HungryMan Gallery presents the photographic works of Evan Jenkins and Virgil Wong in 20 EYES, a show curated by fellow photographer and mentor Craig Doty. The pair, also roommates, met Doty in his photography classes during his teaching stint at the School of the Art Institute. This show is about the camaraderie felt between these three men and their relationship to photography. Doty elaborates,

We all like pictures. Pictures of blankets, couches, mirrors, girlfriends, trash. That's not really what these photographs are about though. They are about seeing.

It is about growing beyond the institutional walls of critiques into a much more mature conversation with a visually and historically aware audience. As Doty's show Women opens at fellow art space Roots and Culture the preceding night, and his recent exodus to Los Angeles, this is a culmination of growth for the trio, as well as a grand farewell.

Evan Jenkins is a Chicago based artist, originally from California, currently completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jenkins crafts a visual narrative inviting the viewer's natural desire and curiosity to "solve" his photographic space. It is through formal qualities, that Jenkins draws from punk rock, horror movies and various youth-subcultures to create these open-ended narratives.

Virgil Wong is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and is currently a BFA candidate at The Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited at the 2009 Bridge NY Art Fair as part of the Mapping The World series, the Yellow Trapezoid Gallery in Chicago, and in The Art of 57: Featuring Works by Hot Crew 57 and Friends in Brooklyn, as well as numerous community collaborations and group exhibitions. Wong utilizes the cameras ability and history of showing reality and fiction through its lens. Often in the face of realism, a lie is just as valid to the mind. It is his interaction with the camera that is a conversation of personal experience, and the perpetual wavering of memory. Even memories, now ventured far from their conception, have not strayed from truthfulness. Every photograph, visually unlike the last, is a quest to validate this reality.

June 18 — July 11, 2010

Opening Reception 6-9p, June 18
Closing Reception 4-7p, Sunday July 11