• Alex Bradley Cohen
    Winter Boi Blu, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    40 x 36 inches
    Photo: Clare Britt

Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

June 5—July 25, 2015


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by two Chicago-based artists: Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd. The exhibit is on view from June 5 – July 25, 2015.

Please join us for a reception for the artists on Friday 5 June from 5 – 8 PM.

Paintings by Alex Bradley Cohen investigate identity through a spectrum of cultural, spiritual and political experiences. Influenced by tropes and techniques found in traditional figure painting, Cohen composes new canvases from scumbling brushstrokes alongside flat, planar forms. Emphasizing color, pattern and shape, Cohen paints his own psychological and autobiographical truths. Existential studies of self commingle with playful portraits of family and tableaus from African American history, folding the artist’s own narrative into a larger history.

Kelly Lloyd considers the idiosyncrasies that structure normalcy, and the devices we form to navigate systems in our daily lives. For her debut project with Carrie Secrist Gallery, Lloyd exhibits a site-specific mural, its content borrowed from billboard advertisements for Montana tourism. Torn entirely from its context, the imagery challenges the rhetoric used to promote natural spaces. In addition, Lloyd exhibits new text pieces that use language to deny and reinforce cultural symbols and mediated signifiers. By restructuring commonplace materials – house paint, toilet paper rolls, vinyl – Lloyd incites uncanny and inconsistent combinations of meaning in a manner both highly critical and sincere.

Alex Bradley Cohen (b. 1989, United States) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Cohen is an alumnus of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is recipient of the 2014 James Nelson Raymond Fellowship. Recent exhibitions include The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA and The Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL. His work was featured on the cover of New American Paintings (issue 113, 2014).

Kelly Lloyd (b. 1986, United States) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Lloyd received a dual MFA and MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. She is currently in residence at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition. Recent projects in Chicago include Hyde Park Art Center, Roots and Culture, Valerie Carberry Gallery, Kavi Gupta Editions, and Ballroom Projects. New City Chicago recently named Lloyd a 2015 Breakout Artist.

For more information please contact the gallery on 312.491.0917.

 

 

Images

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Kelly Lloyd
    Accept the challenge of a mighty land., 2015
    Acrylic
    13 h. x 63 feet

    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Kelly Lloyd
    Accept the challenge of a mighty land., 2015
    Acrylic
    13 h. x 63 feet

    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Kelly Lloyd
    THERE’S NOTHING HERE, 2015
    Toilet paper
    Dimensions variable

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    The Hospital, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    38 x 42 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Self-Portrait, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    30 x 24 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Peter, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    36 x 24 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Sarah Workneh, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    24 x 18 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Marky, 2014
    Acrylic on canvas
    24 x 18 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Chanel, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    26 x 34 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Aunt Ann and Grandma, 2014
    Acrylic on canvas
    40 x 30 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Mother and Child The Disobedient Son, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    34 x 42 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    When We Ate Together, 2013
    Acrylic on canvas
    44 x 30 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Kelly Lloyd
    THERE’S NOTHING HERE, 2015
    Toilet paper
    Dimensions variable

  • Kelly Lloyd
    THERE’S NOTHING HERE, 2015
    Toilet paper
    Dimensions variable

  • Alex Bradley Cohen and Kelly Lloyd

    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, June 5 – July 25, 2015
    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Kelly Lloyd
    New York Times Cosmopolitan, 2015
    Acrylic and vinyl
    Dimensions variable

    Photo: Clare Britt

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Self-Portrait, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    16 x 12 inches

  • Alex Bradley Cohen
    Self-Portrait, 2015
    Acrylic on canvas
    16 x 12 inches

    Photo: Clare Britt