cotton or fruit/flowers

Live(In) Gallery announces its March show, Cotton or Fruit/Flowers, new works by Traci Fowler & Trevor Schmutz. 

Cotton or Fruit/Flowers commemorates two moments of celebration –four years as partners, two years as co-directors. Last March Traci Fowler and Trevor Schmutz worked together on common law, an exhibition at Kitchen Space, the space they co-run in their apartment in Chicago. Picking up where they left off, Fowler and Schmutz probe further into the idiosyncrasies of their parallel relationships: as partners and as artists/facilitators.

Where their individual practices overlap is where things start. Cotton or Fruit/Flowers will exist in the arena of conversation, where the individual strengths of Fowler and Schmutz will propel one another’s forward. The artists will work collaboratively, but individually. Fowler will construct sculptures and installations that structure the visual virtues of their relationship. She will act as an interior decorator, staging Live In as the landscape for their relationship to exist in. Schmutz will script. Texts will interact with and be directly influenced by or influence the sculptural and physical.

In this way, Fowler and Schmutz will structure an exhibition in which they reveal themselves to one another in new ways, while simultaneously deepening a curatorial, collaborative and emotional connection

Traci Fowler is a fat queer feminist artist and curator from Houston, Tx currently living and working in Chicago, IL. Her work has previously been exhibited at Neon Heater (Findlay, Oh), Franklin Street Works (Stamford, Ct), DfbrL8tr (Chicago, Il) and Threewalls (Chicago, Il) among others. She was a 2013 and 2014 resident at 8550 Ohio before taking on the role of head chef this summer. Her work is multidisciplinary and currently she works in sculpture, installation, photography, video and performance. Traci is excited by humor, femininity and cheap materials.

Trevor Schmutz is an artist and independent curator. He has previously curated exhibitions at the Hokin Gallery and Kitchen Space. His practice has been dormant for the better part of the last few years, but ordinarily he makes small scale paintings and installations. More recently he has collected still images from television and movies. He is interested in finding opportunities within art making to question active and passive participation. 

Please come celebrate the opening of Cotton or Fruit/Flowers at Live(In) Gallery on March 5th!