BTWXT I: Diana Guerrero-Maciá + Oli Watt

November 4—December 23, 2022

Carrie Secrist Gallery is happy to announce the first in our project series entitled “CSG BTWXT” at our new temporary gallery space, located at 1637 W. Chicago Ave in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. BTWXT #1 will feature work by Chicago based artists Diana Guerrero-Maciá and Oli Watt. It will open November 4 and run through December 17.

On view will be a selection of artworks from gallery artist Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s new body of work titled Sleeping Giant. This presentation features new large-scale paintings, an immersive wall installation of 36 collages on paper and a sculptural installation featuring a Hans Wegner style folding chair, a pillow made by the artist’s mother, a shipping palette and other personal items from the artist’s upbringing and studio practice. These artworks are built upon the basic structure of a “nine patch”: a fundamental quilt block pattern that organizes space in quilt making originating in the beginning of the nineteenth century. From this basic framework, Guerrero-Maciá drives much more complex forms through the combined languages of abstraction and materiality.

Also on view will be a selection of artworks from Oli Watt’s projects 101 Decoys + Still Lives. Made over the course of the pandemic from everyday objects, found and manipulated, Watt’s duck decoys highlight the paradox of form vs. function while underlining the historical connotations of this peculiar and specific form of outdoorsmanship. Also on view is a bouquet of oversized wooden still-life flower sculptures. A play on the art-school studio drawing class wherein a group of students would surround a teacher built still-life made from any manner of objects, these flowers are quirky, brutalist and beautiful. Watt’s whimsical objects combine repetition and humor while serving as a reminder of the world around us. 

Diana Guerrero-Maciá, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has created several public art commissions for the Public Art Fund, NYC and the City of Chicago. Her artworks are collected into multiple public and private collections. Her exhibitions include Kohler Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Pace San Antonio, Elmhurst Art Museum, and Crocker Museum of Art. She is a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grantee, Illinois Artist Fellow and MacDowell Colony Fellow. She is an alumnus of Skowhegan School of Painting & Drawing, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Penland School of Craft and Villanova University. Guerrero-Maciá. is currently a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Oli Watt has exhibited his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York; the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; La Band Art Gallery, Los Angeles; and the Rocket Gallery, London. His work has been discussed in numerous publications including Art on Paper, Art US, the New Art Examiner and Village Voice. He is a recipient of the Maxine and Stuart Applebaum Award of Excellence and the Tweed Museum of Art Purchase Award. Watt runs the free range gallery and project space in the Albany Park neighborhood.

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CSG BTWXT represents the interim where we find ourselves literally “between spaces”. Over the next few months before our permanent home is ready in early 2023 on Chicago’s Wood and Hubbard Streets, we will be featuring recent developments by both gallery artists and new artist alliances, along with exciting teasers of all that is to come. In addition to BTWXT #1, the gallery will have on view a variety of recent artwork from Gallery artists including Andrew Holmquist, Anne Lindberg, Stephen Eichhorn and Dannielle Tegeder.