Shakkei: Work by Mayumi Lake and Bob Faust

Shakkei: Work by Mayumi Lake and Bob Faust presents the first major museum exhibition for these two Chicago-based artists whose colorful kaleidoscopic artworks create an immersive optical experience. Featured in separate galleries, recent large-scale work by each artist will transform the space. Lake’s imagery is based on the symbolic floral motifs found in antique Japanese kimonos. Faust’s wallpapers and prints incorporate digital photographs he gathers for each project sourced from the natural surroundings of the location where he is showing the work. Lake and Faust will also collaborate on new work for this exhibition, introduced in the center gallery, combining their love of organic patterning and spatial design.

The exhibition is curated by Liz Chilsen, Manager of Exhibitions & Collections at EAM, and prompts conversations around cultural heritage, language, design, and pattern, addressing both the relatable patterns of everyday life and deeply embedded cultural and social histories.

The Japanese principle of Shakkei (“borrowed scenery”), is a design philosophy that integrates natural landscapes with architectural elements, incorporating existing natural features into architectural designs. The artists interpret the eastern concept broadly as a metaphor for empathy and adaptability, and for the ability to hold multiple viewpoints of “inside” and “outside” simultaneously. Each brings their own perspective to the concept, reflecting their unique experiences and history.

About the artists:

Working in the space between art and design, Bob Faust (b. Illinois, 1967) crafts artwork with typography at its core and viscerality on its surface. Faust has over 30 years of experience as the principle and creative director of the eponymously named cultural branding studio, Faust. He makes his work with purpose first—to inform, empower and/or instigate in the service and celebration of human difference. Text, patterns, and the ideas of surprise and discovery emerge as throughlines throughout his conceptual art practice that defies categorization and genre.

Faust has been recognized nationally and internationally for his inimitable creativity through many prestigious honors including a University of Illinois, College of Fine & Applied Arts, 2022 Distinguished Legacy Award and City of Chicago, 2022 Mayor’s Medal of Honor. Exhibitions have included Mass MoCA BY The Numb3r5 (Mass MoCA), For And Nor But Or Yet So (Poetry Foundation), WA/ONDER (167 Green), with all, and still... (The Peninsula Chicago), Rapt on the Mile (The Magnificent Mile Association), Ways and Means (Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and The Chicago Transit Authority), About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art (Wrightwood 659), Great Ideas of Humanity: Out of the Container (Chicago Design Museum), guilty / Innocent (MASS MoCA); Unfolded: Made with Paper (Chicago Design Museum), Betweens (Riverside Arts Center), and CHGO DSGN (Chicago Cultural Center). He has also received recognition from The New York Times, Fast Company, the Chicago Tribune, Newcity, NBC 5 News, the Chicago Sun-Times, CBS Evening News, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

In addition to his own work, Faust is also the professional and personal partner of artist Nick Cave. Together they founded the non-for-profit Facility: a multi-use creative space in Chicago that seeks to build community and change the world through art and design.

Mayumi Lake (b.Osaka, 1966) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work explores the ideas of time, memory, and floating between the real and imaginary. With a foundation in photography, she integrates digital images of nature and Japanese textiles into her collages, sculpture, sound, moving images, and installation to expand the narrative of the work and form conceptual layers.

Lake’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, Asia Society, Art in General, and Artists Space in New York; Chicago Artists Coalition and Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City; Fotografie Forum International in Frankfurt; Cornelius Pleser Galerie in Munich; Galleria PaciArte in Brescia; FOTOAMERICA in Santiago; Witzenhausen Gallery in Amsterdam; and the Setouchi Triennale in Takamatsu. She has published two monographs, Poo-Chi and Ex Post Facto, with Nazraeli Press. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, Asia Society, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE)/City of Chicago, the McCormick Place Art Collection/Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA), Video Art World, the Joy of Giving Something Foundation, and Facebook. Lake received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.