Elmhurst Art Museum : INFLATABLE CONTEMPORARY ART September 10 – November 27, 2016

ELMHURST ART MUSEUM PRESENTS THE MIDWEST PREMIERE OF BLOW UP: INFLATABLE CONTEMPORARY ART

September 10 – November 27, 2016

+ WORLD PREMIERE OF ‘INFLATABLE OPERA’ BIRTH DEATH BREATH

BY CHICAGO ARTISTS JOANNE CHRISTIANSEN & JEANNE DUNNING   

  

Elmhurst Art Museum proudly presents the Midwest premiere of BLOW UP: Inflatable Contemporary Art, an exploration of air as a sculptural medium. The exhibition, organized by California-based Bedford Gallery, investigates the imaginative ways that artists use air as a tool for creating large-scale sculpture and opens a dialogue about pop culture and social norms. The exhibition will be on display from September 10 – November 27, 2016.

While inflatable objects are typically associated with advertising, children’s entertainment or holiday decorations, the format has been appropriated by a diverse group of artists to explore complex subjects such as identity, materialism and war. Playing with scale, color and the

inherent light-heartedness of balloons, the selected artists produce a wide variety of sculptural forms, from Lewis deSoto’s 26-foot-long sleeping Buddha to Claire Ashley’s colorful abstract shapes.  In addition to works by Ashley (Chicago) and deSoto (Napa, CA), the traveling exhibition includes major works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude (New York), Gary Baseman (Los Angeles), Lee Boroson (New York), Nick Cave (Chicago), Patrick Flibotte (New York), Joshua Allen Harris(New York), Billie Grace Lynn (Miami), Guy Overfelt (San Francisco), and Momoyo Torimitsu (Tokyo/New York).

“Thanks to the internet and our global economy, artists today have access to an almost limitless toolbox of media and materials, encouraging ever more creative expressions of their ideas,”
said Jenny Gibbs, Elmhurst Art Museum executive director.  Inflatables allow artists to think big with the medium's ease of transport, lightness and relative low cost. Several of the works in 'Blow Up' explore serious issues within gender roles, spirituality and politics, contrasting the weightiness of the content with the lightness of the material.  Patrick Guy Overfelt’s 'Untitled' is a life-size inflatable replica of the iconic car in 'Smokey and The Bandit', literally making light of the overblown masculinity of American pop culture.  Momoyo Torimitsu’s 'Somehow, I Don’t Feel Comfortable' expresses her discomfort with Japan's 'Hello Kitty' culture by forcing two enormous smiling bunnies into a space which is too small for them, a comment on the constricting cultural expectations of Japanese women in what the artist describes as "the cuteness syndrome."

Presented alongside Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art, will be the World Premiere of Birth Death Breath an opera "performed" by inflatable Christmas lawn decorations in various stages of inflation and deflation. Conceived, written and staged by Chicago artists Diane Christiansen and Jeanne Dunning, visitors are invited to move amongst the various inflatable characters as they rise from the ground and begin to sing, seeming to come back to life. In a way that is simultaneously humorous and heartfelt, the installation explores timeless existential questions about the meaning of life and the incomprehensibility of death. Birth Death Breath will be performed at Elmhurst Art Museum from September 22 to November 27, 2016.

Public Programs

BLOW UP Members Preview and Reception

Friday, September 9 — 5pm

BLOW UP Family Weekend

Saturday, September 10 — 12pm

Celebrate the opening of BLOW UP: Inflatable Contemporary Art with a weekend of hands-on art projects, balloon animals and a bouncy castle.

Performance: Double Disco by Artist Claire Ashley

Saturday, September 10 — 1pm

Performance: Double Disco by Artist Claire Ashley

Saturday, September 10 — 2pm

                                               

Performance: Double Disco by Artist Claire Ashley

Saturday, September 10 — 2pm

Guided Tour of Exhibitions

Saturday, October 15 — 1pm

Family Workshop: “Inflate & Create” with Artist Claire Ashley

Saturday, October 22 — 2pm

Guided Tour of Exhibitions

Saturday, November 12 — 1pm

Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art was organized by Carrie Lederer, Curator of Exhibitions, Bedford Gallery at the Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA. This exhibition was made possible by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, plus major support is provided by The City of Elmhurst Community Grant Program.

About Elmhurst Art Museum

Elmhurst Art Museum is located at 150 Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst (IL), 25 minutes from downtown Chicago by car or public transportation (Metra). The Museum is both an international destination for Mies van der Rohe scholars and fans and a regional center where people from Chicago and the western suburbs learn to see and think differently through the study of the art, architecture and design of our time.

The Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday from 11am – 5pm (7pm on Fridays). Admission is $8 ($7 for seniors) and free for students and children under the age of 18.Tuesday is open for tours only.

For more information, please call 630.834.0202 or visit elmhurstartmuseum.org

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Elmhurst Art Museum:No Place Like House exhibition and Chicago Architecture Biennial Nov 7th

 

(L to R) Mejay Gula, Julia Sedlock, Amanda Williams

Elmhurst Art Museum presents

House Practices: Discussion with Architects Mejay Gula,

Julia Sedlock & Amanda Williams, Saturday, November 7

In conjunction with Museum’s current No Place Like House exhibition

and Chicago Architecture Biennial 

October 23, 2015 (Elmhurst, IL)— In conjunction with its current architecture exhibitions, No Place Like House and Lessons from Modernism: Environmental Design Strategies in Architecture 1925-1970, Elmhurst Art Museum proudly hosts the panel discussion House Practices featuring architects Amanda Williams, Julia Sedlock & Mejay Gula Saturday, November 7, from 2-4pm. The discussion, conceived of and moderated by architect and School of the Art Institute Lecturer Andrew Santa Lucia, will examine the dynamic, “house-based” practices of these female architects as they have lived and worked in Chicago.

Amanda Williams’ ongoing Color(Ed) Theory Interventions on Chicago’s South Side investigates cultural associations of colors (such as Harold’s Chicken Shack Red and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Orange) and their homogenous application to soon-to-be-demolished houses in Englewood. Julia Sedlock’s notions of Smallness have framed her practice to deliver playfully unexpected results within domesticity using shapes and disciplinary histories interchangeably. As the former lead designer for Theaster Gates Studio and Rebuild Foundation, Mejay Gula’s practice focused on the creative reuse of existing materials and vacant buildings to revitalize under-served pockets of South Side of Chicago.

“Andrew Santa Lucia’s year-long exploration of Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House at Elmhurst Art Museum resulted in two major exhibitions that highlight the difference between house and home. Wishing to expand this discussion across approaches and gender, we invited these three women to present their innovative architectural projects and current thinking about the meanings and implications of house and home today,” said Staci Boris, Elmhurst Art Museum Chief Curator & Director of Public Programs.

This conversation is held in tandem with the first Midwest appearance of Lessons from Modernism - an acclaimed exhibition organized by The Cooper Union in New York that examines 25 modern building projects through the lens of sustainability—on display at Elmhurst Art Museum through November 29, 2015 and coinciding with the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. The first architecture exhibition presented by the Museum, Lessons from Modernism offers a new context for the Museum’s McCormick House, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1952, and includes Santa Lucia’s related exhibition, the No Place like Houseintervention. This site-specific installation, guided by “Miesian Mysticism,” a fictional religion uncovered by Santa Lucia, features a series of altars that utilize both the living room space and the newly opened west wing, to transport viewers into a temple of images, objects and offerings.

The House Practices discussion is free to Elmhurst Art Museum members, and free to the public with admission to the Museum. For more information on House Practices or Elmhurst Art Museum membership, please visit elmhurstartmuseum.org.

Bios

Amanda Williams is an artist, architect, educator, activist and cultivator of an art form that combines spatial sensibilities with love of color. She studied architecture at Cornell University and practiced in that field for a number of years in the Oakland Bay Area before turning her full attention to visual art. Color is a central preoccupation in her work, with her palette deriving largely from the urban landscapes she traversed as a child in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood. She has exhibited and lectured throughout the U.S., including: Studio Museum in Harlem; Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; and the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of many awards including, most recently, a 3Arts Award, a Joyce Foundation scholarship, the Eidlitz Travel Fellowship to Ethiopia, the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation’s Heroes & Hearts Public Art Commission, and the Empress Award. Williams is a current participant in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. She is Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she teaches Design and Color Theory. 

Julia Sedlock is a trained architect, writer, and founding partner of Cosmo Design Factory, an upstate NY design practice in the midst of building its first two houses. Through a combination of commissioned projects and independent research, their work explores ways that architectural form playfully engages with the world to promote social and cultural interaction. In addition to their house projects, Cosmo Design Factory recently completed temporary installations for arts organizations in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Sedlock has an M. Arch and M.A. in Design Criticism from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has work published in PLAT Journal, MAS Context, Soiled and Conditions Magazine.

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