Here On The Way There

Comfort Station presents

Kelly Kaczynski: Here On The Way There

May 4-26, 2013

Opening: Saturday, May 4, 6-8p

Open hours: Sundays 12-3p

Organized by Michael Green

The green screen is an infinite “site” on an infinite scale in an intimate production. Comfort Station was built as a rest stop for a journey on the way “there”.

This project is a set of propositions.

On the one hand, it is a question of how to make the green screen an object when it’s color is an infinite “site”. In fact, it is not even the color that matters but the technology that is used to single out the hue and replace it. The technology acts as the vehicle in the traverse between the colored surface “here” and the new landscape “there”. Is it possible to acknowledge the material condition of the color while attempting to re-position its site?

On the other hand, it is a question of the current site, Comfort Station, being an obsolete rest stop for a journey that no longer necessitates travel. Until now as a programed venue, Comfort Station has never been a central destination. How can it call on its past as an intermediary when you must go there as a site to experience it? With the advent of the internet and remote technologies that allow us to be there without being there - or rather to be there without getting there – the idea of the journey is no longer one of mechanical, physical exhaustion. So now, Comfort Station is a site of activity and production, which removes it from rest and relief, its essential namesake.

Here On The Way There is a series of images and objects that parse out the idea of there and here, or a traverse without travel. It attempts to make this idea physical.

Event page

April Programming

Comfort Music Enters its Third Year of Programming!

Brian Labycz performing with Green Pasture Happiness at Comfort Station last year.

Beginning April 4th, Comfort Music will resume its acclaimed series of intimate eclectic concerts in the friendly acoustic environs of Comfort Station. The curators of the series - Jordan Martins (former curator of the Relax Attack Jazz Series at The Whistler) and Dan Mohr (co-curator of long-running dance/music series collision_theory, and Experimental Sound Studio's SummerSonic series) - are excited to present a fresh set of shows, and anticipate that they will be more comfortable than ever, thanks to our successful Kickstarter campaign.

Spanning genres from creative improvisation to chamber pop, April's performances feature key players from an array of Chicago music scenes. On April 4th, stalwarts in the jazz/improvised music scene Josh Berman, Jason Roebke and Brian Labycz are paired with the scrappy, unclassifiable DIY quintet El is a Sound of Joy; April 11th should prove to be a more understated affair, featuring sets by clarinetist Alejandro Acierto (Ensemble Dal Niente) and Pillars & Tongues frontman M. Trecka; the 18th features a trio set by guitarists LeRoy Bach (formerly of Wilco) Bill MacKay (Darts & Arrows) with bassist Jeff Greene, and a solo set by recently-returned-to-Chicago bass wiz Devin Hoff; Brooklyn/Philadelphia-based chamber pop outfit Cuddle Magic and touring grindcore fiddler Joey Molinaro will conclude the month.

Come on out any Thursday and hear something new!

04 04
Josh Berman/Jason Roebke/Brian Labycz
El is a Sound of Joy

04 11
M. Trecka
Alejandro Acierto

04 18
LeRoy Bach/Bill MacKay/Jeff Greene
Devin Hoff

04 25
Cuddle Magic
Joey Molinaro

Sounds from the second floor: Isak Applin and Adam Ekberg

April 6 - 28th, 2013 
Opening on April 6th, 6 - 8pm 
Organized by Michael Green 

Sounds from the second floor brings together recent paintings by Isak Applin and photographic works by Adam Ekberg. After receiving their MFAs from the School of the Art Institute, Applin and Ekberg moved into the same building in Logan Square, 2651 North Spaulding, where they lived and worked in their respective apartments for approximately 6 years. Adam in 3 W; Isak in 1 E. Most of the works included in the current exhibition were made during this time and together they celebrate what Applin has described as the “brave, farcical, and sometimes beautiful act of making art in a rundown apartment.” 

Isak Applin, High Street Studio, 2012

For Ekberg, the apartment as artist studio becomes a space to enact and document minor spectacles: a bubble emerging from a beer bottle, smoke rings hovering over a kitchen table, a room filled with lighters kept alit with cocktail umbrellas, or sunlight streaming through blinds forming circles in the camera’s lens. Though done using the simplest materials, these performances, which transform the mundane into the poignant, are highly detailed and elaborate constructions that make use of what the artist describes as a “celebratory iconography.” Applin in turn shows a series of paintings that combine art historical references ranging from Arthur Dove to Kandinsky, from Munch to Titian, with a formal approach to the landscape genre that layers imaginary classical forms over unruly natural environments. In a work such as High Street Studio, Applin brings the landscape into the studio with his allusion to a mountain pass running through his apartment between a pile of the artist’s possibly discarded canvases and an imposing sculptural form that draws from Titian’s The Death of Actaeon.

Adam Ekberg, The View Through My Window, 2007

Comfort Station Kickstarter

Check out Comfort Station's Kickstarter—as featured on the Huffington Post! We are partnering with Biofoam, a local green insulation company, to start efforts toward LEED certification. If all goes well, we'll barely need A/C in the summer, as we'll be so efficiently insulated. If everyone could donate five dollars ($5!) to our Kickstarter, it would make a HUGE difference in our efforts toward efficient energy use and year-round programming. 
Full speed ahead! 

Love, 
Comfort Station

Hibernation Station

We're keeping very busy during our winter hiatus—2013 is going to be crazy! But the best kind of crazy. Keep your eyes peeled for our expanded programming, new partnerships and (gasp) revamped website launch.

See you in April!

Love,
Comfort Station

11/5: Logan Square Chef's Dinner to benefit Comfort Station

Lula Cafe announces its first annual Logan Square Chef's Dinner! 

Celebrate Logan Square with its finest chefs in a stunning, one-of-a-kind 6 course meal Monday, November 5th. 

Neighborhood institution Lula Cafe has gathered some of the best chefs in the neighborhood to join them in the first of an annual series to benefit arts and community organizations in Logan Square. Join Abraham Conlon of soon to come Fat Rice, Beverly Kim from Top Chef, Jared Wentworth of Longman and Eagle, Johnny Anderes of Telegraph, Matthias Merges of Yusho, and Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe as they showcase the incredible culinary talent in Logan Square. 

This year the dinner will benefit Comfort Station, a multidisciplinary arts space housed in a historic way station that provides free, art, music, film, and literary programming to the Logan Square community. 

Cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvre start at 6:00pm, dinner starts at 7:00pm. The Comfort Station, just a short block from Lula, will be open after the dinner for viewing and a 9:30pm set by local band oRSo.  

$175 is all inclusive: cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, six-courses, wine, tax, and gratuity.

Tickets can be purchased through Lula, 773 489-9554, or via the reservation link on Lula's hours page: http://www.lulacafe.com/lula/hourspages.html