Tonight! The School of the Art Institute of Chicago celebrates a weekend of exhibitions, festivals, symposiums, and creative gathering with graduating students from both the Undergraduate and Masters programs. The weekend will kick off at 7pm this evening, with the opening of the annual Graduate Exhibition located in Sullivan Galleries, showcasing the work of more than 130 grad students completing their degrees in the Master of Fine Arts program. Guest curators include Steven Bridges, grupa o.k. (Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska), Tumelo Mosaka, and Pablo Helguera. I'll be performing in congruence with MFA in Art and Technology student Dao Nguyen! This event is one you won't want to miss.

Jeffrey Daniels
MFA in Art and Technology

Saturday follows up going just as hard with Impact Performance Festival which presents the work of the second year graduate students who are also finishing up this spring. This work exemplifies examples of theater, movement, and visual arts that merge together and collectively unite to display outstanding and profound visions of performance art. Impact will also take place on Sunday evening for those of you who cannot make it the first night.

Also running the majority of the day from 9am until 4:30pm students in the Bachelor of Arts in Visual Critical Studies and Bachelor of Fine Arts with Liberal Arts Thesis programs, are participating in a symposium where students in their respective departments speak about their thesis work, with the objective of exploring socia land cultural meaning in visual experiences.


MFA Show 
April 27th 7pm
Sullivan Galleries
36 S. Wabash Ave

BAVCS + BFA with Liberal Arts Thesis Symposium
April 28th 9-4pm
Art Institute of Chicago- Nichols Trustees Suite
159 E. Monroe St

Impact Performance Festival
April 28th & 29th 7-8pm
Peformance Space
280 S. Columbus Dr.

http://www.saic.edu/

Back again to be exhibited for the first time in over 30 years, the Art Institute of Chicago presents Harlem, U.S.A., a full collection of 25 photographs captured by African American renowned photographer, Dawoud Bey. Harlem, U.S.A. originally premiered at the Studio Museum in Harlem, marking Bey’s very first solo exhibition in 1979. The images function as documentation of Bey’s experience in Harlem and its surrounding neighborhood during his residency at the museum. Now, decades later these photos reappear, fresh— strikingly different from his much later work. The show opens May 2 and lasts through September 9.

In addition to Harlem, U.S.A., one week later the Renaissance Society will be exhibiting Picturing People, an expansive career survey of Dawoud Bey’s work at the University of Chicago campus, Cobb Hall, in Hyde Park. Expanding from street photography to formal studio portraiture, Bey is recognized for his outstanding commitment to portraiture as a means for investigating community and contemporary society. The show will also include, Strangers/Community, a series which brings together a double portrait people from one community who were previously unknown to each other. He quotes, 

"My work as an artist has been about giving ordinary people an enhanced presence in the world through my photographs. I see my work as a way to bring the human community into a conversation with itself. Hopefully through my photographs viewers come to know not only something about the people that I photograph, but something about themselves as well. My career survey at the Renaissance Society is an opportunity to sum up what I have been doing and thinking about for the past 36 years. It is an opportunity to see all of these photographs and ideas in relation to each other,"

Dawoud Bey born 1953 and raised in Queens, NY is a Distinguished College Artist and professor at Columbia College Chicago since 1998. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fogg Art Museum, and Chicago's very own, Art Institute.

Harlem, U.S.A.
The Art Institute of Chicago
May 2 - September 9, 2012
http://www.artic.edu

Picturing People
5811 S. Ellis Ave
May 13 - June 24, 2012
www.renaissancesociety.org

CGN Partner Post

Jed Fielding                                                                                         Ginny Sykes

Surface:
* Jed Fielding, Facades 1977-2011
* Ginny Sykes, Recent Work

Lanny Silverman (Chief Curator of Exhibitions, The Chicago Cultural Center) discusses Surface: "Jed Fielding and Ginny Sykes have had a deep and long-standing friendship for more than thirty years. They have shared a common passion for the photography of Aaron Siskind (with whom Fielding studied extensively), as well as for world travel with a particular emphasis on Italy. Sykes' work utilizes a wide variety of media and approaches, while Fielding's photographs articulate a very specific aesthetic and concern."  
 
Chicago Art Source Gallery
April 19-June 16
Opening Reception + Artist Talk: April 19, 5-8pm
1871 N Clybourn (60614) * 773.248.3100 * Chicagoartsource.com

Twitter @ChicagoArtSourc

Depth, humor, deception, and a whole lot of color are what you will find at Kipper and the Corpse opening this Friday, April 20th at Robert Bills Contemporary Gallery. These works of art created in a variety of different mediums, including sculpture, photography, drawing, collage, and animation will play tricks on you, abstracting spatial relationships and disguising images and materials as if it were a game. Flipping through the preview images on gallery's website, it's no wonder why this group was put together. Visually you can see parallels between form, texture, color combination, and technique. It's not until you investigate a little bit further into the artists' work where you begin to read into a clear dialogue happening between the themes and context of these crafted works as well.

(Montgomery Perry Smith)

The show features the works of four highly talented conceptual and skilled makers, Lauren Anderson, Mike Andrews, Jessica Labatte, and Montgomery Perry Smith. The three, Anderson, Labatte, and Smith are all former students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), while Mike Andrews, is a current faculty in the Fiber and Material Studies Department, making this a show that I personally am definitely anticipating and looking forward to. The show will be on view from April 20th until June 2nd.

(Mike Andrews)

(Lauren Anderson)

(Jessica Labatte)

Take a look at the full press release at:
http://robertbillscontemporary.com/

Spring in Chicago is peppered with many occasions and events to benefit area arts groups and institutions.  An ongoing art auction that goes until April 21 is taking place to raise funds and and support for the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation's (C&AF) mission, to develop and promote programs that support education, civic responsibility, and the arts for children and young adults in the Chicago Metropolitan area. The group's emphasis is on programs that the C&AF initiates, develops, and funds. The programs target financial need and merit. C&AF hosts music and art competitions for individuals between the ages of 14 and 30 that live within 100 miles of the Chicago Loop. The Foundation also offers civic programs for children and families.  

You can support C&AF's mission and also take home some unique art by bidding online on one of over 130 auction items, including restaurant certificates in addition to works of art. The online auction runs through April 20, and the annual gala takes place at the Union League Club on April 21.  

Image pictured: James Mesplé, Moon Dreams - Endymion and Selene. Oil on canvas, 48" x 36". Part of the C&AF auction)