FREE LOVE

Lindsay Mican Morgan & Porous Walker
March 28 - April 24, 2010
Curated by Jeffrey Grauel for Slow

“Love,” like “art,” doesn’t have a single meaning. Every song ever written, every play, movie has tried to figure out what it is and how to deal with it. All of this collective brooding has reduced the images about love to a few we recognize right off, hearts and broken hearts. Mican Morgan and Porous Walker use a new lexicon for an idea refresh and a necessary laugh. Love is not stale; it’s free.

Mican Morgan manipulates relationship clichés like her sculptural materials. She pulls them apart and sticks different bits together, with results that remain familiar yet slightly off—nuggets of base wisdom and metaphors to love by becoming objects and vignettes. Getting “hitched” and braiding are scrutinized as actions of affection, but things aren’t always rosy. Expect a few bombs to drop. Cue Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield.”

Porous Walker’s artwork depicts the parts of life and relationships that make us uncomfortable or exist only in fantasy. He makes them accessible like bathroom graffiti, or a note secretly passed among schoolboys. Indecent and hilarious, his distinct style invokes psychedelic imagery from the 70s and exists somewhere between Dr. Seuss and R. Crumb. Porous’ drawings haven’t matured past adolescence, which is a good thing. They never should. They have fresh wisdom to impart. Sometimes as simple as, “Don’t do this.”

Mican Morgan is a lady, and Porous Walker is a dude. Mican lives and works in Chicago and Porous on a houseboat in Northern California. Mican is the keeper of the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. Porous Walker is not Porous’ real name. Mican earned her MFA from UIC. Porous’ artwork has been featured in magazines and galleries all over the world.