THE MISSION

THE MISSION THE MISSION promotes art of the Americas, with a special interest in Latin American contemporary art

THE MISSION represents artists from the United States and Latin America, promoting an international dialogue through a diverse program of provocative solo exhibitions and group shows. Since 2010, THE MISSION has presented pioneering exhibitions of innovative contemporary and historical art, including numerous US debuts for influential artists from South America. Exploring distinctive cultural, soc

ial and historical contexts, THE MISSION advocates for artists that shape, inform and challenge contemporary art across media and genres. THE MISSION is dedicated to supporting artistic experimentation and forging new exchanges between artists and audiences throughout the Americas.

INSTALLATION VIEWS | Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy HoodSep 20 2024 - Feb 1 2025Collection visits available by appoint...
09/25/2024

INSTALLATION VIEWS |
Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy Hood
Sep 20 2024 - Feb 1 2025

Collection visits available by appointment. Email [email protected] to schedule.

THE MISSION PROJECTS celebrates Chicago Exhibition Weekend with an exclusive open house tour of the collection of Sebast...
09/18/2024

THE MISSION PROJECTS celebrates Chicago Exhibition Weekend with an exclusive open house tour of the collection of Sebastian Campos and Jennifer Andrade on Saturday, October 5 from 3-5pm.

The collection tour will include a special Artist Focus on Texas-born painter Dorothy Hood (1918 – 2000), organized in partnership with McClain Gallery (Houston, TX). One of the first American abstract surrealists, Hood is best known for her sprawling, large-scale paintings that merge abstraction and color field painting. This Artist Focus, entitled Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy Hood, will include paintings, collages, and drawings from the 1960s – 1990s that showcase Hood’s masterful use of color and her examination of physical and mental landscapes. From expansive paintings washed with intense hues to carefully arranged, intricate collages, the selection highlights Hood’s fascination with the cosmos, mysticism, science, spirituality, and outer space.

This event is RSVP only. Please RSVP to [email protected]. Location will be provided in a confirmation email. Space is limited.

Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy HoodSep 20, 2024 – Feb 1, 2025THE MISSION PROJECTS presents an Artist Focus on Texas-bo...
09/06/2024

Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy Hood
Sep 20, 2024 – Feb 1, 2025

THE MISSION PROJECTS presents an Artist Focus on Texas-born painter Dorothy Hood (1918 – 2000), organized in partnership with McClain Gallery (Houston, TX). One of the first American abstract surrealists, Hood is best known for her sprawling, large-scale paintings that merge abstraction with color field painting. This Artist Focus, entitled Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy Hood, will include paintings, collages, and drawings from the 1960s – 1990s that showcase Hood’s masterful use of color and her consideration of physical and mental landscapes. From expansive, large-format paintings washed with intense hues to carefully arranged, intricate collages, the selection highlights Hood’s fascination with the cosmos, mysticism, science, spirituality, and outer space.

Dorothy Hood cultivated her artistic practice in Mexico City in the 1940s, an epicenter of profound cultural, political, and artistic transformation. She befriended and worked alongside exiled European artists and Latin American surrealists and married Bolivian composer José María Velasco Maidana. Upon returning to Houston with her husband in the 1960s, she began making massive paintings flooded with vivid color, marrying elements of Mexican surrealism and New York abstraction in a new and remarkable way. Striking and rich in emotion, Hood’s works explore and evoke the vast unknown of the universe, the cosmos, and the psyche. Cosmic Balance: Works by Dorothy Hood also presents a focused look at the artist’s collages, which she began making in 1982. While more modest in scale and recognition than her paintings, these works underscore Hood’s curious material experimentation and offer a more intimate view of her process.

DOROTHY HOOD (1918 - 2000) established herself as a pioneer of modernism from 1937, first at the Rhode Island School of Design, then at the Art Students League in New York City, before settling in Mexico City in the 1940s. In 1962, she returned to Houston and presented solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Witte Museum, San Antonio; Rice University, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY. Her work is included in the permanent collections of several American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; among many other institutions. In 2016, the Art Museum of South Texas (AMST), Corpus Christi, organized the first major retrospective of her works and published a monograph about her life and career entitled The Color of Being/El Color del Ser: DOROTHY HOOD (1918-2000). In 2018, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presented a two-person exhibition entitled Kindred Spirits: Louise Nevelson & Dorothy Hood, mounting an unprecedented visual dialogue between the works of both artists.

Collection visits available by appointment. Email [email protected] to schedule.

