Sabina Ott, “the weight of air”, 2016. Polystyrene, plastic, cloth, canvas, mirror, gauche, and spray enamel, 24 x 20 x 3 inches. Collection of Vincent Uribe. © Estate of Sabina Ott. Image courtesy of Jeroen Nelemans.

By JEFFERSON GODARD

How many artists have their first solo show at a museum (Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1983) just one year after finishing college and then go on to have an almost forty-year career all while influencing so many others in the process? Sabina Ott is the culprit here, and she is currently being celebrated at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in all this and not ordinary, the first solo presentation of her work since she left our material world in 2018.

Sabina Ott was born in New York and raised in Los Angeles. Her first works were large figurative oil paintings that depicted natural settings with theoretical and poetic references. Some of these early works would become part of institutional collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art amongst many others. As her career progressed, Ott moved beyond painting to create installations, videos, screen prints, and sculptural works.

Installation view of Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2025. Photo by Mariah Monedah, courtesy of MMoCA. 

Throughout her career, Sabina was never one to focus on one material alone and often pivoted between media that included oil, acrylic, ink, video, encaustic, and polystyrene. all this and not ordinary focuses on polystyrene-based works that she first began showing at The Great Poor Farm Experiment I (2009) at Michelle Grabner’s The Poor Farm, an experimental residency and exhibition space in Manawa, Wisconsin. In polystyrene, she loved the malleable and lightweight properties as well as the ability to layer on it. Often, she would layer canvas, spray foam, and mirror, but she also layered meaning. In this regard, Sabina often turned to poetry and specifically Gertrude Stein for inspiration. In fact, all of this and not ordinary is also a line from Stein’s poem A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass.

Installation view of Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2025. Photo by Mariah Monedah, courtesy of MMoCA. 

all this and not ordinary focuses on works that were created in the last eight years of her life and includes printed excerpts from Gertrude Stein poems on the walls. These decisions were prompted both by the influence of Stein in her work but also echo Sabina’s own teaching practice. Sabina was a mentor to so many students at the institutions such as Columbia College Chicago, Washington University, San Francisco Art Institute, ArtCenter College of Design, California State University, and the Melbourne Royal Institute of Technology in Australia.

Sabina not only charted a storied artistic and academic career that had international reverberations, but she left her most lasting mark on Chicago, the city that she called home for the last 13 years of her life. Mentoring students at Columbia College, where she served for over a decade, she wanted to do more for her community. In 2011, Sabina founded Terrain Exhibitions, an experimental exhibition space that ran out of her Oak Part home and hosted some ambitious artworks from acclaimed artists. One of the first iterations of the now storied Graft series from Edra Soto enveloped Sabina's porch, a sculptural painting installation from Michelle Wasson’s Red, Yellow, Blue began on top ofthe roof slowly dripping and landing on the front lawn, a 10-foot pink unicorn horn, Struck, was supplanted on the front yard by Iris Bernblum, and Cauleen Smith’s banner extolling Gwendolyn Brooks’ Conduct your Blooming, that now resides in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, all had their first showing at Terrain. Artist Tom Burtonwood continued Terrain after Sabina’s passing, and the Terrain Biennial still maintains an international presence today. Aside from his steadfast support of Terrain, I must also make mention that if not for the efforts of Tom and his collaborator Holly Holmes, many of the works included in this exhibition would not have been available to us. Thank you both for all of the hard work that you continue to do to cement Sabina’s legacy.

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all this and not ordinary continues at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art through February 15, 2026, and will have an opening celebration on December 12th, 2025, from 6:00-9:00 pm, with a gallery talk by Chicago-based artist Michelle Wasson on December13th at 1:00. Please consult the museum’s website for more details.

Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and co-curated by Paul Baker Prindle, MFA and Jefferson Godard, M.Arch.

Installation view of Sabina Ott: all this and not ordinary, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2025. Photo by Mariah Monedah, courtesy of MMoCA.