhibitions at such venues as the Comfort Station, Chicago; Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago; Mana Contemporary, Chicago; the Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Arcade Gallery, Columbia College Chicago; and Chicago Artist’s Coalition. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago.

Partially funded by a 2015 Part-time Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago.

www.nicholassagan.com

Erin Washington embraces materiality and labor to examine themes of vulnerability and permanence. Questioning how time structures transitions in ephemera, she creates mixed-media paintings, drawings, and sculptures, which unravel time through the performance of their making, and their subsequent degradation. Washington is currently a lecturer in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2011. Notable solo exhibitions have been held at such venues as The Riverside Art Center, Riverside Illinois, Johalla Projects, Chicago; and Skinny Squirrel Gallery, Denver.  Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at such spaces as Heaven Gallery, Chicago; Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago; Julius Caesar, Chicago; and Columbia University in New York.

www.erinwashington.com