Time on a Wire

Cherie, JR Robinson and I have created an installation for the Rough Space gallery at the DANK Haus. Here are the details:


TIME ON A WIRE a multi-media installation

photographs by Hagen W. Dost, poetry by Cherie Caswell Dost,
sound and film by Jeffrey Mark Robinson

August 3, 2007 – September 22, 2007

Opening reception: Friday, August 3, 6-9pm
Poetry reading at 8pm

Chicago--Time on a Wire combines photography, film, sound, and poetry to explore the experience of sky at dusk. For this installation, three artists collaborate on the theme of the elasticity of time: how the simple act of watching the sunset is immediate and sensory, but also intangible and abstract.

Hagen W. Dost is a photographer who grew up taking German lessons at the DANK Haus. His work was exhibited at the Rough Space Gallery last November. For this exhibition, he created nineteen photographs that capture the subtle intervals in color at nightfall. windowboy.blogspot.com

Jeffrey Mark Robinson is a sound and installation artist. He has made recordings in museums across the country, including the MCA in Chicago, MOMA PS1 in New York, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His latest recording was made this summer at the Art Center Berlin Friedrichstrasse. www.jeffreymrobinsonsounds.com

Cherie Caswell Dost is a poet and a regular essayist for Chicago Public Radio. She will perform a poetry reading at the exhibition opening, from her series of poems titled “Nocturne.” cheriecaswelldost.blogspot.com

ABOUT Rough Space Gallery

Rough Space Gallery is located on the 4th floor of the DANK-HAUS, 4740 N. Western Avenue in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. The Gallery is free and open to the public on Saturdays from 11 am – 3pm (except Sept. 1) or by appointment.

PRESS CONTACTS:

Wally Rozak
(773)561-9181 or wally@dankhaus.com

Hagen W. Dost
(773)777-9898 or hdost@yahoo.com or windowboy.blogspot.com


Image Credit: Hagen W. Dost, inkjet print

"Two-mile Radius" @ Rough Space Gallery

I've got a show up! It's called "Two-mile Radius" and runs through December 30 at:

Rough Space Gallery (4th Floor)
DANK Haus German Cultural Center
4740 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773-561-9181
for more info go to www.dankhaus.com

The gallery is open from 12-5 Saturdays or by appointment. I'll be at the gallery every Saturday.

Some of the works are collaborations with my wife, Cherie:







The Wine Grape Men

This is how wine gets made in Chicago.

Mario is the meat man, the ball breaker, the finger shaker. Pointing and yelling out directions, he crosses the normally empty lot at 35th and Racine with the energy of a pinball machine.

“What ya lookin for? We got everything, everything!” Mario’s arms arc wide in the direction of the six semi-trailers loaded with crates of California grapes, brimming over in their purple-stained lusciousness.
These California beauties got taken for a ride—farther than their three-day haul—to find their skins dressed in the frosty coats of a Chicago autumn.

Mario runs down the inventory of the grapes: “We got Gren-ASH right here, PEENOS and SHARDS over there, and Mer-LOTTS on the end. Beautiful.”

The customers--the I-talians, the Slavs, the brood of basement Bacchanalians—waddle their Cadillacs and pick-up trucks across the uneven gravel of the lot.

“C’mon, c’mon, back it up,” Mario directs a car with a popped trunk to back up to the grape truck. “Look at this guy, c’mon, don’t be afraid to drive your car.”

How far these grapes have come from their gentle childhood in Napa Valley, where they grew sun-drenched in poetic rows on lyrically rolling hills, watching small schools of tourists on bicycles earnestly pedaling from winery to winery to learn important things like how to “swish, not swallow,” and how to say phrases like “a nutty substantiality perfect for sipping in front of the fireplace.”

“C’mon, get them boxes ready,” Mario shouts to his workers who are moving fast but not fast enough for Mario, “we’re doin thirty-two ZEN-FAN-DELLS over here.”

And so the grapes go home to the cellars and crushers and wooden presses stained pink by the run of grape juice. They find their Old Country families run by women who hand-roll the dough and men whose hearts pump with the gush of a lush burgundy. Families who won’t pose for a family portrait without a bottle of their own wine proudly placed on the dinner table.

20 Photos, 2001-2004

Fencepost, 2004,
originally uploaded by hdost.

Click on the photo to view my slideshow......