New work by Alejandro Jimenez-Flores & Michael Milano

To arrive at his subjects, Alejandro Jimenez-Flores begins by collecting images and gestures that he encounters through walks, surfing the web, or that come to him as gifts. His paintings are produced through a process of transferring drawings from paper and fabric to its surface.  The mimetic nature of his process aspires to unveil the inner workings of language and how it delineates meaning, authority, and agency.  His process continually develops more layers of simulations and transmissions, with each layer aspiring to give his subjects a platform to develop their own creative agency, a space for gathering, and abstraction.

Michael Milano employs materials that are part of our everyday experience, producing fabric-based paintings that are indebted to textile traditions and the history of abstraction. Thinking through the physical properties of textiles, as well as their cultural associations, he combines processes such as dyeing, pressing, and distressing to create abstract compositions that champion a deeper engagement with our material environment. Whether it involves the piecing of a quilt, or the seam, fold, or drape of a shirt, the ubiquitous and seemingly mundane quality of cloth continues to motivate him in the studio.

Alejandro Jimenez-Flores (b.1989) is Conceptual Artist. He attained a BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012 & a very minor in Poetry from School of Poetics in Marseille France in 2013 ;). He thinks about concepts, idleness, funny things & likes using language to assess the limits of semiotics and its structures.  Jimenez-Flores has been featured in a range of exhibition spaces including ADDS DONNA, Chicago, IL;  Elastic Arts, Chicago, IL; Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL;  FilmFront, Chicago, IL; Comfort Station, Chicago, IL; Neu West Berlin,  Berlin, Germany; Plains Project, Chicago, IL;  Eel Space  Chicago, IL.  His writings and works have appeared in Monsters & Dust; The Landline and Internet Poetry.

Michael Milano is an artist, writer, and curator living and working in Indianapolis. He earned his MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his BA in Humanities from Shimer College. He has shown at museums, galleries and alternative art spaces such as Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; Land And Sea, Oakland, CA; Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, NY; DBQ Project Space, Pittsburgh, PA; Devening Projects, Chicago, IL; Roots & Culture, Chicago, IL; threewalls, Chicago, IL; Praxis Space, Singapore; Trunk Show, Chicago, IL; Intermedia House, Toronto, ON; Peregrine Program, Chicago, IL; Adds Donna, Chicago, IL; and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, IL. His writing has appeared in Surface Design, Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, Women Artist Zine and Bad At Sports, among other publications. He is a founding member of AM, a curatorial collective based in Indianapolis.