WITHOUT WAX is Derek Erdman's final solo exhibition in Chicago before relocating permanently to Seattle, Washington on September 1, 2010. Erdman has lived in Chicago for 14 years. Over the course of the past decade he’s made more than 4,000 paintings, and sold more than 3,000 of them. In addition to painting, Erdman has successfully earned his living making and selling all manner of media, such as illustrations for web and print magazines, custom raps delivered via telephone, prank call CDs, self-published booklets and mail-order hamburgers. Without Wax celebrates the breadth and scope of his creative endeavors by packing High Concept Laboratories' 3500 sq-ft first-floor space with what can accurately be called an Extravaganza of Erdman Ephemera.
On display will be every item in the artist's possession that can possibly be sold, including but not limited to: paintings (canvas, glass, wood), drawings, sculptures, CDs, DVDs, records, posters, prints, books, clothing, furniture, and more. Most items will be made by the artist, but many will be from his own personal collection--the value of which is not to be underestimated, as Erdman himself is a notoriously obsessive collector of rare and/or useful memorabilia. Items in the exhibition catalogue, which may be purchased online at the event, will amount in the hundreds with prices ranging from $0.01 to $1000. Opening Night will feature a special presentation of Erdman's collected video works (Rap Master Maurice, Juggalo Documentary Series), collected audio works (Kathy Mcginty & other prank CDs, excerpts from his Advice Masters & Free Psychic Hotline telephone conversations), live DJ sets by Odd Obsession, and hamburgers for everyone. WITHOUT WAX will be a fun, fond farewell to Chicago's most prolific artist of all time.
This exhibition is curated by Angeline Gragasin in collaboration with Derek Erdman.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Derek Erdman (b. 1973 Cleveland, Ohio) is regularly called a Pop Artist, and this is understandable given that his tactics appear to intensify the preoccupations of the Factory tradition. Over the last decade Erdman has developed an increasingly efficient method for producing batches of art that he can make quickly, duplicate easily, and sell cheaply. According to this method his energy is concentrated in the plan (selecting source materials from which he will ‘borrow’ imagery), and the execution of each piece becomes semi-automatic, a series of choreographed tasks that he can carry out much like an assembly liner or a tap dancer might perform his job. The subjects of his paintings (second-tier celebrities, flash-in-the-pan current events, obsolete advertisements) are almost always borrowed from the moving spotlight of popular attention, and so the pieces themselves take on the form of commercial debris, relics of the recent surface-past. Occasionally they even turn up in thrift stores. In displaying and distributing his work (paintings, but also magazines, CDs, and pranks of all kinds), Erdman has demonstrated an unwavering preference for the banal and the widespread, favoring newsstands, restaurants, building sides, and balloons over galleries. And he has become an expert at harnessing the special hype-magic of the Internet (along with the party and various other spectacle-events that will circulate later in other people’s stories), which he uses not only as a mass-marketplace, but also to cultivate his own semi-celebrity, which carries his work, infusing it with everyday myth.
Unlike his Pop predecessors, Erdman’s paintings are not meditations on the shiny coldness of market interactions, nor are they clever declarations about the end of art. Instead, they are exercises in turning commercial surfaces back into a folk tradition, a truly popular lexicon, which we can playfully control. If his paintings are flat and bright—and they are incredibly, stubbornly so—it is because they are the coins in this constant exchange, the tokens of an unfolding common language of serious puns and half-jokes being shot back and forth between Erdman and his fans. The fan is the single constant, the only truly necessary piece in Erdman’s game, and to play it, the artist himself becomes a super-fan of the constantly shifting popular landscape, faithfully reproducing how it delights and disgusts. What results is a collapsing of the personal and the public in Erdman’s work, and in his life—a collapse that Erdman has embraced perhaps more than any other artist. Just as he re-frames the seemingly impersonal stuff of mass-publicity (celebrities, news events, commercials) as the shared familiars in our common biography, so too do the workings of Erdman’s private life become his material for public entertainment. No detail, no matter how mundane or potentially damaging to himself or his audience, is spared from consideration (the examples are endless, but see for instance the fallout of his recent appearance at Pecha Kucha in Chicago). All this may seem quite megalomaniacal. It is. But in the end it is also the opposite. In a way Warhol would never have tolerated, Erdman perpetually offers his fans absolute artistic control of his fate (gleefully handing over his Myspace password, for instance, so that anybody might tinker with his brand). In doing so he illuminates his own celebrity, like all the others, as the people’s creation.
- Hannah Woodroofe
February 2009 Ohio
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, LLC
is a multimedia production company based in Chicago. We are a global community of artists and entrepreneurs who collaborate on commissioned and in-house creative projects.
MISSION
NATONAL HEADQUARTERS is the future of cultural exchange. It is a diverse network of individuals and ensembles committed to the examination and expression of the contemporary social condition through the creation of original artworks and events which engage the senses and enrich the minds of ordinary citizens in an extraordinary way.
SERVICES
We make everything, but our specialties include digital media and live event production, professional technical workshops for creatives, web design and development, social media strategy, and online marketing.
