Doug Stapleton "Atlas of the Heavens" and Jeffrey Michael Austin "What We Can Handle"

Bert Green Fine Art is pleased to present our second solo show by Chicago collage artist Doug Stapleton and our first show by Chicago artist Jeffrey Michael Austin.

Doug Stapleton is a master collagist. His works employ extreme precision, keen composition, and idiosyncratic source materials which address identity, history, and ancestral themes. His interest in traditional illustrative and reproduction techniques give his work gravity and a sense of solidity. Collage is a time-honored medium that is practiced by most artists at one time or another - either in their preparatory practice or as final, finished artworks. The impulse to assemble, dismember, and re-organize imagery is central to an artist's methodology and the creative process.

Jeffrey Michael Austin has a fascination with the phenomenon of reflection. Whether a puddle, a mirror, or a glistening, slick, viscous surface, he works with materials that imitate and amplify reflective qualities. His simulacra of ordinary objects employ illusory effects to mediate and obscure reflectivity: high gloss, humidity, fingerprints, smoke, etc. The works invite interactivity with a large dose of caution, as thing are not always what they seem.