Override 2018

OVERRIDE | A Billboard Project is a cutting edge citywide public art initiative, presented by EXPO CHICAGO and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). Displayed throughout Chicago’s City Digital Network (CDN), the citywide exhibition ran from September 17–October 7, 2018 to align with the seventh annual exposition. 

Placing artwork within this public context and the broader presentation of billboard advertising, OVERRIDE takes its name from industry terminology referring to the continuation of an outdoor advertising program beyond a contracted period. Fully integrated into the language of advertising and local familiar signage, each of the works included within the OVERRIDE program present the opportunity for artists to intercept and push the boundaries of how visual culture is disseminated in our increasingly image-based environment. Selected from EXPO CHICAGO 2018 Exhibitors, the artists included each engage with the medium in a dynamic way, from existing projects that seamlessly extend toward a conceptual continuation of their current practice, to new works created specifically for this context.

Building upon the City of Chicago and DCASE’s longstanding commitment to public art, OVERRIDE provides EXPO CHICAGO a key opportunity beyond Navy Pier to showcase works by leading international artists in neighborhoods throughout the city.

Program Statement

Curated within a public context, and the broader phenomenon of billboard advertising, the OVERRIDE exhibition program takes its name from industry terminology—placing artworks by major international artists throughout the City of Chicago’s digital network, the initiative intercepts our everyday experience of visual culture. The 2018 program, entitled Interlude at Hand, will feature twelve international artists whose work addresses various contemporary thematics that employ a hand-made gesture—from signs of protest, to texts, archives, and modes of representation—within a poetic framework, in addition to a dedicated site-specific installation commissioned by Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, New York).

Located at 515 W. Congress Pwky, visible from both the highway into downtown Chicago and at pedestrian level on the street, Gates’ latest series Black Madonna (2018) will be presented on this single screen, configured from selections of his recent body of work that interrogates and delves into the Johnson Publishing Archives, coinciding with the artist’s exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland), Fondazione Prada (Venice, Italy), and in advance of his show at Haus der Kunst (Munich, Germany, opening October 2018). Gates’ sourcing of the Johnson image collections and archives both exposes and adopts the unique viewing experience of the OVERRIDE program, as a site both embedded within, and critically engaged with, the advertising language it adopts.

Throughout Chicago’s downtown and neighborhoods, the expansive network of over 28 sites will feature John Bankston (Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco), Olaf Breuning (Carbon 12, Dubai), Brian Calvin (Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago), Judy Chicago (Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco and Salon94, New York), Douglas Coupland (Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto), Sam Durant (Praz-Delavallade, Paris, Los Angeles), Paul Heyer (Night Gallery, Los Angeles), Glenn Ligon (Luhring Augustine, New York, Brooklyn), Portia Munson (P.P.O.W, New York), Anahita Razmi (Carbon 12, Dubai), Lee Wan (313 Art Project, Seoul), and Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez (Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago).

The presence of text is explored through many of the 2018 OVERRIDE pieces, such as Sam Durant’s Consider Listening, whose script is sourced from photographs of protest marches, sit-ins, and uprisings, among other events surrounding liberation struggles, Paul Heyer’s poetic and illusionistic work I am the Sky, with black cursive text among realistically rendered paintings of clouds, or Canadian artist and novelist Douglas Coupland’s It’s not an illusion. Time is moving more quickly., which harkens to concerns of science and physics, as much as it does to the rapid and ephemeral visual landscape of the billboards themselves. Durant’s employment of handwritten text serves as a backdrop to experience works such as Glenn Ligon’s Hands, a closely cropped black and white isolation of endless hands in the air that could depict either a concert or a protest, John Bankston’s seemingly innocent coloring book aesthetic in Farewell, or Portia Munson’s careful arrangement of pink objects, a sculptural installation first exhibited at the New Museum’s Bad Girls exhibition in 1994. This feminist tact is developed through the inclusion of a still from Judy Chicago’s seminal performance Women and Smoke—also featured in the 2018 EXPO VIDEO program curated by Anna Gritz—a work known for the term ‘feminizing the landscape,’ and its criticism of the male dominated field of Land Art in 1970s California. In Purple Atmosphere, Chicago’s piece takes on new contexts. As if travelling through both space and time, the billowing lavender cloud floats above a seascape, amid the skyscrapers and transitory space of the city’s digital highway monitors. 

Unfolding at various points within the urban landscape, the OVERRIDE program builds upon the City of Chicago and DCASE’s longstanding commitment to public art, and provides EXPO CHICAGO a key platform to showcase works by leading international artists beyond Navy Pier. 

Curated by Stephanie Cristello, Alexis Brocchi, and Daniel Schulman

John Bankston | Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
Olaf Breuning | Carbon 12, Dubai
Brian Calvin | Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
Judy Chicago | Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco and Salon94, New York
Douglas Coupland | Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Sam Durant | Praz-Delavallade, Paris, Los Angeles
Paul Heyer | Night Gallery, Los Angeles 
Glenn Ligon | Luhring Augustine, New York, Brooklyn
Portia Munson | P.P.O.W, New York 
Anahita Razmi | Carbon 12, Dubai
Lee Wan | 313 Art Project, Seoul 
Amanda Williams | Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago with Andres L. Hernandez 

2018 Commission | 515 W. Congress Pkwy 

Theaster Gates | Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, New York

John Bankston

Farewell, 2015
Courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco

Olaf Breuning 

Stock Market, 2011
Courtesy of Carbon 12, Dubai

Brian Calvin 

Untitled, 2018
Courtesy of Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago

Judy Chicago

Purple Atmosphere, 1972
Courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco and Salon94, New York

Douglas Coupland

It’s not an illusion. Time is moving more quickly, 2011
Courtesy of Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Sam Durant

Consider Listening, 2018
Courtesy of Praz-Delavallade, Paris, Los Angeles

Paul Heyer

I am the Sky, 2018
Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles

Glenn Ligon

Hands, 1996
Courtesy of Luhring Augustine, New York, Brooklyn

Portia Munson

Pink Project: Table, 1994/2016
Courtesy of P.P.O.W, New York 

Anahita Razmi

Roof Piece Tehran, 2011
Courtesy of Carbon 12, Dubai

Lee Wan

For a Better Tomorrow, 2015
Courtesy of 313 Art Project, Seoul 

Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez 

A Way, Away (Listen While I Say), 2017
Courtesy of the Artists and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago 

Located at 515 W. Congress Pkwy

Theaster Gates

Black Madonna, 2018
Courtesy of Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, New York