2022 Featured Alignments

The Peninsula Chicago x Africobra: I Am Somebody

April 7 – Mid- May, 2022
The Peninsula Chicago

The Peninsula Chicago is proud to present an exhibition of works by AFRICOBRA founders Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Sherman Beck, Jeff Donaldson and Gerald Williams, along with additional early members of the pioneering collective. AFRICOBRA was an artist collective founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1968. Known for creating art to address social and cultural challenges affecting the Black community, AFRICOBRA is one of the most significant arts movements of the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition will feature a selection of works from the AFRICOBRA group's groundbreaking early exhibitions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as key insights into their aesthetic explorations before the group came together, and subsequent developments in the following decades. AFRICOBRA's incredible contributions to the history of art have been highlighted in such exhibitions as the 2019 Venice Biennale and the critically-acclaimed Soul of a Nation, which debuted at the Tate Modern in 2017, and traveled to five further museums. This exhibition is in partnership with Kavi Gupta, EXPO CHICAGO and The Peninsula Chicago.

NICK CAVE PREVIEW AT ART ON theMART

April 8, 2022 | 8:00–10:00pm
Art on theMART

Viewable along the Chicago Riverwalk, between Wells and Franklin Streets

In partnership with Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Art on theMART is presenting a brand-new projection by acclaimed American artist Nick Cave. A preview of this projection will be viewable as a pop-up installment at Art on theMART during EXPO CHICAGO on Friday, April 8 from 8:00 – 10:00pm. The projection of Cave’s video work, made specifically for Art on theMART, is a remix of Cave’s original film Drive-By (2011) with new footage as part of the Summer 2022 programming to be shown twice nightly from May 5 through September 7, 2022. Cave’s projection will coincide with his first career-spanning retrospective, Forothermore, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

SKIN IN THE GAME

April 7 - 24
400 N Peoria St.

Curated by Zoe Lukov, produced by Abby Pucker

Skin in the Game is an exhibition of painting, sculpture, video, installation and performance that explores touch, transmission, and skin—the potential, vulnerability and risk contained therein—as a boundary to protect from danger or as a porous border to receive. The exhibition establishes a dialogue of the erotic; from pleasure and violence, to the taboo and voyeurism, with through lines that touch on game, color, the hunt, sport, religious iconography, performance and competition. Among the artists included are Derrick Adams, Isabelle Albuquerque, Tosh Basco, Carlos Betancourt, Raúl de Nieves, Jen DeNike, Jane Dickson, Amir H. Fallah, Brendan Fernandes, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Nicholas Galanin X Merritt Johnson, Theaster Gates, Clarity Haynes, Camille Henrot, Jesse Krimes, Yvette Mayorga, Marilyn Minter, Maynard Monrow, Carlos Motta, Paul Pfeiffer, Erin M. Riley, Florencia Rodriguez Giles, Sheena Rose, Moises Salazar, Hank Willis Thomas, Kennedy Yanko and Jwan Yosef.

Open to the public: 

April 7 12:00 – 10:00pm, April 8 12:00 – 6:00pm, April 9 12:00 – 10:00pm, April 10 – 14 12:00 – 8:00pm, April 20 – 22 12:00 – 8:00pm 

SENJU’S WATERFALL FOR CHICAGO

On view now through June 26
The Art Institute of Chicago

Under a combination of white light and UV lighting, the works evocatively express the force and motion of falling water. These enchanting painted screens are the work and a gift of Senju (b. 1958), a contemporary proponent of Nihonga, traditional Japanese painting. Known for his signature Waterfall works, Senju created the panels on view at the Art Institute specifically for the museum’s Gallery 109, the space designed by architect Andō Tadao. Thinking of the exhibition as a collaboration between himself and the architect through time, Senju tailored the scale and lighting to best suit this distinctive space.

BARELY FAIR

April 8 – 10, 2022 | 6:00 – 10:00 pm
Color Club | 4146 N Elston Ave.

Barely Fair is a miniature art fair operated by the artist-run project space Julius Caesar. The invitational fair presents a tiny peek inside the programming of 30 contemporary art galleries, project spaces, and curatorial projects from around the world. Included spaces exhibit works in 1:12 scale booths built to mimic the design of a standard fair. Barely Fair opens with a vernissage on April 8 and runs through April 24. Located at the arts and events space Color Club, the fair will run with daily hours through the first weekend, and be open for weekly gallery hours and by appointment through April 24th.