Media Contact:
Angeline Gragasin, Creative Director
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
(312) 532 - 2264
angeline(at)nationalheadquarters.org
WITHOUT WAX: 14 Years of Derek Erdman in Chicago
Saturday, August 14, 2010
6pm - 11pm
Location: High Concept Laboratories - Chicago, IL
RSVP derek(at)nationalheadquarters.org for address
RSVP hotline: (312) 834-4290
Exhibition on display through August 22, 2010
Gallery hours by appointment
On display will be every item in the artist's possession that can possibly be sold, including but not limited to: paintings (canvas, glass, wood), drawings, sculptures, CDs, DVDs, records, posters, prints, books, clothing, furniture, and more. Most items will be made by the artist, but many will be from his own personal collection--the value of which is not to be underestimated, as Erdman himself is a notoriously obsessive collector of rare and/or useful memorabilia. Items in the exhibition catalogue, which may be purchased online at the event, will amount in the hundreds with prices ranging from $0.01 to $1000. Opening Night will feature a special presentation of Erdman's collected video works (Rap Master Maurice, Juggalo Documentary Series), collected audio works (Kathy Mcginty & other prank CDs, excerpts from his Advice Masters & Free Psychic Hotline telephone conversations), live DJ sets by Odd Obsession, and hamburgers for everyone. WITHOUT WAX will be a fun, fond farewell to Chicago's most prolific artist of all time.
This exhibition is curated by Angeline Gragasin in collaboration with Derek Erdman.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Derek Erdman (b. 1973 Cleveland, Ohio) is regularly called a Pop Artist, and this is understandable given that his tactics appear to intensify the preoccupations of the Factory tradition. Over the last decade Erdman has developed an increasingly efficient method for producing batches of art that he can make quickly, duplicate easily, and sell cheaply. According to this method his energy is concentrated in the plan (selecting source materials from which he will ‘borrow’ imagery), and the execution of each piece becomes semi-automatic, a series of choreographed tasks that he can carry out much like an assembly liner or a tap dancer might perform his job. The subjects of his paintings (second-tier celebrities, flash-in-the-pan current events, obsolete advertisements) are almost always borrowed from the moving spotlight of popular attention, and so the pieces themselves take on the form of commercial debris, relics of the recent surface-past. Occasionally they even turn up in thrift stores. In displaying and distributing his work (paintings, but also magazines, CDs, and pranks of all kinds), Erdman has demonstrated an unwavering preference for the banal and the widespread, favoring newsstands, restaurants, building sides, and balloons over galleries. And he has become an expert at harnessing the special hype-magic of the Internet (along with the party and various other spectacle-events that will circulate later in other people’s stories), which he uses not only as a mass-marketplace, but also to cultivate his own semi-celebrity, which carries his work, infusing it with everyday myth.
Unlike his Pop predecessors, Erdman’s paintings are not meditations on the shiny coldness of market interactions, nor are they clever declarations about the end of art. Instead, they are exercises in turning commercial surfaces back into a folk tradition, a truly popular lexicon, which we can playfully control. If his paintings are flat and bright—and they are incredibly, stubbornly so—it is because they are the coins in this constant exchange, the tokens of an unfolding common language of serious puns and half-jokes being shot back and forth between Erdman and his fans. The fan is the single constant, the only truly necessary piece in Erdman’s game, and to play it, the artist himself becomes a super-fan of the constantly shifting popular landscape, faithfully reproducing how it delights and disgusts. What results is a collapsing of the personal and the public in Erdman’s work, and in his life—a collapse that Erdman has embraced perhaps more than any other artist. Just as he re-frames the seemingly impersonal stuff of mass-publicity (celebrities, news events, commercials) as the shared familiars in our common biography, so too do the workings of Erdman’s private life become his material for public entertainment. No detail, no matter how mundane or potentially damaging to himself or his audience, is spared from consideration (the examples are endless, but see for instance the fallout of his recent appearance at Pecha Kucha in Chicago). All this may seem quite megalomaniacal. It is. But in the end it is also the opposite. In a way Warhol would never have tolerated, Erdman perpetually offers his fans absolute artistic control of his fate (gleefully handing over his Myspace password, for instance, so that anybody might tinker with his brand). In doing so he illuminates his own celebrity, like all the others, as the people’s creation.
- Hannah Woodroofe
February 2009 Ohio
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, LLC
is a multimedia production company based in Chicago. We are a global community of artists and entrepreneurs who collaborate on commissioned and in-house creative projects.
MISSION
NATONAL HEADQUARTERS is the future of cultural exchange. It is a diverse network of individuals and ensembles committed to the examination and expression of the contemporary social condition through the creation of original artworks and events which engage the senses and enrich the minds of ordinary citizens in an extraordinary way.
SERVICES
We make everything, but our specialties include digital media and live event production, professional technical workshops for creatives, web design and development, social media strategy, and online marketing.
Media Contact:
Angeline Gragasin, Creative Director
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
(312) 532 - 2264
angeline(at)nationalheadquarters.org
WITHOUT WAX: 14 Years of Derek Erdman in Chicago
Saturday, August 14, 2010
6pm - 11pm
Location: High Concept Laboratories - Chicago, IL
RSVP derek(at)nationalheadquarters.org for address
RSVP hotline: (312) 834-4290
Exhibition on display through August 22, 2010
Gallery hours by appointment