The Renaissance Society

PRESS: Artforum on Black Is, Black Ain't

2008-05-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Black Is, Black Ain't was chosen as a Critics' Pick on Artforum.com. Britany Salsbury writes:

"Black Is, Black Ain't," illuminates both the complexity of racial discourse and its continued necessity.

Read the full article on Artforum's website.

The Wrens Study Break

2008-05-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Events at The Renaissance Society

2008-05-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

View details for each event on our events calendar

LECTURE: Race: Effects and Intent
Tuesday, May 6, 6:00 pm
Jeffrey Grogger

STUDENT MIXER
Thursday, May 15, 6:30 pm
hosted by The Wrens

PANEL DISCUSSION: Roots Revival
Friday, May 16, 6:00 pm
Saidiya Hartman
Rick Kittles

POETRY READING
Sunday, May 18, 2:00 pm
Tyehimba Jess

LECTURE: The Black Eclectic...Revisited
Wednesday, May 21, 6:00 pm
Travis Jackson

STAGED READING: Orenthal by Maarten van Hinte
Thursday, May 29, 8:00 pm
Directed by Ron Parson

PANEL: Post-Black: There and Back Again
Sunday, June 1, 2:00 pm
Darby English, Kerry James Marshall, Kym Pinder, and Greg Foster Rice

LECTURE: Erasing Race: Transforming public housing in Chicago
Thursday, June 5, 6:00 pm
Janet Smith

LECTURE: From the Moynihan Report to Obama's Candidacy
Sunday, June 8, 2:00 pm
Camille Charles and Lawrence Bobo

LINKS: Black Is, Black Ain't

2008-04-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Terry Adkins
The Black Factory
Hank Willis Thomas
The Ballad of Emmet Till at Goodman Theatre
Hyde Park Art Center

Black Is, Black Ain't

2008-04-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

Taking its title from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, this exhibition will explore a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition will bring together works by over 20 black and non-black artists whose work together examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called “blackness” is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.

Artists Include: Terry Adkins, Edgar Arceneaux, Elizabeth Axtman, Jonathan Calm, Paul D'Amato, Deborah Grant, Todd Gray, Shannon Jackson, Thomas Johnson, Jason Lazarus, David Levinthal, Glenn Ligon, David McKenzie, Rodney McMillian, Jerome Mosley, Virginia Nimarkoh, Demetrius Oliver, Sze Lin Pang, Carl Pope, William Pope.L, Robert A. Pruitt, Randy Regier, Daniel Roth, Joanna Rytel, Andres Serrano, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas.

Please join us for the opening reception Sunday April 20, 2008, 4 to 7 pm, with a discussion with the artists from 5 to 6 pm.

PRESS: Artforum on Katerina Seda

2008-04-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

Read James Yood's review of Katerina Seda's exhibition "It Doesn't Matter" at The Renaissance Society in the April Issue of Artfroum.

The exhibition...was presented as the work of Katerina Seda, not her grandmother, and begged to be interpreted less a the discovery of some visionary portraitist of the mid-twentieth-century hardware than as a representation of an artist generating work through social activity.

PRESS: Trisha Donnelly

2008-03-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Check out the latest review of Trisha Donnelly's exhibit in Time Out Chicago. Read it online now.

THE RADIO: Jack Quartet

2008-03-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

Jack Quartet
98.7 WFMT

Listen to Andrew Patner's excellent commentary on the JACK Quartet's performance at The Renaissance Society.

Listen online now

PRESS: Trisha Donnelly

2008-03-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Tribune reviews Trisha Donnelly at The Renaissance Society:

Everybody ends up being mystified to some degree, which, of course, is fine for the artist as long as everybody continues to believe in the mystery.

Read the full article here.

VIRTUAL TOUR: Trisha Donnelly

2008-02-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

UPCOMING EVENTS

2008-02-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

March 4: Reading, Carla Harryman, 5:30 pm
March 7: Staged Reading, Memory Play by Carla Harryman, 8:00 pm
March 13: Concert, JACK String Quartet, 8:00 pm
March 15: Concert, Ensemble Dal Niente, 8:00 pm
March 16: Concert, Millenium Chamber Players, 7:00 pm
March 18: Concert, Ossatura with Ensemble Noamnesia, 8:00 pm
March 30: Reading, Helen Mirra , 2:00 pm

Go to the calendar for more information about each event.

NEW: Google Events Calendar

2008-02-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

Keep up to date with our new Google Events Calendar. Select "Add to my Calendar" to add particular events of interest to your own calendar.

