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| 1822 S Desplaines, moving day artifacts. |
The website for Dogmatic was an artifact originating with the program, Instalation View. A seven person exhibition that happened in July, 2000, it presented work by Nicola Axford, Diego Bobby, Jeremy Boyle, Danielle Gustafson-Sundell, Jack Sloss, Pedro Velez, Siebren Versteeg. First appearing for the length of that show, the website offered the following helpful information on it's front page.
Welcome to the debut of Dogmatic’s space on the web. Presently this site is the location for the on-line catalog for Instalation View. The contents of this site will be a dynamic mix of information about the Artists that show here and the programs that they present and curate. So check in frequently to see what the Art of Chicago and the future of the international community will be like.
From Dogmatic's beginning we had committed ourselves to building an archive. What we called it's Permanant Collection was to be the beating heart of our transpatial experiment in realism. It reflected the resourcefulness and effusive spontaneity of the actions that artists we worked with were undertaking in their community. This collection of objects and documents were like a string of shiny garland strung up between two points, an alpha and an omega. Some examples of it's many points were the catalogs that for, Burnt Fried Set Aside: The Meat Show, or the essay and the website that was commissioned for, Instalation[
sic.] View. There was also an interactive digital catalog released with the Work Show: What Artists Do When They Are Being Paid To Do Something Else. But there was more and different besides this, there were the tools, chairs, stools and rugs that moved around the space like so much water inside a jug. There was also a pile of phone books to be stacked and arranged from program to program and a square lump of molded concrete to sit beside it. A cassette tape in a plastic case with the photo of a Chinese landscape that would be arranged on a shelf beside a hammer or a dusty mason's level. There were stiff paintbrushes inside of rusty of cans and a detergent box was filled with postcards from other spaces.
The artists that worked at Dogmatic hemorrhaged objects of stuff. In so doing they would change how stuff existed in spaces that traditionally existed to be exchanged as so much sport for the entities controlling capital. The text that follows is the text that appeared on our website at http://www.nhartfabricators.com/dogmaticgallery.
Dogmatic began in 1997. Founders Paul Chan, Aviv Kruglanski, Andrew Natale, and Michael S. Thomas were committed to civil and artistic actions that could draw attention to the growing rifts within their community. Politics, big business, institutions and their relationships to the citizenry at large and artists specifically provided us with easy targets. The gallery became a tool that provided a new form of dialogue to those who had become cynical listening to dullards describe the bland. The goals of our gallery early on were met in part by breaking down the existing models for art presentation in the traditional modern white box. The modern box was replaced by the house in which we lived while shows became thematic in an attempt capture the vitality that surrounded us and to purge the gallery of any white space by covering every inch with artwork.
In doing so we created a personal space in which a new mercurial art could be seen without the cloying persistence of old dogmas and old moneys. What we provided was a place wherein artists could be seen and talked to without the pressure to relent to a market place that was turning its back on them.
I no longer have the luxury of working with Paul, Andrew and Aviv but my mission is still short, simple and crucial. It is to present to the public the best artwork that can be seen at any given time. My shows are still intended to incite dialogue but the thematic nature of those early years has been replaced with a greater emphasis on a curatorial practice that investigates individual artists and small groups. It has always been my desire to provide the public with the opportunity to see the progression of these Artists works and their ideas before established institutions edit them. In simplest light I’m committed to giving everyone I can the chance to say that I am wrong, and an affordable space within which they can prove it.
When the website was rebuilt in 2004 following the physical move of Dogmatic to a new location I added some extra words to this brief. I was hoping to explain some of the motives for uprooting the space and how important it was to be moving forward while continuing to adapt along with our community to the new challenges we were facing.
In these intervening years Dogmatic has established a bold exception to exhibition and curatorial practice. Through the persistence of its partnership with artists and their resolve we have continued to inform the ways in which institutions throughout this city look at emerging and early career artists and the work that they present. We have demonstrated time and again the necessity and virtues in looking at the work of these artists now. When you attend a Stray Show or see a program such as Twelve by Twelve at the MCA you are experiencing the lasting impact that this resolve has had. Dogmatic has provided this along with a capacity for leadership necessary to help spawn a new generation of spaces that will confront the future with an unrelenting cheeriness.
Despite these accomplishments Dogmatic is at the end of an era. Our artist’s needs are changing. The dialogue that once served them and provided the backbone for spaces devoted to project-based work has dwindled as the community has grown. The bleak time where their continued investigations are met without hope of support or compensation for their efforts is at hand. As DIY is replaced with grab what you can, the new millennium quickly shows us how words like community and dialogue can be made passé and altruism can seem dirty. In short Dogmatic has come full circle.
However with the tools of leadership and experience at our disposal Dogmatic looks forward to meeting the realities of these times head on. The space as it has existed at 1822 S. Desplaines will forego the comforts of its home for a more transient and versatile approach to curatorial conundrums and project based work. We look forward to offering new challenges to a new group of artists both locally and those not so lucky to be from Chicago. The artists that have continued to make Dogmatic their home will also return as we push even further the notions of the gallery space as place, art as ephemera and kitsch as a site specific reality in the contemporary framework. Dogmatic will also continue its practice of making available time based franchises to artists, curators and anybody with the temerity to open such ventures.
Dogmatic will maintain and uphold its belief that art is not something accessible only to the few. It is instead a potential for all people everywhere to engage the notion of sensation and challenge the experience of history with anything they choose to make a tool of in any space anywhere. Dogmatic in short, will continue to provide leadership in a time when duck, duck goose seems a reasonable way to ring around the rosy. We will continue providing Art in any way possible to a world that’s forgetting the importance of such experiences and we will do this from Chicago where Art happens in real time at Dogmatic daily.
While I believe that much was accomplished with Dogmatic
Dogmatic is pleased to announce that its new home is at 1319 W. Lake St, the Butcher Shop. After 8 rewarding years, we have shed our old space at 1822 S. Desplaines. Location has never been a paramount concern of Dogmatic’s, great work after all is just as great displayed in a gas station or a museum. However a good deal of thought has gone into this transition. The Butcher Shop will offer to us the leisure of working in a large yet comfortable space and it also affords the benefit of working with Tom Colle’s reservoir of skill and experience.
Mr. Colle and I will be coordinating the gallery’s affairs jointly. It is our intention to continue our work with early career artists. While Mr. Colle looks forward to providing Dogmatic a long absent sense of spontaneity. I, for my efforts look forward to continuing the work I set out to do eight years ago.
Mr. Colle is without equal in Chicago. He along with several like minded artists started the Butcher Shop in 1997 as a live/work gallery space. In the intervening years, a large number of young artists here in Chicago have had the opportunity to show with the Butcher Shop. Many of those same artists have worked concurrently with Dogmatic and continue to do so. In the same number of years Mr. Colle and is associates created Cross Hair Studios, one of the preeminent silk screen print shops in the country. He is currently working on multiple projects including his Masters Degree in the Library Sciences.
I have owned and operated Dogmatic here in Chicago since 1997. Dogmatic began as an experiment in anti-jargon, pro-artist community building. Its emphasis has been project and site specific work with small group and individual artists as our focus.
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| Instalation View (2000) card front view |
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