POP STARS! POPULAR CULTURE AND CONTEMPORARY ART

March 21, 2022 – March 1, 2023
21c Museum Hotel Chicago

The multi-media exhibition illuminates the intersection of celebrity, commerce, technology and the media, including notable works by Nick Cave, Titus Kaphar, Hank Willis Thomas and Kehinde Wiley, among others. Spanning all 10,000+ square feet of the 21c Museum Hotel Chicago’s gallery space, Pop Stars! features over 90 works of art by 55 artists from around the world. The artists exhibited in Pop Stars! examine recent shifts in how culture is being created and consumed, demonstrating the dominance of the popular as today’s ubiquitous culture. Curated by Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites. 

A guided docent tour will be available on Friday, April 8 from 5:00 – 6:00pm.

THEODORA ALLEN: SATURNINE

March 29 – July 10, 2022
The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

The Driehaus Museum presents Theodora Allen: Saturnine as part of their 2022 contemporary exhibition program A Tale of Today. Drawing upon the museum’s focus on ornamentation and exquisite craft, the exhibition—previously on view at the Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark), curated by Stephanie Cristello—resonates with specific histories and motifs within the Nickerson Mansion and Driehaus collection, and installed within select period rooms of the Gilded Age mansion. A monograph published by Motto Books in Berlin accompanies the traveling exhibition. 

An opening reception will take place April 6, 7:00 – 9:00pm.

SPEKTRAL QUARTET: ENIGMA

April 8, 2022 | 6pm & 8pm
Adler Planetarium

Performed live by the multi-GRAMMY-nominated Spektral Quartet, ENIGMA is a hypnotic collision of music and film, tempting audiences to investigate the secret alcoves of their own minds. Distinguished on 2021 Best of lists by NPR Music and The New York Times, ENIGMA combines the mysterious sounds of internationally-acclaimed composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir with the cryptic visuals of video artist Sigurdur Gudjonsson (Venice Biennale 2022) – debuting in Chicago this April at the Adler Planetarium’s iconic 360-degree dome theater.

Chris Larson: The Residue of Labor

April 8–May 21, 2022
Opening reception April 8, 6:00–8:00pm | 401 N Paulina St.

ENGAGE Projects is pleased to announce The Residue of Labor, a site-specific exhibition by St. Paul-based multimedia artist Chris Larson. The exhibition will be presented across two locations: Larson will debut a primary, large-scale installation at an offsite warehouse in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood (401 N Paulina St), in addition to a small presentation of works at ENGAGE Projects (864 N Ashland Ave). At the offsite location — a 10,000 square-foot warehouse in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood — Larson’s large-scale, site specific installation will include 55 recent works ranging from sculpture, video, drawing, painting, and photography, as well as an immersive work titled Thread Room.

NICK CAVE AND BOB FAUST: RAPT ON THE MILE

Ongoing
679 N Michigan Ave

Rapt on The Mile is designed to act as a multi-story beacon inviting Chicagoans and visitors from around the world to enjoy all that iconic Michigan Avenue has to offer. Installed by Creative Graphics Management, the vinyl piece spans more than three stories and wraps 6,000+ square-feet. The expansive building-wrapped mural utilizes iconic images and layered colors to create a three-dimensional garden, evocative of a fertile migratory hub, much like the way Cave sees the city. The vibrant mural, which now wraps the 679 N. Michigan Avenue building, is presented by The Magnificent Mile® Association with EXPO CHICAGO and key support and funding from World Business Chicago, Choose Chicago, the City of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Northern Trust, The Peninsula Chicago, and Water Tower Realty.

BOB FAUST: with all, and still…

On view now through May 2022
The Peninsula Chicago

with all, and still… is a series of layered, billboard-scaled works created from photographic details captured by local Chicago artist Bob Faust from several of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. The vibrant, digital images are used as the main medium to create new artworks with unique reads from differing vantage points. The result is a colorful and immersive experience that feels as if the vernacular panels of distant canvas billboards have been transformed and transported to The Peninsula Chicago lobby, providing an urban and industrial counterpoint to the elegance of the surrounding hotel spaces.

Wednesday, April 6

The Arts Club of Chicago
5:30–6:30pm | Exhibition Tour, Kamrooz Aram

Please note this event is at capacity.
Join artist Kamrooz Aram for a tour and discussion of his exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, where new and previously-made works examine the hierarchies of modernist aesthetics, challenging the false opposition between ornament and abstraction.

