2007-2008 Preview

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

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