/Dialogues 2017
A curated component of the 2017 program, the second annual Symposium featured a day-long series of discussions and discourse surrounding the intersecting fields of art and architecture—including original members from Superstudio and the Italian Radical Design movement, artists David Hartt, Thomas Demand, and Luisa Lambri; critics Felix Burrichter from PIN—UP and Julian Rose from Artforum, as well as Flavin Judd, among others.
Additional panels included an intimate conversation between author Sarah Thornton and artist Paola Pivi; artists Tom Burr and Nina Beier; a keynote discussion with Sharjah Art Foundation President and Director Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi; and an interview with Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz on his first-ever U.S. museum survey organized by Omar Kholeif, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.
The Curatorial Forum, presented in partnership with Independent Curators International (ICI), and the EXPO CHICAGO Art Critics Forum was hosted on the /Dialogues Stage, open to the public for the first time since the inception of the program. The Symposium and announced panels joined the full program of over 30 discussions on the /Dialogues stage on-site at EXPO CHICAGO.
Click by day to view full footage from each of the discussions presented as part of /Dialogues.
Thursday, September 14 2017
Visibility | Invisibility — Sculpture in Everyday Space
Nina Beier (Artist, STANDARD (OSLO), joségarcía, mx), Tom Burr (Artist, Bortolami Gallery). Moderated by Stephanie Cristello, Director of Programming, EXPO CHICAGO and Editor-in-Chief, THE SEEN
What is the responsibility of formalism in the twenty-first century? This panel traced the work of contemporary artists whose diverse sculptural practices are inflected, transformed, or reflective of their environment—from public space, to galleries, and institutions. Tracing the implications of visibility and invisibility through work that both adopts and appropriates existing materials, this discussion addresses the poetic and political consequences of how works appear (or disappear) in a given context through the lens of object-making.
Conversations at the Edge — EXPO VIDEO: These Restless Times
Stanya Kahn (Artist, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects) in conversation with Ali Subotnick (2017 EXPO VIDEO Curator, SAIC MA 1997)
Join EXPO VIDEO Curator Ali Subotnick for a discussion with Los Angeles-based artist Stanya Kahn, whose work was included in the 2017 program, These Restless Times. Featuring a dynamic curated screening program for film, video, and new media works, EXPO VIDEO is installed on the main exposition floor in large-format screening rooms. Presented as part of Conversations at the Edge (CATE), organized by SAIC’s Film, Video, and New Media Department.
Curatorial Forum Presents — Out of Body: Black Identity in Abstraction
Valerie Cassel Oliver (Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art | The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) and Naomi Beckwith (Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator | Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago). Moderated by Romi Crawford (Visual Critical Studies and Liberal Arts Associate Professor | SAIC).
Join EXPO CHICAGO and Independent Curators International (ICI) for this exclusive public panel as part of the Curatorial Forum. Curators Valerie Cassel Oliver and Naomi Beckwith discuss how abstraction deals with representations of blackness without or outside of figuration, using abstraction to challenge didactic ways of portraying the black body in art. Centered around the work of Howardena Pindell, a multidisciplinary African-American artist, whose work follows a historical trajectory of black representation in abstract painting, the conversation, moderated by Romi Crawford, will also trace the influence of female and queer artists, and the discourse bbetween artistic intention and critical response in shaping public response. Presented in partnership with ICI.
EXPO CHICAGO Art Critics Forum: Criticism in the Post-Truth Era
Sarah Douglas (ARTnews), Ana Bilbao (Afterall), and Kevin McGarry (Freelance) and Kenny Schachter (artnet news). Moderated by Christian Viveros-Fauné (artnet News).
Conversations and Perspectives on Contemporary Art Criticism — the thematic focus of the 2017 EXPO CHICAGO Art Critics Forum, Criticism in the Post-Truth Era, will address the impact of the current political climate on the state of art journalism. Featuring panelists from a variety of perspectives, speakers will present keynotes before opening into a group discussion. Presented in partnership with Virgin Hotels.
Friday, September 15 2017
Art & Architecture Symposium
A curated component of the full /Dialogues program, the second annual Symposium featured a day-long series of discussions and discourse surrounding the intersecting fields of art and architecture.
SuperDesign: Radical Italian Design 1965–1975
Lapo Binazzi (Artist and Architect), Maria Cristina Didero (Independent Curator), Francesca Molteni (Film Director), and Gianni Pettena (Artist and Architect)
What started as a rally against the establishment, the Radical Italian Design movement (architettura radicale) was formed out of the belief that creation could change the world—not through political acts or war, but through architecture and design. SuperDesign investigates how and why these designers, during this short yet dynamic time, changed the way we think about the objects that surround us. Featuring original perpetrators of the Radical movement—Gianni Pettena and Lapo Binazzi—the panel is moderated by leading Italian design curator Maria Cristina Didero, alongside film Director Francesca Molteni, whose documentary will launch in 2017.
Presenting Partner
Architecture as Metaphor: Nature vs. Culture
David Hartt (Artist, Corbett vs. Dempsey | Chicago, David Nolan | New York) in conversation with Felix Burrichter (Editor-in-Chief | PIN—UP Magazine)
Aligning with the opening of David Hartt’s in the forest, a newly commissioned solo exhibition at the Graham Foundation, the artist will speak on his multi-part installation, intersecting elements and ideologies of architecture alongside photographic and filmic practice. Focusing on the Bosque Urbano de San Patricio, an urban park in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Hartt’s anthropological approach considers the connections between ideology and the built environment: interior vs. exterior, public vs. private, nature vs. culture. Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation.
