Wheel of Life

Hyde Park Art Center presents group exhibition Wheel of Life

featuring new works created for pre-cinema animation device zoetropes

March 19 – July 2, 2022

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, announces group exhibition Wheel of Life and free related public program. The exhibition will be on view from March 19 – July 2 in Kanter McCormick Gallery, located on the Art Center’s second floor.

Guest curator and interdisciplinary artist Scott Wolniak invited 13 artists who do not normally make moving image work to create pieces to be activated by a custom-made zoetrope, a 19th-century pre-cinema optical device that produces the illusion of motion when a series of pictures on the inner surface is viewed through slits with a rotating cylinder.

Participating artists include Carris Adams, Leslie Baum, Jessica Campbell (with Aaron Renier), Sophia Chai, Ryan Travis Christian, Nicholas Frank, Charles Irvin, Flor, Laura Letinsky, Devin Mays, Dutes Miller, Daisy Schultz, andGeorgina Valverde. The exhibition also features an ambient sound installation by Franny M. Levitin.

Scott Wolniak is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher and curator based in Chicago, and an Instructional Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. Working in a variety of media including drawing, sculpture and animation, his work uses humor and phenomenology to present everyday life within a cosmic context. Wolniak has exhibited throughout the U.S., and was the founder and director of an alternative exhibition space Suitable Gallery between 1999 and 2005. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee. Wolniak received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2002. 

Admission and hours

Exhibition admission is free. For latest hours, visit www.hydeparkart.org.

Daisy Schultz, two frames from zoetrope sequence, 2022