Image:

Dorothy Hood
Shards of the Earth
c. 1980s
oil on canvas with collage elements
24.5 × 20.5 in
62.2 × 52.1 cm

ON VIEW | Rodrigo Lara : ConstructsApril 20 - June 1, 2024THE MISSION PROJECTS is pleased to present Constructs, a solo ...
04/22/2024

ON VIEW | Rodrigo Lara : Constructs
April 20 - June 1, 2024

THE MISSION PROJECTS is pleased to present Constructs, a solo show featuring new sculptures by Chicago-based artist Rodrigo Lara. The exhibition will include works created during his residency at Cerámica Suro.

As a Mexican immigrant in the United States, Lara’s work is informed by fragmented stories of memorialization, time, religion, ancestries, and his own experience of the endless process of becoming. Although classically trained in sculpture, he often eschews traditional ideologies and methods. His works are not always clean, finished, or beautiful. Instead, they break from these formal constructs. His sculptures, works on paper, and installations imagine a culture where portraiture and Catholic iconography are largely subsumed by indigenous visual languages, as well as other millennial religious artifacts and architecture from around the world.

Exhibition viewings by appointment. Email [email protected] to schedule.

Thank you for including us, Chicago Gallery News!DAY 2 of EXPO CHICAGO! Visit us in the EXPOSURE Section, Booth 115
04/12/2024

Thank you for including us, Chicago Gallery News!

DAY 2 of EXPO CHICAGO! Visit us in the EXPOSURE Section, Booth 115

This year's EXPO CHICAGO features 170 galleries from around the world – from Paris to to Cape Town to Seoul. Several exhibiting galleries also operate close to home all year round, and in recognition of the special programming that these Chicago and regional galleries are exhibiting this weekend, ...

EXPO CHICAGO opens TODAY! Visit us in the EXPOSURE section in Booth 115 to view new works by Peruvian artist Kenji Nakam...
04/11/2024

EXPO CHICAGO opens TODAY! Visit us in the EXPOSURE section in Booth 115 to view new works by Peruvian artist Kenji Nakama. See you soon 👋🏻

VISIT US NEXT WEEK AT EXPO CHICAGO!Apr 11–14, 2024 Navy PierBOOTH 115THE MISSION PROJECTS is pleased to present an EXPOS...
04/05/2024

VISIT US NEXT WEEK AT EXPO CHICAGO!
Apr 11–14, 2024 Navy Pier
BOOTH 115

THE MISSION PROJECTS is pleased to present an EXPOSURE solo booth at EXPO Chicago, featuring new work by Peruvian artist Kenji Nakama. A native of Lima, Nakama made his U.S. debut in a group exhibition last spring at THE RESIDENCE. This presentation will be his first solo exhibition in the United States.

Selected work from two of Nakama’s most recent series, Folding Studies and Exhaled Series, will be presented. These compositions are made of manipulated strips of blank white paper. Some are representational – from Warhol’s iconic image of Marilyn Monroe to Van Gogh’s self portrait – and some are abstract, but all elicit a sense of movement, the gestures of brushstrokes, or the illusion of oil paint dragging on a surface. These visual effects, produced by the dense accumulation of paper sheets, become evident as the viewer physically moves around the piece, changing their perspective and angle. The complex, meticulous arrangement of the paper sheets reveals the physical nature of the material, and the fragility of the paper creates a fluid conversation connecting optical, minimalist, and geometric art.

Image:

Kenji Nakama
Exhaled Marilyn (Warhol)
2023
bond paper collage
39 x 39 in

Rest in peace, Jeroen Nelemans (1974-2024)It is with heavy hearts we say goodbye to artist and dear friend, Jeroen Nelem...
03/14/2024

Rest in peace, Jeroen Nelemans (1974-2024)

It is with heavy hearts we say goodbye to artist and dear friend, Jeroen Nelemans.

A beloved figure in the Chicago art community, Jeroen left a profound impact on the many colleagues, friends, and students that he interacted with. The warmth, humor, compassion, and generosity that he projected was and is a comfort to all of us who knew and loved him.

THE MISSION is so thankful for the many opportunities we have had to share his work. In 2013, we presented Jeroen’s first solo exhibition with us, “Returning to the Cave,” which featured multidisciplinary work investigating the construct and lifespan of an image through four incredible series involving lightboxes, light fixtures, and photography. The works were influenced by the importance of the quality of light intrinsic to the piece, an homage to his Dutch heritage.

We organized two additional solo shows with Jeroen in our Chicago gallery space, “Backlit” (2014) and “This Lemon is Not Yellow” (2015). His work was included in in numerous group and two-person exhibitions in both our Chicago and Houston spaces, and we had the opportunity to present his works at EXPO Chicago (Chicago, IL), PArC (Lima, Peru), Texas Contemporary (Houston, TX), and Miami Project (Miami, FL) art fairs.

We join our friends in the art community in mourning the loss of dear Jeroen. We hold him and his loving husband, Jefferson Godard, close to our hearts as we navigate this difficult time.

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Chicago, IL
60614

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