Skimption
December 4, 2015 - January 31, 2016
December 4, 2015 - January 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, December 4, 2015, 6:00pm
One of the most exciting aspects of contemporary art-making is being able to work outside of the fixed contexts of our traditional art dialogue. Each artist in “Skimption” defies all the usual qualifiers: “painter,” “sculptor,” “fiber artist,” “ceramicist.” Even the term “multidiscipline artist” fails to accurately describe the way in which these artists’ unique conceptual goals fluctuate amongst scope, media and process. And while Diana Gabriel, Emily Hermant, Luis Sahagun, Catherine Schwalbe and Rusty Shacklefordcan’t be easily denominated, each of their voices is unquestionably well defined.
In this exhibition, curated by artist and art critic Robin Dluzen, the grey areas between established genres are explored by these five emerging artists. Gabriel and Hermant each present site-specific works, with Gabriel’s linear-patterned, fiber installation bringing drawing into three dimensional space, and Hermant’s hand-rendered “wallpaper” challenging the distinction between slow handmade processes and fast-paced digital communication. Sahagun intermingles “high art” materials with the “low” stuff of everyday life with a series of floor and wall pieces that embody both permanence and ephemera. For Schwalbe, an intimate, ceramics studio practice is a catalyst for her large-scale social practice, here manifested in an indoor garden of edible greens for viewers to harvest. Shackleford’s series of works are neither paintings, photographs nor typical collages, in an innovative gestural painting and digital scanning process that’s unlike anything else.
Preview exhibit – HERE
Catalog available – HERE
Opening Reception
All.go.rhythm
October 2 - November 29, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, October 2, 2015, 6:00 pm
October 2 - November 29, 2015
“All.go.rhythm” is a show of plotter drawings, digital prints, textiles, watercolors, installation and performance works by artists who work with algorithms. Algorithms are recipes for carrying out a logical or mathematical task. We associate them with computers, but the word is ancient and the concept more ancient still. Weaving, music, tiling patterns and architecture all make use of algorithms. Through computing and networking, algorithms shape contemporary culture and technology. Artists who create their own computer programs, which includes everyone in all.go.rhythm, have become especially aware of the power of algorithms.
Computational algorithms play a critical role in the art practices of the four artists in all.go.rhythm, hence the title, which also suggests that algorithms may be found everywhere. Colette Bangert, Roman Verostko, and Jean-Pierre Hébert are highly regarded pioneers of what was once referred to as “computer art,” and now is called “new media art.” With the collaboration of her husband Charles Jeffries Bangert, Colette Bangert produced some of the earliest digital art in the form of plotter drawings. In 1995, Jean-Pierre Hébert and Roman Verostko together founded the Algorists, a group of artists working with algorithms. Curator Paul Hertz, an artist who curated last year’s glitChicago show at UIMA, has developed free software for artists.
The catalog for all.go.rhythm features essays by Grant Taylor, noted author of When the Machine Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art, and Debora Wood, who as Senior Curator at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art curated (with Paul Hertz) Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of the Computer Print.
Order Catalog – HERE
Special Event:
Symposium with the artists: Saturday, October 3, 2:00 pm
Sponsored by Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation
Featured image:
Paul Hertz
i as in beet, a as in father (El guateque), 2015
Archival pigment print on paper, 18 x 18 inches
Software: GlitchSort, an application written by the artist in Processing.
Description: The characteristic frequencies of the human voice pronouncing the vowel sounds “i as in beet, a as in father” were used to modify an image that was treated as if it was an audio signal. The audio signal was encoded back into image format, and output to a file.
Chicago Connection
July 31 – September 27, 2015
Artists from the Post-War Period
July 31 - September 27, 2015
In the history of Chicago art, much has been written about the works created in the late 1940’s, ‘50’s, and ‘60’s. The worldwide political struggles, the Depression years, and the upheaval caused by World War II, served as the backdrop of the artists in this exhibit. This societal disjunction pushed many artists to question artistic traditions and inspired many to break from the norm. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) served as the meeting ground for many of these artists, a place where their skills were groomed and where they could explore the existential questions that they sought to answer through their art.
