Melissa Oresky

Melissa Oresky’s work in paint, paper, and video engages a scientific view of the natural world through the lens of abstraction. Her most recent work centers around plants, not by merely through representing, or inventing plant forms, but allowing a sense of “plantlikeness” to inform her studio and thought process. Plant logics include plasticity, growth, replication, and an arborescent, networked, and layered materialization of thought that are harnessed to generate still and moving images.

Oresky has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, at venues including the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; TSA Brooklyn; SCA Contemporary, Albuquerque; OQBO Gallery, Berlin; 65GRAND, Chicago; and Devening Projects and Editions, Chicago. Her video work has screened at The Franklin, Roman Susan, Facets, and Comfort Station, all in Chicago.

She has received fellowships and residencies from the Illinois Arts Council; Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; Schloss Pluschow, Germany; Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona; and The Thicket, Georgia. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Edition projects include a collaborative video and music project with Zak Boerger, “Solar Anvil/And the Rhythm Ace”, and the artist’s book “Ghosts”, with Kayrock Screenprinting, Brooklyn.

Oresky lives and works in Normal, Illinois, and is Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Illinois State University.

Year

2008
2010

Website

melissaoresky.com

Location

Normal, IL USA