The Society

The Acquisition Committee of the Society for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to announce the five acquisition finalists for 2012: a work on paper by Tony Conrad (American, born 1940), a multimedia installation by Jimmie Durham (American, born 1940), a sculpture by Robert Grosvenor (American, born 1937), a film installation by Paul Sharits (American, 1943-1993), and a painting by Martin Wong (American, 1946-1999).

For more than 40 years, Tony Conrad’s highly experimental work has moved freely between music, film, video, television, performance, painting, and sculpture. He aims to expand the formal boundaries around disciplines because he believes that “the job of an artist is to discover laws to violate that haven’t been made yet.” Conrad was part of the underground music group Theatre of Eternal Music, which improvised with combinations of harmonic tones and sustained notes in extended duration. In 1966 he made The Flicker—now considered a landmark of Structural film—consisting of only rapidly alternating black and white frames. During the 1970s, he created film objects by cooking, frying, and pickling film stock....

Jimmie Durham insisted, “I’m not really an artist on my own, I’m a social artist in that I want my work to be part of whatever discourses are going on.” For over 30 years, as a poet, essayist, performer, sculptor, filmmaker, and activist for the American Indian Movement, Durham has spoken out against cultural exploitation and displacement of indigenous peoples. He questions accepted notions of the “other” by mining historical figures who, like himself, have served as interpreters—either by choice or by force—between the oppressed and their subjugators....

For more than 50 years, Robert Grosvenor has given form to contradictions in his large-scale abstract sculptures. His practice is rooted in the dignity of ordinary, often slightly worn or used objects and materials and the vagaries of their meanings. In a departure from his Minimalist peers—who largely favored a highly refined, somewhat serious approach to the industrial elements in their work—Grosvenor playfully combined parts fabricated in the studio with those found in the world beginning in the early 1980s. He described them simply as “ideas that operate in the space between the floor and ceiling.”...

Paul Sharits was a pioneer experimental and Structural filmmaker whose work expanded the traditionally static viewing space of moving images. He began his studies as a painter, but later exploited the physical properties of film stock and the mechanical workings of the projector to create hallucinatory works that define the flicker film genre. After 1971 he produced single- and doublescreen 16mm works as well as immersive film installations, which he termed “locational” film pieces. Sharits challenged conventional ideas about film by creating pieces intended for gallery exhibition instead of cinematic venues: “People have not developed a way to reacting to seeing a film in the same way that they would react to, say, a [Mark] Rothko after all these years of abstract painting.”...

Martin Wong’s singular approach to painting combines painstaking documentary realism with highly charged symbols and decorative motifs to reflect a culturally diverse worldview. Wong studied ceramics in northern California and was a member of several performance troupes in San Francisco before eventually becoming a self-taught painter and moving to New York. He arrived in 1978 and joined the lively East Village art scene, filled with artists making political work about their personal and cultural experiences. His urban landscapes show a critical engagement with gritty everyday scenes; an obsessive focus on detail; a flair for ornamentation; and an affinity for language, symbols, and storytelling....

The weekend trip will include an exploration of local museums, historic and modernist architectural sites, restaurants, and private art collections in Indianapolis and Columbus, Indiana. Attendees will get a private tour of the Indianapolis Art Museum (IMA) by Lisa Freiman, Chair of the Contemporary Art Department and organizing curator of the U.S. pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. The IMA oversees the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park (also known as “100 Acres”), one of the largest museum art parks in the country.

This gallery walk in Chicago’s dynamic West Loop will feature a selection of contemporary art galleries presenting a diverse group of artists—ranging from emerging to the established veterans of the art world. Art dealers and some exhibiting artists will make presentations at each stop about the gallery’s program and current exhibition. They will also discuss their views of Chicago’s art scene and the process of contemporary art collecting. This will be an informative behind-the-scenes look at one of the most vibrant gallery districts in Chicago.

The New Yorker has described Albert Oehlen as “the most resourceful abstract painter alive.” He continually challenges conventions of abstract painting by approaching each work with its own set of questions and problems. Mining endless possibilities for picture making, he has deliberately used a range of painterly media and styles throughout his career. Oehlen has painted in shades of grey, collaged found advertisements, attached mirrors to canvas, used computer-generated imagery, and most recently, directly applied paint with his fingers.

Albert Oehlen (German, b. 1954) is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His antiauthoritarian works in the 1980s were marked by many collaborations with Werner Büttner, Georg Herold, and most notably, Martin Kippenberger. He has had solo exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris (2009–2010); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2009); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2005); Secession, Vienna (2004–2005); and many others including the Renaissance Society, Chicago (1995). His work was included in the traveling exhibition Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Culture organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2009). Oehlen also plays music and has been a mainstay in the psychedelic-pop band Red Krayola since the mid-1980s....

