FLATFILEphotographyGALLERY announces the October 18th opening of 4x6, a dual show featuring Chicago's own Dennis Kowalski and Boston artist Charles Giuiano. The title for the show derives from the fact that both men use 4" x 6" photographs as a basis of their work.

Dennis Kowalski, who is a noted sculptor and one of Chicago's earliest conceptual artists, has placed series of snapshots, taken on holiday in a variety of international locales, into grids and then added hand drawn black forms on the individual images, rendering them not only less recognizable, but strangely intruded upon by geometric 'clouds'. Many of the forms Kowalski has utilized as tracing devices are drafting templates that speak of his early aspirations toward an architectural career. Kowalski, who studied architecture at UIC, and earned his BFA and MFA at The School of the Art Institute, has been a professor at UIC for the past 30 years. A founding member of N.A.M.E. Gallery i 1973, Kowalski has been an important figure on the Chicago art scene, due to his own work, as well as his support of young conceptual artists during the time before such art was accepted or appreciated by the public. Kowalski's work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago and the MCA among others. This is his first appearance as a FLATFILE guest artist.

Charles Giuliano shoots a variety of images, nay with historic reference, collages the actual 4x6 photographs into less perfect grid-like arrangements, which he then scans, reduces slightly, and prints digitally on beautiful deckle-edged archival paper. Giuliano's work ranges from somewhat humerous odes to pop icons like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis to hauntingly spiritual pieces that pay homage to places like Maya Lin's Viet Nam Memorial, to images laced heavily with gardens and statuary photographed abroad. The colors are lush and powerful, and the compositions extraordinary. Giuliano, who has made his mark on the East Coast as an independant curator and essayist, has spent many years as the Director of Exhibitions for the New England School of Art & Design, in addition to being an Adjunct Professor at several colleges and universities, and a frequent writer for numerous publications and guest in a variety of broadcast media. As an artist, Giuliano's work is in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Addition Gallery of American Art, and the Sonnabend Collection/Sonesta Hotels in New Orleans and Amsterdam, among many others. 4x6 marks Giuliano's first Chicago show, although he has been represented by FLATFILE for several months.

In the project room, Joan Truckenbrod will show her latest in a series of video projections that explore short, intense lives of salmon. In this provocative piece, Truckenbrod has juxtaposed the moving image onto a doll's house that is perfectly scaled replica of a home. The windows glow with human faces, and the fish swimming upstream toward mating and imminent death fill the rooms of the house, spilling over onto the wall through the back windows. Truckenbrod, who filmed the footage for this piece in Alaska, has shown with FLATFILE since the gallery opened two and a half years ago. Truckenbrod has shown her digital work extensively in the U.S. and Europe, recently adding two one-person exhibitions in Paris and Weisbaden, Germany to her vast list of solo and group shows. Like Kowalski and Giuliano, Truckenbrod has been extensively reviewed and collected. Her work is represented in the corporate collections of ISA Holding, Londa; Parade Publications, New York; and Kirtland & Packard, Santa Ana, California; among others, and numerous university, museum, and private collections throughout the U.S. Truckenbrod currently teaches Art & Technology at both The School of the Art Institute and Northern Illinois University.

FOTOwerk 2002 is a gallery and guest artists' group show in FLATFILE's Gallery II. FOTOwerk is the "new and improved" version of the gallery's popular annual 3D in 3D show. (3D referred to the suite number that housed the gallery in its former loation as well as the orientation of the work). The work in FOTOwerk 2002 has all been created by alternate means, or by adding to, altering or combining photography with other mediums to crate the genre known as photowork, or photo-based art. A large number of gallery and guest artists will participate in the show.