Make New History: Photography in the Expanded Field of Architecture
Adam Caruso (Caruso St John Architects, London | Zürich), Thomas Demand (Artist | Matthew Marks), Florian Idenburg (SO—IL | New York), and Luisa Lambri (Artist | Luhring Augustine). Moderated by Jesús Vassallo (Architect and Writer)
Join this Chicago Architecture Biennial program on the /Dialogues stage for a conversation with artists and architects included in Make New History, featuring collaborations intersecting photography and architecture. The discussion, organized by Co-Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (Johnston Marklee), addresses the historical relationship between the two fields in the expanded field of media, sites of display, and production technologies. Presented in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Resistance and Necessity: Language in Art and Architecture
Flavin Judd (Curator and Co-President | Judd Foundation), Sarah Herda (Director | Graham Foundation), and Julian Rose (Senior Editor | Artforum)
Writing was a parallel activity to Donald Judd’s art, architecture, and design practice. In his essay "Art and Architecture," from 1983, he states, "My aphorism is not that form follows function but that it never violates it." This essay is one of many texts by the late artist included in Donald Judd Writings, the most comprehensive survey of Judd's writing in one volume, released by the Judd Foundation in partnership with David Zwirner Books. This panel examines the role of language—both its resistance and necessity at the crossroads of art and architectural practice. Presented in partnership with the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Saturday, September 16 2017
IN/SITU: Chronopolitics
Bethany Collins (Artist, PATRON, Chicago), Lavar Munroe (Artist, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco), and Dan Peterman (Artist, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago). Moderated by Florence Derieux (2017 IN/SITU Curator).
Join IN/SITU Curator Florence Derieux for a panel discussion with select artists from the 2017 program, entitled Chronopolitics. Featuring large-scale suspended sculptures and site-specific works within the exhibition hall, IN/SITU is presented within the vast vaulted architecture of Navy Pier.
Cultural Cargo
Paola Pivi (Artist | Galerie Perrotin) and Sarah Thornton (Writer and Sociologist of Culture)
Renowned author and cultural sociologist, Sarah Thornton, interviews Paola Pivi, an artist whose dynamic sculptures and installations address the tragicomedies of life, society, nature and power. Appropriating cultural symbols and translating them into an art context, the subjects of Pivi’s spectacular and enigmatic practice have included live animals in the museum, an upside-down G-91 fighter jet, anthropomorphic feathered polar bears and unedited documentation of staged performances.
Palais de Tokyo | Singing Stones In Conversation
Bouchra Khalili (Artist) and Cauleen Smith (Artist, Corbett vs. Dempsey). Moderated by Alison Gass (Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum)
Join Moroccan-French visual artist, Bouchra Khalili and Cauleen Smith, an American interdisciplinary filmmaker, for a conversation about national identity and social activism in moving image and media. The discussion, moderated by Alison Gass, addresses issues frequent in their works, such as border crossing, migration, cultural heritage and identity. Both artists are included in Singing Stones, curated by the Palais de Tokyo's Katell Jaffrès, bringing together 11 emerging artists from both the French and Chicago art scenes, as part of the first off-site exhibition in the United States with the Institut française. Presented in partnership with the Smart Museum of Art.
Art Criticism and Rock & Roll
Jan Verwoert (Critic and Author), Jörg Heiser (Author), Ian F. Svenonius (Musician and Author), and Nadya Tolokonnikova (Founder, Pussy Riot). Moderated by Zachary Cahill (Curator, Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry).
Featuring critics, writers, musicians and music theorists, this panel will focus on lyricism in the expanded sense of their multi-faceted practices—from the contemporary art review to sonic adaptations. How does the metric of language—rhythm, rhyme, and lyricism—change within these contexts? Art critics Jan Verwoert and Jörg Heiser, both members of the band La Stampa (Italian for "the press") are joined by musician and acclaimed author of Censorship Now!! Ian F. Svenonius and Nadya Tolokonnikova—founder of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot—in advance of their Fall 2017 album release. Presented in partnership with the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.
Sunday, September 17 2017
Global Art Geographies
Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi (President and Director | Sharjah Art Foundation)
Aligning with the 2017 edition of the Sharjah Biennial, this discussion focuses on the global impact and responsibility of institutions’ off-site international programs, as well as the importance of their influence on the region.
The Hospitality of Violence
Michael Rakowitz (Artist | Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Jane Lombard Gallery) and Omar Kholeif (Manilow Senior Curator and Director of Global Initiatives | Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago)
Based in Chicago, Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz makes work that explores recent contested social, political and cultural histories. Drawing on personal experiences and research on these subjects, as well as history and popular culture, Rakowitz creates illustrated objects, installations and performances that invite viewers to contemplate their complicit relationship to the political world around them, recognizing that hospitality and hostility are interlinked. The artist’s first US museum survey, curated by Omar Kholeif, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, features early works, a new commission and major installations, such as The invisible enemy should not exist (2007-ongoing), a lifelong project by the artist to reproduce to scale items looted from the Iraqi National Museum, each made to scale and using recycled food supplies from Middle Eastern food stores in the United States. Collectively, the exhibition tells a story of restitution and reconstitution, positioning Rakowitz as one of the most important artists of our time.