Glass Curtain Gallery

Rube Goldberg's Ghost: Confounding Design and Laborious Objects

February 28 – May 4, 2013

Reception, Thursday, February 28, 5-7pm

Glass Curtain Gallery

Columbia College Chicago

Glass Curtain Gallery
1104 S. Wabash Ave, First Floor
Chicago, Il 60605

The comical machines of American cartoonist and inventor Reuben Garrett Lucius
“Rube” Goldberg were never intended to be built and used. His cartoon schematics of impossibly complicated low-tech machines and designs poked fun at both bureaucratic systems and the laborious machinations required to traverse them. While Rube Goldberg took a light-hearted and humorous approach to public concerns with a wink and a nod, Rube Goldberg’s Ghost: Confounding Design and Laborious Objects presents contemporary artworks that offer plausible deniability toward some of society's current obsessions, ills and issues. In the spirit of Rube Goldberg’s cartoons, this exhibition examines social, cultural and design dilemmas through ingenious DIY engineering and 'what if' solutions. 

Participating Artists: Matthew L. Aron, Karen Bovinich, Juan Angel Chavez, Brian Dettmer, Fischli & Weiss, Conrad Freiburg, Joan Giroux, Joseph Hersher, Taylor Hokanson, Industry of the Ordinary, Heidi Kumao, Anthony Heinz May, Betsy Odom, Erik Peterson, Mark Porter, Michael Thompson and Graem Whyte

Curated by Elizabeth Burke-Dain

Gallery hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 9am - 5pm, Thursday 9am -7pm, Saturday Noon - 5pm, Closed on Sunday

For more information contact mporter@colum.edu or 312-369-6643

www.colum.edu/deps