CURRENT EXHIBITS [126]

This husband and wife team of Russian emigres collaborate to make large scale paintings of people walking. Their individual styles merge in a blend of Renaissance technique with contemporary edginess.   [more]

We’re filling the Museum with mystery to celebrate Chicago’s place in American magic. Visit our object theater to discover the story of Greta, a little girl who visits a wonderful store looking for a magician’s secrets. Next door, explore a collection of magical artifacts from across the country that have returned home to Chicago for your amazement and delight. Curious how magic looks in acti...   [more]

Opening: June 9th, 2012   6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Stacey Rozich new works brings to life a narrative taken from the depths of subconscious. Pulled from a realm steeped in indigenous and contemporary symbolism, Rozich creates a parable for present day. Situational vignettes are imagined through the lens of familiar fictional archetypes. Drawing inspiration from children and their unfettered spirit bring a note of mischief and terror to a story deeply ro...   [more]

Opening: July 6th, 2012   7:00 PM - 12:00 AM

Exit Eden casts light on the Earth’s shifting environments through Doug Fogelson’s photography. Exit Eden by Doug Fogelson considers the transformative effect climate change is having on our natural environment through the abstraction of landscape photography. In removing layers of both imagery and color from his original transparency film, Fogelson creates a dialog between destructiveness and be...   [more]

Opening: May 4th, 2012   5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

For its second summer exhibition, Corbett vs. Dempsey is delighted to present Xylophone Solo, an exhibition of selected drawings by Seymour Rosofsky. Rosofsky (1924-1981) is one of the key figures in twentieth century Chicago art. Emerging in the late 1940s as part of the movement later dubbed the "Monster Roster," alongside Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, June Leaf, and Dominick Di Meo, he initially painted g...   [more]

Opening: July 27th, 2012   5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

In the West Wing, CvsD presents the Chicago debut of Keiichi Tanaami. Born in Tokyo in 1936, Tanaami has been active as a video artist, animator, designer, and visual artist since the 1960s, and his enormous oeuvre continues to expand with ever stranger images that, since a near-death experience in 1981, have had a bardo-like hallucinatory buzz. This small exhibition spotlights a series of exquisit...   [more]

Opening: July 27th, 2012   5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

This group exhibition focuses on a growing trend within drawing: the meticulous translation of images from photographs and photo-based media. Concentrating on instances of social and political transformation, these thirteen contemporary artists present a novel approach to the drawn medium. In their hands, drawing as rote translation signals a desire for agency coupled with a sense of the distance be...   [more]

Opening: June 21st, 2012   5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

The Chicago artist Peter Karklins creates small pencil-and-paper drawings that capture the processes and energies just below the surface of all human life. The complexity of his organic forms is matched by the artist's meticulous recording of the times and circumstances of the creation of each drawing on its reverse, providing viewers with an added insight into these rich images. Sean D. Kirkland,...   [more]

The Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new photographs by James Welling. Featuring two bodies of work, the exhibition includes new concepts in subject and process. Water describes the select group of water photograms that stem from Wellingʼs investigation into the effects of cameraless pictures. By wetting paper in the dark and exposing it to light of a color enlarger, the...   [more]

Opening: May 16th, 2012   5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

This exhibition documents the historical journey made by people from Africa to the Americas, along with their language and music. In the 1930s, Lorenzo Dow Turner discovered that the Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina retained parts of the culture and language of their West African enslaved ancestors. Turner’s research produced a living treasury of previously unknown traditions, songs, and...   [more]

Opening: June 15th, 2012   10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Buried Treasures: Art in African American Museums will draw attention to the rich legacy of art produced by African Americans within the collections of 30 African American museums. The exhibition will display approximately 90 works of art including works on canvas and paper, sculpture and mixed media from many noted 19th and early 20th century American artists including Henry O. Tanner, William Edoua...   [more]

Opening: July 14th, 2012   10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of over 80 documentary photographs of African American folk gardens— and their creators — in the Deep South including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina (the collection of images will be shared through a joint exhibition with the Chicago Botanical Garden, each venue will have a different set of photographs...   [more]

Opening: July 14th, 2012   10:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Anders Nilsen tells stories with pictures. Adam and Eve Sneaking Back into the Garden to Steal More Apples is an exhibition of stories from the 594-page comic book, Big Questions, and for Nilsen, a new exploration of fate. Nilsen is a comic book artist. It may be more politically correct to call him a graphic novelist, but Nilsen will tell you he draws serial pictures in the deeply narrative and vernacu...   [more]

Michael Ferris Jr.’s large-scale sculptures of recycled wood take portraiture to an extreme. His figures, often of close friends and family, are massive; one torso measures more than five feet tall. Ferris’ interest is in the balance of extremes; between the stoic and classical compositions of his sculpture and the tattoo-like patterns of painted wood on the clothing and flesh of each figur...   [more]

Becker’s quiet portraits evoke longing and foreignness with distant glances and delicate expressions. Haunting and expressive, Becker’s emotional subjects are drawn from memory, not from models or photos. The women she creates are distinctly hers, each displaying features of traditional beauty, high cheekbones, large eyes and narrow faces, but none of her drawings are particularly beautiful. Ins...   [more]

Casey Roberts’ paintings create small poignant moments, vaguely narrative and reminiscent of the most elegant children’s book illustrations. Somewhere between the bright playfulness of Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and suggestive darkness in drawings by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) Roberts’ work creates a distinct atmosphere where empty space, nature and narrative bec...   [more]