Art & Art History
2022 MFA Thesis Show: Fade into Me: Identity and Abstraction

Gallery 400
400 South Peoria Street, Chicago, IL 60607
Caleb MacKenzie-Marguiles, Mark Guinto, Jacob Boglio, Juan Banos Arjona and Kaia Colsen
MFA Thesis Talk Friday April 8, 6-7:00pm moderated by Hannah Higgins, Gallery 400 Lecture Room
Closing Reception Friday April 8, 7-9pm Gallery 400, 400 S Peoria Ave, Chicago IL, 60607
The first of two University of Illinois at Chicago MFA Thesis Exhibitions in Studio Arts, Fade into Me: Identity and Abstraction features Juan Baños Fonseca, Jacob Bolio, Mark Guinto, Caleb MacKenzie-Margulies, and Kaia Olsen.
In Fade into Me: Identity and Abstraction, monochromatic brown paintings reference skin color in meditations on race and ethnicity, and the chromatics of rainbow hues painted inside monumental geometric sculptures point to the multiplicity of genders and sexualities. The uniforms of workers are stretched into canvases that negotiate the intricacies of class dynamics, prints in photographic and impressed forms abstract the punk’s ethos into conceptual acts and totemic sculptures abstract the human figure into a cacophony of internal voices. The work of Caleb MacKenzie-Marguiles, Mark Guinto, Jacob Boglio, Juan Baños Fonseca and Kaia Olsen resists an easy identification and transparency while simultaneously plumbing the depths of self as individual in concert with and set against community affiliations, identity politics, and collective ideologies.