Postponed
Society for Contemporary Art, Fullerton Hall | Art Institute of Chicago
6:00–7:00pm | Performance, Evelyn T. Wang: Layers of Vocalization

This event has been postponed until further notice
Evelyn T. Wang’s new lecture performance is about layers. Layers of paint, ink, and graphite. Layers of make-up and their destiny. Layers of identities. Layers of language, one stacked on top of the other, loose and controlled, singing over speaking, listening over talking. The last layer is one made out of time—meeting painter Agnes Martin in the ruin of her semi-Zen garden to discuss how the body dissolves every line drawn, every color chosen.

The Richard H. Driehaus Museum
7:00–9:00pm | Opening Reception, Theodora Allen: Saturnine

The Driehaus Museum presents Theodora Allen: Saturnine as part of their 2022 contemporary exhibition program A Tale of Today. Drawing upon the museum’s focus on ornamentation and exquisite craft, the exhibition—previously on view at the Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark), curated by Stephanie Cristello—resonates with specific histories and motifs within the Nickerson Mansion and Driehaus collection, and installed within select period rooms of the Gilded Age mansion.

Friday, April 8

Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art
6:00–9:00pm | Opening Reception, Wanting it Both Ways

The Ukrainian Institute is pleased to announce the opening of Wanting it Both Ways with artists Bill Conger, Tanya Gill, Mie Kongo, and Jennifer Mannebach.

Chicago Artists Coalition
9:00–11:00am | The Annual Breakfast

Join us at The Annual Breakfast and connect with artists, curators, collectors, and art enthusiasts from around the world, while getting a glimpse into what’s happening in Chicago’s emerging art scene. 

Mana Contemporary
6:00–9:00pm | Open House

Mana Contemporary Chicago invites you to celebrate their new programming, including Michael Heizer: HOLLYWOOD 24, at their spring open house. The event is free and open to all ages. 

KAVI GUPTA
5:00–9:00pm | Opening Reception + Performance

Kavi Gupta invites you to an evening of art, music, performance, energy healing, and tarot readings in celebration of the openings of A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, a solo exhibition of new works by Devan Shimoyama examining cultural representations related to transformation, and Stars Are Born in Darkness, a solo exhibition of new work by Alisa Sikelianos-Carter envisioning a parallel universe in which white supremacy has been eradicated and Black features are honored as a manifestation of the mystical. 

Join Shimoyama and legendary Chicago-based drag sensation Miss Toto, as, throughout the evening, they invoke the spirit and shimmering artistry of Shimoyama’s newest body of work through a series of transformational performances, including appearances by Chicago Queens, Kenzie Coulee and O’laysia; and Sikelianos-Carter as she welcomes diviner Jabulile Mickle-Molefe, who will manifest the mystical through free tarot readings and energy healing in the gallery.

Friday, April 8th, 5-9 pm
First Performance: 6 pm 
Second Performance: 8 pm 
Free tarot readings and energy healing: 5-9 pm

Kavi Gupta | 219 N. Elizabeth St., Floors 1 & 2 

Buddy x Printed Matter at Chicago Cultural Center 
5:00–8:00pm | Reception 

Join Printed Matter and Buddy Chicago from 5:00 – 8:00pm for a reception celebrating prints and editions at the Chicago Cultural Center. Free and open to the public.

Saturday, April 9

Blanc Gallery
6:00–9:00pm | Opening reception, BIG WORDS

Join artist Brandon Breaux at Blanc Gallery for an opening reception of BIG WORDS.

Chicago Cultural Center
10:00am–1:00pm | Reception, An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman, Jin Lee: Views & Scenes

Two exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center will offer a special reception to meet the artists on-site for Q & A. In the first floor Michigan Avenue Galleries are animations and paintings by Leslie Baum, Selina Trepp, and Diane Christiansen in An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman. In the second floor galleries, Jin Lee presents photographs in Views & Scenes. The Chicago Cultural Center, at 78 E. Washington, is open 10 to 5 every day, and all exhibitions are free.

Chicago Athletic Association
10:00am | EXPO at CAA: Printed Matter with Sasha Phyars-Burgess

On behalf of EXPO CHICAGO and Printed Matter, we invite you to a conversation between artists Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Cecil McDonald Jr., Katherine Simóne Reynolds and curator Asha Iman Veal in which they focus on their personal practices and photography in Chicago and St. Louis, and discuss the ethics of street photography within predominantly Black communities. Coffee and tea will be provided. RSVP with link above.

