M. LeBlanc, Chicago
Marika Thunder & Cameron Spartley & Ben Foch
M. LeBlanc proudly returns to Art-O-Rama presenting new works by Ben Foch, Cameron Spratley, and Marika Thunder. The three artists on view engage in distinct practices interrelated by their explorations of contemporary identity, visual culture, and social politics.
Born in New York and raised between there and the American South, artist Marika Thunder’s works communicate a critique of mechanical beauty through images of automobiles and scrapyards. Her work frames acceleration and automation as manufacturing forces of desire activated and expressed by the consumer body.
Similarly, Chicago-based artist Cameron Spratley’s collages twist the figure into a contested and hyper-visible symbol. The body is splayed into a visual language, or target, shaped by violence, corporate imaging, and recent political spectacle. Spratley’s fraught compositions resist legibility, mimicking the way identity and cultural memory are perpetually at risk of collective or political scrutiny.
Ben Foch’s chaotic, cheetah-print hellscapes offer a visual overload that recalls French philosopher Paul Virilio’s critique of the optical regime of war and entertainment where speed, or data, produces confusion instead of clarity. Foch leans into the artificial excessive synthetic, echoing a vision of the world in which invention and destruction are co-extensive. Here, Virilio’s warning that speed leads to extinction finds a tactile and humorous expression.
Ben Foch (b. 1977, Chicago) lives and works in Chicago. His work has been exhibited at venues such as M. LeBlanc, Chicago; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Selena’s Mountain, Brooklyn; Efrain Lopez, Chicago; Roots and Culture, Chicago; and Side Car Gallery, Hammond. Foch received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000.
Cameron Spratley (American, b. 1994 in Manassas, VA) lives and works in Chicago. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at von ammon, Washington D. C.; M. LeBlanc, Chicago; Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles; and James Fuentes, New York. Spratley’s work has also been exhibited at venues such as Artist’s Space, New York; Weatherproof, Chicago; de boer, Los Angeles; Nightclub, Minneapolis; The Ranch, Montauk; Temple Projects, Los Angeles; Sulk Chicago, Chicago; Centralbanken, Oslo; Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Columbus; P.P.O.W., New York; Kranzberg Arts Foundation, St. Louis; and Arcadia Missa, London. In 2021, Spratley collaborated with filmmaker Jordan Peele and his firm Monkeypaw Productions on the remake of Candyman, set in Chicago. Spratley attended the Yale University at Norfolk residency in 2015, obtained his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016, and completed his MFA at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2021.
Marika Thunder (American, b. 1998, New York) lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as National Arts Club, New York; Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles; Nina Johnson, Miami; Nino Mier, Los Angeles; 56 Henry, New York; Public Access, New York; de boer, Los Angeles; Half Gallery, New York; and Hoffman Mahler Wallenburg, Nice. Her works have been featured in numerous publications such as Purple Magazine, Interview Magazine, and Marfa Journal.
