Mystery Show: Julia Arredondo
On View: March 25th - April 20th
With scraps from zines and jeans, pressed flowers, stickers, hand-pulled prints, crude drawings, and photocopies, Julia Arredondo simplifies musings about her options, experiences, and exes to their simplest terms. Every mark and layer - be it original, or sourced from the offcuts which fill her studio - offers a few new details of the story of each work, and connections to the rest, stretching threads of content, texture, and color from one to the next. As a result, Mystery Show is cohesive, conversational, personal, and totally uncomplicated. Her nothing-wasted ethos and her desire for expediency have made it easy for viewers to jump into the clever and honest mixed-media works, and to follow repeated motifs and unique moments through the exhibition as they might move through a catching-up chat with a friend.
Julia Arredondo is the founder of Vice Versa Press, a travelling print and publishing entity that produces zines and multiples. Vice Versa has participated in small press and zine events including Pop-Up Zine Library at the Brooklyn Museum, the Chicano/a Biennial at MACLA in San Jose, CA, and art book and zine fairs across the country (and in Toronto, Canada), and Julia has had solo shows in venues such as the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, TX, Art & Architecture Library Sam Fox School in St. Louis, MO, and Spudnik Press, Chicago, Il. Although she is currently based in Chicago, Julia’s previous residencies have brought her to the Jaffe Center for Book Arts in Boca Raton, FL, CAC Woodside Troy in Troy, NY. She was awarded an honorary MFA in 2016 by Lucky Pierre Free University, and earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College (MICA) of Art in 2010.