Featuring recent work by Jim Chatelain with selected work from the 1990s by the late Paul Schwarz, the grouping highlights each artist’s idiosyncratic approach to abstraction and collage. The exhibition will begin with an opening reception on Saturday, April 30th, from 6 to 8 PM and will remain on view through June 4.
Chatelain, who grew up in Findlay, Ohio, and Schwarz, whose youth was spent in Warren, Michigan, met and became friends in Detroit in the late 1960s as they began their paths as artists; their friendship continued until Schwarz’s death to cancer in 1998. Chatelain and Schwarz are synonymous with of group of Detroit artists whose work was canonized by its inclusion in Kick Out the Jams: Detroit Cass Corridor 1963-1977 curated by Jay Belloli and Mary Jane Jacob and presented at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 1980 and 1981 respectively. As Frederick J. Cummings, then DIA Director, stated in the catalog of the same name, “Nor…were we able to say, until this past decade, that Detroit art could stand at the forefront of the artistic output of any American city, including New York." The exhibition at Paul Kotula Projects, the first two-person exhibition of Chatelain and Schwarz, demonstrates the artists’ continued vitality and importance.
