Josh Azzarella, Untitled #100 (Fantasia): Kavi Gupta | 835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL, 60607

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present our second solo exhibition of a new film by New York artist Josh Azzarella.

Azzarella's new video Untitled #100 (Fantasia) 2007- 2009 makes a departure from his former use of historic press images to augment what is likely the 20th century's greatest pop cultural phenomenon, Michael Jackson's Thriller. As a work that was created over a nearly three year process it predates the star's passing and marks Azzarella's most ambitious project to date.

Reconstructing each scene three-dimensionally, Azzarella seamlessly matches the landscape's grain, movement, and lighting in order to remove Jackson and his entourage. What remains is simply gray mist rolling slowly through a graveyard, forest landscapes lit only by a foggy moonlight, and rows of empty dilipidated storefronts. Without the king of pop and his entourage out on the midnight prowl, the affect of the images is brought to the foreground and the video's spectacular drama is erased. Each shot shows itself to be a mundane landscape, suggesting that such unnatural events have or could occur anywhere. With the spectacular performance so absent, the macabre scenes become hauntingly romantic.

Josh Azzarella (b. 1978, Ohio) lives and works in NY. He most recently had a solo exhibition at DCKT Contemporary, New York. Azzarella was the recipient of the 2006 Emerging Artist Award and had a solo exhibition from The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. ). Previous solo and group exhibitions include Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago, IL); Academie der Kunste (Berlin, Germany); Sean Kelly Gallery (New York, NY); Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco, CA). His work is included in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.