The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art presents its latest exhibition “Chicago Connection – Artists from the Post War Period,” which focuses on artwork created in the ‘50s and ‘60s by students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This period is central to the history of the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art because it was during this time that the institute’s co-founders, Konstantin Milonadis and Mychajlo Urban, attended SAIC. The paintings, sculptures, and prints featured in this exhibition were created by the co-founders and by their peers at SAIC, including Eleanor Coen, Seymour Rosofsky, Ted Halkin, Arthur Lerner, Thomas Kapsalis, Richard Hunt, Robert Kuntz, Donald Vogl, and Maurice Lapp—all were instrumental in many of the prominent artistic movements and groups in Chicago from the Monster Roster to Bauhaus. In addition to the works they created at SAIC, some of their later works are included in this exhibition, displaying the enduring influence that Post War art has on today’s artists’ imagination.
Order catalog- HERE
Images from opening reception – HERE
For a selection of images from “Chicago Connection,” please visit: UIMA Flickr page
Opening Reception
Australian Artists from Ukraine
March 27 – May 31, 2015
Opening reception: March 27, 2015 (6pm-9pm)
March 27 – May 31, 2015
The exhibit “Australian Artists from Ukraine” opens an untapped new window into Ukrainian Art History. It shows the talents of six artists that came from different backgrounds, all born in what is now Ukraine, who through the vagaries of world history settled in Australia before and after World War II. They influenced Australian art with their individual techniques and personalities. Australia had never seen anything like them before. Michael Kmit, Maximilian Feuerring, Stanislaw “Stacha” Halpern, Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz, Ludwik Dutkiewicz and Timothy Messack were survivors of a horrific world war, but yet through an unbroken spirit, brought to Australia with their art, beauty, culture, and style.
View photos from opening – HERE
View letter from Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott to UIMA – HERE
Order catalogs – HERE
Opening Reception
Convergence: The Poetic Dialogue Project
February 6 - March 22, 2015
Opening reception: Friday, February 6, 2015 (6-9pm)
February 6 - March 22, 2015
The upcoming exhibition, Convergence: The Poetic Dialogue Project, curated by Chicago-area artist and curator Beth Shadur, is an exhibition of collaborative works created by twenty pairs of visual artists and poets. The exhibition includes renowned visual artists and poets from throughout the United States (and a poet from Canada).
The Poetic Dialogue Project is an ongoing project that came about after a wonderful meeting of hearts and minds in 2004 at the Ragdale Foundation between poet Lois Roma-Deeley and Shadur, as both explored the parallel creative process of artist and poet. Since their meeting and dialogue at that time, Shadur and Roma-Deeley have undertaken a number of collaborative projects. Out of her own collaboration, Shadur created the idea of The Poetic Dialogue Project. Since 2004, four traveling exhibitions have been curated by Shadur, with various pairings of artists and poets. In 2009, the last exhibition, Collaborative Vision: The Poetic Dialogue, was premiered at the Chicago Cultural Center. The excitement of this ongoing project has been in the creation of new works outside established paradigms of artistic discipline, and in artist and poet taking their work in new creative directions.
Pairings: Visual artists / Poets
Jane Fulton Alt / Martha Collins
Granite Amit / Jan Beatty
cat chow / Rosemary Willey and Maggie Dietz
Laura Ann Cloud / Francisco Aragón
Sergio Gomez / Maurice Manning
Donna June Katz / Maurya Simon
Heidi Kumao / Kate Gale
Kim Laurel / Micheline Maylor
Lynda Lowe / Joseph Heithaus
Susan Mackin-Dolan / Honorée Fanone Jeffers
Renee McGinnis / Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Zach Mory / Kevin Prufer
Bonnie Peterson / Maggie Anderson
Mark Pomilio / Rigoberto Gonzalez
Beth Shadur / Lois Roma-Deeley
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris / Daniel Tobin
Vivian Visser / Peggy Shumaker
John Pitman Weber / Michael Heller
Cynthia Weiss / Margaret Rozga
Connie Wolfe / Annie Finch
EVENTS:
Opening reception: Friday, February 6, 2015 (6-9pm, with remarks on collaboration at 7pm)
Panel Discussion: Saturday, February 7, 2015 (2-4pm), panel on the collaborative process will be presented by several pairs of artists and poets
Joseph Heithaus and Margaret Rozga, Poetry reading: March 14, 2015 (2pm)
Order Catalog – HERE
Photos from the opening – HERE
Opening Reception
