hicago-based artist, muralist, and sculptural fabricator Czr Prz is pleased to present Idol Hands, the latest group show of his own curation dedicated to craft, fabrication, and structure. This exhibition collects new and original works by fifteen artists from across the United States engaged with material-based practices. Idol Hands opens on December 17th at Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago, and will remain on view through February 2022.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” the grownups of yesteryear used to say. Thank goodness these artists heeded their exhortations. Idol Hands takes that old religious adage and turns it around, refocusing the stale phrase towards the human capacity to create godforms. Whether hanging or freestanding, built from balloons or sewn neat with needlework, these varied and visually arresting relics reveal the magic possible just beyond the picture plane.

While the artworks throughout Idol Hands find common ground in their undeniable urban contemporary edge, each of the show’s fifteen artists hail from disparate geographical, professional, and circumstantial backgrounds. Woes Martin started taking art seriously after a 1998 car accident drove him indoors, and Anthony Lewellen shaped his sensibilities by getting up on the streets. The emergent paths of these fifteen distinct people yield fifteen distinct creative approaches. Sarah Best, for example, sculpts paper into snake scales with startling sharpness. Zeye sprays shimmering deities out of aerosol cans.

Prz’s affinity for fabrication starts with his working class Caribbean-Latino upbringing. The artist’s fabrication practice employs heavy machinery to honor a culturally rich childhood where the adults who raised him worked much like the artists in this show–relying on their own two hands. Remodeled from a decaying church in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, Epiphany Center for the Arts’ stunning 42,000 square foot campus offers an uncanny forum to venerate the idols collected by Prz and his Idol Hands cohorts. Exalt in the divinity of 3D creation, which starts in our own mortal palms.

FULL ARTIST LINEUP:
Sarah Best (NYC)
Sea Of Doom (Philadelphia)
Ian Kuali’i (NM/Hawai’i)
Phybr (Detroit)
Czr Prz (Chicago)
Zeye (Chicago)
Elloo (Chicago)
Mr BBaby (LA)
DENIAL (Detroit/Canada)
Woes Martin (LA)
Balloonski (LA)
Hank Von Hellion (Worcester, MA)
CLS (Denver)
Jb Snyder/Janel Garza (Phoenix)
Anthony Lewellen (Chicago)