At “Ground Floor,” a biennial exhibition spotlighting emerging artists from around Chicago at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., creators are given a boost during a pivotal moment in their careers.
With nearly 100 works, the show features 20 recent graduates from Chicago’s top Master of Fine Arts programs: Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In addition to showcasing recent graduates, the show highlights emerging trends in Chicago’s creative scene.
Selected by a jury of working artists and educators, the graduates' work encompasses a wide range of perspectives and mediums. There is painting, sculpture, fabric installations and videography. There is even a virtual reality piece where a stylized Abraham Lincoln recounts scenes from his life surrounded by pastoral scenery.
The show “feels very reflective,” said Mariela Acuña, HPAC’s exhibitions and residency manager, who helped curate the exhibition. “Whether it is reflecting on personal issues, traditions or histories, there is a lot of thought in the work.”
Now in its seventh iteration, the biennial began as a way to bring together young artists from across the city so they might learn from one another and collaborate.
“These five schools were producing really great artists but these artists weren’t in conversation … so we wanted to think about how the Hyde Park Art Center could play a role in being that hub and bringing them together,” said Allison Peters Quinn, HPAC’s director of exhibitions and residency and a co-curator of the exhibition.
According to Quinn, since that first exhibition in 2010 Chicago’s universities have formed networks to encourage more collaboration between schools. “There were moments where we were like do we need to do this anymore because these schools were having more conversations and that is part of why we are doing this and then the pandemic happened and suddenly no one was doing any of that,” she said.
Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 protests and the ongoing war in Ukraine have impacted the artistic practices of a number of the featured graduates. Many are thinking about what it means to recenter themselves with respect to global events and how their relationships have been impacted as a result of these shifts.
Northwestern University graduate Travis Morehead is one such artist reinterpreting a relationship with the outside world in the wake of change. At the start of the pandemic, Morehead said he would walk around Northwestern’s campus, often spotting signs of beaver activity in the ponds that dot the lakeshore. He watched as local groundskeepers would try and protect trees with fences and netting only for the beavers to thwart their efforts at each turn.
Inspired by this back and forth between humans and nature, Morehead began collecting found wooden structures like shipping pallets and old sawhorses, whittling them down to impossibly delicate whispers of their former selves. His efforts became, “Holding Pattern,” a series of wooden sculptures that form ghost-like impressions of the tools and time it took to craft them.
Other artists are using their work to call attention to issues affecting their communities.
"Rolling up the river (ProudT Mary, help my brothers and sisters suffering from Tina)" by Ajmal Millar.
When you enter the exhibition your eyes are immediately drawn upward to Ajmal “MAS MAN” Millar’s piece, “Rolling up the river (ProudT Mary, help my brothers and sisters suffering from Tina)”. Suspended from the ceiling like a pair of massive butterfly wings, the work is composed of a large cotton mesh draped over a welded steel frame. At the top of the piece, where the two sides of the mesh meet is a circle of blue and green glass drug pipes, a nod to the ongoing methamphetamine epidemic affecting the Black queer and trans community. The piece takes its name from the colloquial term for meth, “Tina,” often abbreviated “T,” and the Tina Turner song “Proud Mary.”
Millar, a School of the Art Institute graduate, created this particular work to pay tribute to a friend who, after struggling with a meth addiction, is now 10 years sober and working in their community to help those navigating similar struggles. “No matter what you are, if you’re human you go through several transformations, and I wanted to create something that could change form depending on when you looked at it and how your perception was at that time, wherever you are in life, at that moment.” said Millar.
Other exhibition artists include: Sungho Bae (SAIC), Juan Baños (UIC), Scott Campbell (U. of C.), Ále Campos (SAIC), Sofia Fernandez Diaz (SAIC), Ali Georgescu (CCC), Sara Grose (U. of C.), Payton Harris Woodard (SAIC), Patrick Hubbell (SAIC), Nicholas Jackson (UIC), Natasha Moustache (CCC), Elissa Osterland (U. of C.), Jess Atieno (SAIC), Shabtai Pinchevsky (NU), Emilie Plunkett (CCC), Corey Smith (SAIC), Frank Vega (SAIC), and Jessica Walker (NU).
HPAC will release a full catalog of featured artists this Spring. The center will also host a performance in the gallery on March 2 from 6 - 8 p.m. to accompany some of the artist’s works.
“Ground Floor,” the Hyde Park Art Center’s biennial exhibition of emerging artists, is on view through March 5 at 5020 S. Cornell Ave. The show is free to the public.