NEXT UP: Trisha Donnelly

2008-02-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

Trisha Donnelly
February 24 - April 6, 2008

Tell me why the ivy twines? As if it needs a reason. Trisha Donnelly’s work does not defy reason, but like the rhetorical response to that question, it doesn’t need it. Accountable to nothing or no one, her work is refreshingly free to roam, whether it is driven by slight whim, vague urge, or calculated thought. Likewise, it can assume any form-installation, video, sound, photographs, drawing, language, and or performance. All possibilities are open for the production of a poetry that however slight or obscure remains poetry nonetheless. Always specific, Donnelly’s work attenuates thought toward the precipitation of meaning as it resides ever so subtly around us.

Opening reception Sunday February 24, 2008, 4 to 7 pm, with a discussion with the artist from 5 to 6 pm.

ON TV: Kateřina Šedá

2008-01-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

Gallery Walkthrough on CAN-TV, Channel 21
Sunday, January 20th @ 3:00pm

Watch a gallery walkthrough with the artist Katerina Seda and curator Hamza Walker this Sunday at 3 pm on CAN-TV21. Seda will speak about her project It Doesn't Matter on display at The Renaissance Society until February 10th.

Find schedule updates and a full list of showtimes here.

Watch the gallery walkthrough online now here.

PRESS: Kateřina Šedá

2008-01-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

Alan Artner in the Chicago Tribune: It Doesn't Matter an "enthralling exhibition organized by The Renaissance Society," read the full article here

Also read the reviews in TimeOut and New City

THE RADIO: Kateřina Šedá

2008-01-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

International Three to See
Chicago Public Radio
Friday, January 11 @ 8pm
WBEZ 91.5 FM

This week on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight, Matt Cunningham and Hamza Walker will discuss Katerina Seda's exhibition at The Renaissance Society as part of the 32C segment.

Listen now online at CPR's website.

INSTALLATION: Kateřina Šedá

2008-01-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

This week we've been hanging hundreds of drawings for our new exhibit Kateřina Šedá, It Doesn't Matter, play the slideshow below to check out images of the installation. The show opens this Sunday, January 6th, from 4 to 7 pm, Šedá will be giving a presentation on her past projects from 5:00 - 6:30 pm in Cobb 307.

LINKS: Kateřina Šedá

2008-01-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

Frieze

Arratia, Beer

OPENING: Kateřina Šedá, It Doesn't Matter

2008-01-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

Opening reception Sunday January 6, 2008, 4 to 7 pm, with a discussion with the artist from 5 to 6:30 pm.

Czech artist Kateřina Šedá’s primary media are her friends, family, and community of her native town Líšeň. Šedá uses performance, staged activities, and public interventions to reactivate social concourse as it is the basis for a sense of self predicated on group identification. The Society will present It Doesn’t Matter, a series of over 600 drawings executed by Šedá’s 77-year-old grandmother, cataloging in size and type the various tools and supplies sold through the Brno hardware shop her grandmother managed for over thirty years under communism. While therapeutic in intent, the result is a profound reflection on memory and subjectivity as expressed through, rather than in spite of, alienation.

VIRTUAL TOUR: Meanwhile, in Baghdad...

2007-12-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

PRESS: Building Dissent

2007-11-29T13:11:00.000-08:00

Patrick Klemz for New City:

"Meanwhile in Baghdad" strikes countless lurid notes concerning U.S. action in the Middle East, a credit owed to the vast diversity of perspectives employed. Much of its success in achieving novelty lies in a refreshing international focus; the rest is a product of masterfully subtle but provocative posturing.

Read the full article here

PRESS: 2 exhibits examine toll of war in Iraq

2007-11-29T12:46:00.000-08:00

Check out Alan Artner's Tribune article on Meanwhile in Baghdad and the HPAC's "Consuming War" show. Artner remarked:

Each show presents examples of traditional painting, drawing and photography, but two of the more effective works are in so-called new media: Kenneth Goldsmith's "The Weather (Spring)," a recording of weather reports giving conditions in New York and Baghdad during the first 15 days of combat, and Wafaa Bilal's "Al Qaeda R Us," a video showing the sad American intervention in the affairs of nine countries. The one is numbing, the other infuriating, which memorably fixes the range of emotions prompted by these intelligent exhibitions.

Read the full article here

Meanwhile in Baghdad Installation

2007-11-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

This week we've been installing our upcoming exhibit Meanwhile, in Baghdad... Here are some pre-installation shots of Jonathon Monk's Deadman:

Meanwhile in Baghdad will open Sunday, November 11, 2007.

Meanwhile in Baghdad Opens November 11

2007-11-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

From the demise of communism to the Iraq war, globalization has taken a turn from the rhetoric of optimism to the reality of conflict. With the war going into its fifth year, the events in Iraq are less the headlines these days and more a backdrop. Meanwhile in Baghdad… is a group exhibition which takes the war as a general context in which to examine a range of artistic responses, some as direct as Daniel Heyman’s Abu Ghraib Project in which the artist made engravings based on firsthand accounts he gathered from victims of torture, and others as viscerally poignant as a series of bandaged bed frames by Jannis Kounellis.

