Good Naked (Chicago) is pleased to present:
BARELY FAIR / An exhibition of works by
Rachel Borenstein
Langdon Graves
Ryan Richey
Mary Tooley Parker
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VISITING HOURS
7 - 12 APRIL / 11 A - 5 P
14 - 19 APRIL / 11 A - 5 P
NEAR McKINLEY PARK / CHICAGO IL
EVENING EVENTS APRIL 10, 11
Good Naked is pleased to return to Chicago for our 4th presentation at Barely Fair. This year we are exhibiting four artists whose works embody a tactile response to the every day with uncanny familiarity. Rachel Borenstein’s sensitive paintings composite many moments of observation over a period of time compiled and woven together. Her works engage with boundaries of perception as she connects the intimate and vast. In Borenstein’s paintings, “familiar forms become splintered and abstracted … and recognizable forms begin to break down into a network of infinitely interlocking shapes.” Langdon Graves’s sculptures present forms filled with personal and symbolic affect. A poppy, moth, and cigarette butt and all presented as if discovered in-situ, casually placed to call our attention to light and remembrance and a contemporary kind of memento mori. For Graves, “the trope of moths drawn to light or flame is often a metaphor for instinct, need or desire so great, one can overlook the danger in getting too close.” Grave’s sculptures call us closer in their trompe l’oeil presentations, pulling on our interest in the familiar and asking us to investigate and pause. Ryan Richey’s works are honest and direct, concerned with connecting with the viewer and communicating without pretense. He depicts both the intimate and the mundane, the traumatic and the joyous, utilizing humor to build common ground and explore vulnerability. Richey’s Sectional comes from a long history in his practice of painting family heads atop furniture, which acted as bodies. Bringing to mind comfort and a favorite pastime of sitting with relatives, the drawings eventually turned into soft sculptures. Richey utilizes family clothes as material and makes pillows that mimic the sectional once wrapped around his family room. Mary Tooley Parker’s non-traditional use of fiber materials creates densely textured works that embody innate warmth and familiarity. Her embroidery and soft sculptures offer a clear evocation of the intimate and primitive. Using a traditional, folk art medium, Parker's tableaus and vivid colors make space for humor and play.
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Rachel Borenstein received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine MFA and a BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and has exhibited work in New York at My Pet Ram (2025), and Los Angeles at Last Projects (2025) and Gallery Mariposa (2024). Borenstein’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, and Art Maze Magazine.
Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting & Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. She is adjunct faculty at Parsons School of Design and the Graduate Fine Arts program at Pratt Institute. Langdon has shown her work throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia with solo and group exhibitions that include Dinner Gallery, TEI’s Art in Buildings, Mrs., Tilton Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Grimm, Taymour Grahne Projects, STONELEAF and the Delaware Contemporary Museum. Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and STONELEAF Retreat in upstate New York. She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Artnet, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Vice Creators Project, Juxtapoz, The Wall Street Journal, the Sound & Vision podcast and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X.
Ryan Richey (b. 1979) received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives and works in Rushville, IN. He has exhibited at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; ADDS DONNA, Chicago, IL; Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL; Loyola University, Chicago; Root Division, San Francisco; Roots and Culture, Chicago; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Threewalls, Chicago; The Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago IL.
Mary Tooley Parker is a textile maker using wool and other fibers as paint. After a career in dance and then in art production at Vanity Fair and GQ magazines, Tooley Parker left New York City for a more rural environment. She then began pursuing an interest in textiles of different forms, eventually leading her to the American folk art of rug hooking, though her pieces are not rugs for the floor. Parker's work has been exhibited internationally including New York, London, and Denmark and is held in public and private collections. She is honored to have been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship twice (2015 and 2024), and has also served as a NYFA panelist. Art critic John Yau recently wrote a review of her work in Hyperallergic.