Vulnerability Hangover by Lauren Iacoponi

Bio
Lauren Iacoponi (Ike) is an artist, curator, writer, and arts administrator deeply invested in the DIY art scene of Chicago. She is a curatorial assistant at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and previously served as the Director of Exhibitions at Columbia College Chicago. Iacoponi has worn many hats while running independent project spaces from exhibitions coordinator at Rubberneck Gallery in West Town (2017-2019), director and co-founder of Unpacked Mobile Gallery exhibiting out of a moving truck (2017-present), and founding Purple Window Gallery in Pilsen (2020-present). Iacoponi has over a decade of experience working as a fine arts professional and is adept in independent curation, exhibition coordination, and fine art promotion. Iacoponi is keenly interested in the development of living artists and actively promotes the work of emerging, mid-career, and under-represented artists. Iacoponi is an art critic and freelance writer, her writing has been published in Sixty Inches from Center, New Art Examiner, Chicago Reader, Chicago Artist Writers, Odyssey, DEFINE ART, APOTH Creative, and Discovering Art in Chicago in addition to catalog essays for Glass Curtain Gallery and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art. Iacoponi received her MFA from Northern Illinois University with a Certificate in Art History and her BFA from Columbia College with a Minor in Art History. She was the 2016-2017 recipient of the Northern Illinois University Fellowship for the School of Art and Design. Iacoponi has exhibited at Hokin Gallery (Chicago), C-33 Gallery (Chicago), Studio Oh! (Chicago), Elephant Room Gallery (Chicago), Ground Level Platform (Chicago), Beverly Arts Center (Chicago), Zhou B Art Center (Chicago), ARC Gallery (Chicago), Gallery 214 (DeKalb), Annette and Jerry Johns Gallery (DeKalb), Terrain Exhibitions (DeKalb),Gallery UNO (Berlin) and Becco Gallery (Kansas City). She has exhibited solo and two-person exhibitions at the University Club of Chicago and Purple Window Gallery (Chicago). Iacoponi has guest-curated exhibitions at Rubberneck Gallery (Chicago), MdW Fair 2022 at Mana Contemporary Chicago, BOCCARA Art (Miami), Heaven Gallery (Chicago), Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House at Elmhurst Art Museum, and STNDRD Exhibitions (Granite City, IL).

Statement 
Anonymous in appearance yet commanding a strong material presence, Iacoponi evokesPost-minimalism as both an aesthetic and conceptual reference. Gestural and abstract, three-dimensional and planar, her artworks—through the repetition of form—focus on process and material. Knots are central to Iacoponi's aesthetic vocabulary, linked to connectivity, and familial ties. The act of tying knots is a method of coping with anxiety reinforced through repetitive behavior. Knot-making reflects how commonplace objects conjure themes of continuity and separation, combination and deviation. Iacoponi explores the dichotomy of order and chaos and the paradox of accident and control through tactile-rich works that stimulate and pacify. There is a bodily connection to her works made through a process of repetition, accumulation, and seriality that is both labor and time-intensive and layered materials provide a visual record of the passage of time. Wrapping, knotting, and binding, Iacoponi’s material use is a tactile blend of bleached muslin, cotton, silk, and miscellaneous white-adjacent fabric, often dipped in chalky white plaster or creamy melted wax. Her near-monochromatic works feature varying shades of white, some crisp, others with hues of cream, charcoal, ivory, pearl, alabaster, or beige. The palate is simplistic to emphasize texture, but the variety of color and cloth comes from the sourced materials found at Chicago’s Waste Shed (a sustainable non-profit that sells affordable repurposed arts and crafts materials). Tearing, slashing, knotting, and pinning materials into place has a calming and immediate impact on Iacoponi’s mental state. The immediacy of the process spikes dopamine. Iacoponi’s work can be seen as a reflection of obsessive behavior in the everyday, her focus on obsessive tendencies and thinking patterns - whether it is tunnel vision thinking or a fixation with health that leads to a repetitive workout regiment. Iacoponi finds obsessive behavior is key to both alleviating and causing stress.