LVL3 proudly presents Vice Grip, a three person exhibition featuring Nicolo Gentile, Chad States, and Corey Smith.
In Vice Grip the three artists offer disparate approaches to collective understanding of selfhood and physicality.
Through archival research, the artists explore the contradictions between historical queer experience and one’s connection to the body and its limitations. Each combining a multi-disciplinary approach to art-making, Gentile, States, and Smith generate a collection of provocative and intimate representations of our shared, trepidatious experiences.
The images that Chad States presents conjure a sense of the sublime, a dichotomy between contradictions of the sacred and profane and a synergy between formlessness and corporeality. Nicolo Gentile’s installations reference motifs of the queer experience including kink and competitive/obsessive physique-building, as seen in material choices ranging from leather and latex to iron and steel. His imagery signals an early-AIDS epidemic hesitation towards gay pragmatism, assimilation, and profuse alienation. Smith’s performative contribution roots the viewer in time, exploring the non-normative rhythms that exist within their own body; the fluctuating rhythms of a heartbeat, of a season, of an emotional landscape. As a whole, this work serves to radicalize queerness through a collective mourning and an activation of spaces for the critical reimagining of the future.
Opening Reception
Saturday, November 4th, 6 pm – 9 pm.
Corey Smith performing “Vice Grip Variations”
Opening: 11/4/23 (7 pm – 8 pm) and Closing: 12/17/23 (2 pm – 3pm)
Gallery hours are Sundays 1 pm – 4 pm and can also be made by appointment. Email team@lvl3official.com or call/text 312-469-0333 to reserve a time outside of gallery hours.