Live and silent auction featuring works by established, emerging, and cutting-edge artists. A fabulous selection of vacations, trips, and experiences.

All funds raised will be used to purchase artworks for the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Contemporary Art

Major support provided by:
Marc Jacobs
Tequila Avión
CS Magazine

R. H. Quaytman (American, born 1961) currently lives and works in New York. Three of her paintings were included in the 2011 Society for Contemporary Art Acquisition Exhibition. She will have a solo exhibition at The Renaissance Society, Chicago in January 2013. Quaytman has had solo exhibitions at museums and institutions including: Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Quaytman’s work has been included in group exhibitions at: CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Sculpture Center, NY; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; and MoMA PS1, NY. Quaytman was included in the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and the Whitney Biennial in 2010. Her work has recently been published in Spine, a 400-page volume that includes her work from the past decade....

Please join us for the Society for Contemporary Art’s annual event, which recognizes the special commitment and generosity of Patron and Angel members and provides an opportunity for our Board to thank you for your extraordinary support during the past season.

Ei Arakawa will organize a new live performance IWAKI ODORI (Sunbathe Museum) for the Society for Contemporary Art. Tomoo Arakawa, Kerstin Brästch, Jeffrey Rosen, and Sergei Tcherepnin join the performance inspired by the 2011 nuclear crisis and a tanning salon business owned by Tomoo Arakawa in Iwaki, Fukushima, Japan.

Ei Arakawa (born in 1977) has been based in New York since 1998. Working almost always collaboratively, his work defies easy categorization. Selected performances and exhibitions: Tate Modern, London (2012); Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2012); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2011); Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2009 and 2011); CAC Brétigny, Paris (2011); Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France (2011); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011);  DAAD Gallery, Berlin (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2011); Wiels, Brussel, Belgium (2011); Frieze Project, London, United Kingdom (2010), Galerie Neu, Berlin (2010). ...

Tomoo Arakawa is an older brother of Ei Arakawa. He runs three suntanning salons in and near Fukushima, Japan.  Since 2004, he initiated a legal entity UNITED BROTHERS to handle tax matters of suntanning salons....

DAS INSTITUT started as an import/export agency in 2007 by Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder (born 1979 / 1980, live in New York City), but no longer limited to the commercial meaning of "agent." Their collaboration is characterized by all kinds of visual and material manipulations, thus the modes of DAS INSTITUT develops an orchestration of objects such as printed reproductions, slide shows, silkscreened fabrics, posters, and paintings. Since June 2011, DAS INSTITUT has collaborated with UNITED BROTHERS on a variety of projects involving Tomoo Arakawa's sun tanning shop BLACKY IWAKI. Selected exhibitions; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland (2011); Deste Foundation, Athens (2011); 54th Venice Biennial, Venice, Italy (2011); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2011); New Jerseyy, Basel (2010)....

Sergei Tcherepnin (born in 1981) is a Brooklyn-based artist who uses performance, composition, and installation to explore the materiality of sound and its physical and psychological effects on the listener. Selected performances and exhibitions: Performa11 at New Museum, New York (2011); CAC Brétigny, Paris (2011); Murray Guy, New York (2011); 47 Canal, New York (2011); Societé, Berlin (2011); Tokyo Wonder Site, Shibuya (2011); Audio Visual Arts, New York (2010); Roulette, New York (2010); The Stone, New York (2008); Merkin Hall, New York (2008). His compositions have been performed by Da Capo Chamber Players, St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, American Wind Symphony Orchestra. He is a 2012 Artists-in-Residence at ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, New York....

Joseph Grigely will lecture on a topic from his forthcoming book Textualterity 2.

Joseph Grigely (American, born 1956) is a Professor of Visual & Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions internationally since 1994. Venues include the Center Georges Pompidou, Paris & Metz; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris; Kunsthaus, Zürich; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A 2008 survey of his work was co-organized by the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, and travelled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach. Grigely has been included in the Whitney, Venice, Berlin, Istanbul and Sydney Biennials. He has published several books includingTextualterity: Art, Theory, and Textual Criticism; Conversation Pieces; Blueberry Surprise, and Exhibition Prosthetics, as well as essays on disability theory and body criticism....

Please join us for the Society for Contemporary Art’s annual event, which enables new members to meet the SCA board and discuss the activities of our group. James Rondeau, Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chair and Curator, and Lisa Dorin, Associate Curator, will lead a private tour of the Contemporary Art collection, exclusively highlighting past acquisitions by the Society for Contemporary Art.

All RSVPs must be received by Thursday, September 1. You must be a new or recently upgraded member to attend. There is no charge for this event.