ABOUT THE SHOW

Now that we've got all of that meta-BEN RUSSELL one-year anniversary action out of the way, it's time to move onto the real order of business - we're talking NURSES (of course), and what better way to honor the memory all of those post-Halloween Sexy Nurse / Sexy Florence Nightingale costumes than with a group art show that will care for you in your moment of ill health? We've seen you sniffling on the train, sneezing at the zoo, and staying in bed on Election Day - we saw you hit your head with your bass guitar while performing in a Nirvana cover band last night, and we know that the 8-year old in you is still in need of sustenance.

This almost-always recession-cusp-of-the-everyday is apparently unrelenting, and most of can't afford Japanese Robonurses to carry our stricken selves from bed to bed to bed. It's in times like this that the soothing, comforting, and occasionally lactating powers of art can be called upon to heal us - BEN RUSSELL : NURSES

stands as proof that artists are the new clinicians, that apartment spaces are their temporary free clinics...

When you find yourself multiplied and contorted and devouring your own flesh (DONNER), let us dress your wounds. When you have been beaten upon and pounded into like the skins of so many heavy metal drum heads (POSITIVE), let us put a salve upon your bruises. BEN RUSSELL : NURSES is art for the body - let us be your healthcare professional!

Like the memory-image of battlefield matrons conjured up through the smell of fresh oil paint (HOFFMAN) or a jellyfish-shaped monument to bodily fluids (FAIN) or the hand of God descending upon your weary frame while a Madonna song echoes through those dark nights (CIOCCI), BEN RUSSELL : NURSES is art for the soul - make an appointment now and avail yourself of our metaphoric health care setting!

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

JACOB CIOCCI is most notably known as one third of the American art collective Paper Rad. In his videos, performances, collages, and net art Jacob deals with the relationship between popular technology, popular culture, and contemporary American pathos. He has performed and exhibited at a variety of venues including the New Museum and MOMA in New York, Tate Britain, and most recently the TBA festival in Portland, Oregon and the Penrith National Gallery in Australia.

CHRISTA DONNER uses a variety of drawing-based media and small-press projects to examine the human body and our relationships to it through physical sensation and imagination. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Museum Bellerive (Zurich, Switzerland), BankART NYK (Yokohama, Japan), Centro Columbo Americano (Medellin, Columbia), Kravets-Wehby (New York, NY), and POST (Los Angeles, CA).

BEN FAIN is best known for his large-scale public performances and parades. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Most recently Ben (with Uncle Merril Ferris, an expert on the Mayan calendar), transformed the Miami Lotus House Thrift Store truck into a parade float/mediation center based on an ancient South Indian practice and lead small groups in short meditations focused on the power of community.

PETER HOFFMAN is a Chicago based artist who primarily works with oil paint on canvas. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and studied at the Marchutz School of Painting in Aix-en-Provence, France in 2006. Hoffman has exhibited in numerous Chicago venues including Heaven Gallery, Green Lantern Gallery, Harold Washington College, Old Gold, mini-dutch, Hyde Park Art Center, and has been featured in multiple national and international group exhibitions.

ANDY POSITIVE AND HIS DISSONANT RIDERS "are from mind's eye from Mosinee and western Massachusetts. Andy with some help from the Beard, from western Massachusetts, works in the public field explaining corporate procedures and Andy is a history collector of the blues (the Blue Riders). We play in order for unity, not to be hard really but more because I don't get do this very often " - Andy Positive