Artists include Adel Abidin, Walead Beshty, Matt Davis, Daniel Heyman, Jenny Holzer, Maryam Jafri, Jannis Kounellis, Ann Messner, and Jonathan Monk.

Opening reception Sunday November 11, 4 to 7 pm, with a discussion with the artists from 5 to 6 pm.

Wrens Video DJ Art Party

2007-11-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

The Wrens hosted an Art Party featuring music by DJ Oto and visuals by Stoptime 341. Thanks to The Wrens for throwing another successful event!

2007-2008 Preview

2007-08-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

Steve McQueen, Gravesend, 2007
35mm film transferred to high definition

Steve McQueen
September 16 – October 28, 2007

The subject of British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s new short, Gravesend, is coltan, a mineral so valuable it is proving to be the new blood diamond. Used in all cell phones and computers, eighty percent of this mineral comes from the Congo. Symbolic of a new global economy unable to shake the vestiges of neo-imperialism, coltan’s is a tall story to tell. McQueen’s approach is unapologetically abstract, compressing within the space of 17 minutes a poetic narrative of empire as told through a series of formally striking shots. Gravesend will be accompanied by Unexploded, a 54 second film the artist made using footage he took in Basra, Iraq. Both films are U.S. premieres.

Jonathon Monk
Deadman, 2006
Wax, rubber, human hair, oil paint, fabrics
8” x 73” x 24”

Meanwhile in Baghdad…
November 11 – December 21, 2007

From the demise of communism to the Iraq war, globalization has taken a turn from the rhetoric of optimism to the reality of conflict. With the war going into its fifth year, the events in Iraq are less the headlines these days and more a backdrop. Meanwhile in Baghdad… is a group exhibition which takes the war as a general context in which to examine a range of artistic responses, some as direct as Daniel Heyman’s Abu Ghraib Project in which the artist made engravings based on firsthand accounts he gathered from victims of torture, and others as viscerally poignant as a series of bandaged bed frames by Jannis Kounellis.

Kateřina Šedá
It Doesn’t Matter, 2003-2006
Documentation of the project

Kateřina Šedá
January 6 – February 10, 2008

Czech artist Kateřina Šedá’s primary media are her friends, family, and community of her native town Líšeň. Šedá (b. 1977) uses performance, staged activities, and public interventions to reactivate social concourse as it is the basis for a sense of self predicated on group identification. The Society will present It Doesn’t Matter, a series of over 600 drawings executed by Šedá’s 77-year-old grandmother, cataloging in size and type the various tools and supplies sold through the Brno hardware shop her grandmother managed for over thirty years under communism. While therapeutic in intent, the result is a profound reflection on memory and subjectivity as expressed through, rather than in spite of, alienation.

Trisha Donnelly, Satin Operator (12), 2007
C-Print, 62 ½” x 44”

Trisha Donnelly
February 24 – April 6, 2008

Tell me why the ivy twines? As if it needs a reason. Trisha Donnelly’s work does not defy reason, but like the rhetorical response to that question, it doesn’t need it. Accountable to nothing or no one, her work is refreshingly free to roam, whether it is driven by slight whim, vague urge, or calculated thought. Likewise, it can assume any form-installation, video, sound, photographs, drawing, language, and or performance. All possibilities are open for the production of a poetry that however slight or obscure remains poetry nonetheless. Always specific, Donnelly’s work attenuates thought toward the precipitation of meaning as it resides ever so subtly around us.

Jason Lazarus, Standing at the grave of Emmett Till, day of exhumation, May 31st, 2005(Alsip, IL) 40” x 50" archival inkjet

Black Is, Black Ain’t
April 20 – June 8, 2008

Taking its title from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, this exhibition will explore a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained. The exhibition will bring together works by over 15 black and non-black artists whose work together examines a moment where the cultural production of so-called “blackness” is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant.

PEEP SHOW

2007-08-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

PEEP SHOW
THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY'S
ANNUAL BENEFIT GALA AND ART AUCTION

SEPTEMBER 8, 2007
6:30 Cocktails and Silent Auction
8:00 Dinner

The Renaissance Society is pleased to announce PEEP SHOW, its annual gala and benefit art auction. The evening will feature a seated dinner, entertainment by Chicago’s Luna Negra Dance Theater, and live and silent auctions of luxury experiences and cutting-edge art by some of today’s most compelling artists.

Click here to view a preview of the art auction and to place advance bids.

The gala evening will be preceded by a free auction Preview Event on Thursday, September 6 from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Benefit 2007 Preview

2007-08-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

EVENTS CALENDAR

2007-01-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

Keep up to date with events at The Renaissance Society, select an event in the calendar below for more details, then select "Add to Calendar" to include this event in your own calendar.