At the Yellow Windows
“I had been making all yellow work for 4 years because it represented hope during my past struggles with mental illness. It is a symbol for non-binary identity. Ironically when I was struggling with COVID my liver wasn’t working properly and I got strange yellow callused feet and toes. I realized that my art was imitating life once again. Now diagnosed with POST COVID SYNDROME, my yellow windows seek to memorialize my 10 month long haul with COVID, while providing the transformational curative power of fearless personal mythology. In my artjoys I am distilling the essence of suffering into something beautiful and strange.”- Hereaclitus Here Vernon
At the Yellow Windows by Hereaclitus Here Vernon
March 4th to April 4th Co-Prosperity - 3219 S Morgan, Chicago
An experimental multi-window, one-person exhibition from transdisciplinary artist, Hereaclitus.
Live performances will be available to stream via Twitch and on Lumpen TV at 8pm every Thursday through April 1, leading up to live performances in the windows on Friday, April 2 and Saturday, April 3 at 8pm.
There will be a special Easter matinee for families on Sunday, April 4 at 2pm with eggs hidden in the windows and edible art treats.
Paul Eluard writes, “To what fantastic creatures have I entrusted myself”.
Hereaclitus fantastic creatures fill the window with trompe l'oeil suggesting that everything is in flux, moving, enlarged, and out of place. Hereaclitus DADA ballet movements in the main windows are choppy and sped up and in the diamond window they liquid slow. In the window that symbolically represents the parietal lobe in the brain, a place where thoughts form and float in and out of logic and nonsense. They dangle in duet with their sculptural mobiles, puppets, and shadows.
The yellow windows are anything but a frozen poem in history, to Hereaclitus the text is made flesh, it’s alive. To Eluard and Hereaclitus, the window is a portal into the active imagination that keeps you company while you daydream, for it is hope that keeps you alive.
The Co-prosperity windows come alive in the spring infused with the frenetic dance movement, pastiche, and theatricality of a seasoned performer, Hereaclitus. Once described by the filmmaker Laura Parnes, “as Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman on Acid”.
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This show is a part of Co-Prosperity Peers, a series of solo exhibitions initiated by the Co-Prosperity Programming Council. Four artists are selected each year to take over the Co-Prosperity windows and hold programming during the run of their show.
Hereaclitus Here Vernon is a Chicago-based performance, video, and visual artist that has presented their transdisciplinary work throughout Europe and the US for three decades. They studied Sculpture at Yale School of Art (1995) and they received a nomination from Joan Jonas herself in 1995 for a Fulbright Scholarship to Amsterdam. In 1987, they met and collaborated with Linda Montano, inspiring two decades of ART/LIFE biodynamic art. This led to a second master’s degree in Art Therapy from The School of the Art Institute where they pioneered a movement-based Expressive Arts program into Chicago Area nursing homes for 5 years.
Hereaclitus is interested in what Shannon Bell refers to as, Fast Feminism. Their trans-disciplinary gustemverks over the last 30 years mash up sexual politics, identity, and meta-physical philosophy. They re-named themselves after the pre-socratic philosopher Heraclitus that said, "The only thing constant is change.” In 2012, New City named them one of the top 5 artists “whose life is probably an artwork”. Hereaclitus, has been an active collaborative force, starring and acting in many films with Chicago-based filmmakers, Peter Lambert, Derek Badgely, Julia Zinn, and Emily Esperanza. They can also be seen in queer art videos by Wendy Geller and Cecilia Doughtery. Hereaclitus has danced and collaborated with local movement-based artists: Darling Shear, Sara Zalek, and Victoria Bradford. They were recently awarded art grants for experimental art through the Foundation for Contemporary arts and through the Arts Relief Fund awarded by American Artists.
For more updates on Hereaclitus’ practice, follow them on Instagram , Facebook or join their Patreon.