Pagoda Red
10:30am–12:00pm | Musings of Calm with Past + Present Chinese Art

This immersive exhibition featuring modern Chinese masters alongside historic objects explores the question: how do you find peace and calm during turbulent times? Join us as Orianna Cacchione (Curator of Global Art at the Smart Museum of Art), Dan Chen (Director of Chambers Fine Art) and Betsy Nathan (Founder of PAGODA RED) present these essential pairings of past and present. And discover how the ancient teachings of Ming Scholar Wen Zhenheng can be applied to life through our relationship with material objects, fine art, and state-of-mind.

PATRON GALLERY
11:30 AM | Skin in the Game: A Conversational Panel

Join Soo Shin, Samuel Levi Jones, Kristin Korolowicz, Zoe Lukov for a conversation surrounding the Skin in the Game exhibition. 

Ralph Arnold Gallery at Loyola University Chicago
12:00–4:00pm | Open hours, This Too Shall Pass

Curated by Joshi Radin Flores. Featuring works by Rebecca Beachy, N. Masani Landfair, and Nancy Valladares

The experience of time has ruptured in ways large and small. From the shared temporal limbo of the past two years to the passing of accustomed norms and expectations for the future, we are poignantly reminded of the precarity and temporariness of current conditions. Through their works, the artists in This Too Shall Pass address cycles of materiality as processes that reclaim, restore, regenerate, reconstitute and reconfigure.

KAVI GUPTA
1:00 PM | Artist-Led Exhibition Walkthrough with ARGHAVAN KHOSRAVI

Join artist Arghavan Khosravi as she provides an artist-led walkthrough of her exhibition The Witness at Kavi Gupta | Washington Blvd. Floor 2

Khosravi’s practice takes a conscious look at how values are transmitted and fostered through visual art. Typically, the only women portrayed in Persian miniature paintings have a subservient or secondary role, lacking agency and social significance. The value system transmitted by that iconography continues to shape Iranian gender politics today. Khosravi’s paintings introduce contemporary figurative and symbolic iconographies that challenge that misogynistic cultural architecture by spotlighting the contemporary international fight for gender equality. Abstract elements, like black, liquid plumes, reference corrupted economic and political systems, while female bodies are often depicted as being shackled or with their mouths sewn shut.

ANDREW RAFACZ
2:00–4:00pm | Performance + Artist-Led Exhibition Tour

Interdisciplinary visual artist, activist and arts educator Krystle Lemonias will perform in the gallery and lead a tour of their exhibition Yu cyan ketch Quaku, yu ketch im shut. There will also be a tour of the concurrent exhibition Paradiso by artist and educator Melissa Leandro.

KAVI GUPTA
2:00 PM | Artist-Led Exhibition Walkthrough with Beverly Fishman

Join artist Beverly Fishman as she provides an artist-led walkthrough of her exhibition FEELS LIKE LOVE at Kavi Gupta | Washington Blvd. Floor 1

For decades, Fishman has diligently studied the visual vocabulary that pharmaceutical designers deploy in their calculated efforts to market antidepressants, anxiolytics, amphetamines, anti-inflammatories, beta blockers, opioids, and other chemicals to the masses. Morphed and elevated by Fishman in her studio, these medicinal motifs become the building blocks for ecstatic visual cocktails that open doors to the aesthetic sublime.

Rubenstein Forum, The University of Chicago
4:00–6:00pm | Guided Tour, Art at the David Rubenstein Forum

The inaugural Art at the David Rubenstein Forum program showcases loans from the art collection of University of Chicago Trustee Kenneth C. Griffin in tandem with historical documents from the collection of University of Chicago Trustee and Forum namesake David M. Rubenstein. Rather than presenting an exhibition in a designated gallery space, the Art at the David Rubenstein Forum program integrates selections from these two collections into convening spaces throughout the 10-story building, designed by the acclaimed New York architecture firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The selections intersect with the rigorous scholarship and teaching at the University of Chicago and support the Forum’s mission of contributing to the University’s character as an intellectual destination that builds community through the exchange of ideas. Pre-registration required. Click here for more info.

South Asia Institute
5:30–6:45pm | Performance, Kiss of Spider Woman

This cross-disciplinary performance work will feature multiple participants during its 77-minute duration. Audience members will have each of their senses engaged as they navigate through the space, contemplating their experience with the world around us.