Please join us for a reception and talk by curator and author Manuel Herz to celebrate the opening of our winter exhibition, Architecture of Independence: African Modernism.

Friday, January 29
6:00pm: Talk by curator and author Manuel Herz
7-8:30 pm: Opening Reception

This exhibition is based on the book project African Modernism: Architecture of Independence by Manuel Herz in cooperation with the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Manuel Herz is an architect based in Basel, Switzerland. His recent projects include the Synagogue and Jewish Community Center in Mainz, Germany. He has taught at the ETH Zürich and at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and is currently professor of architecture and urban design studies at the University of Basel. Manuel's research addresses the relationship between migration, architecture, and nation-building and the spaces of refugee camps. His publications include Nairobi: Migration Shaping the City (with Shadi Rahbaran and supported by a Graham Foundation grant; Lars Müller Publishers, 2014); From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013); and African Modernism: Architecture of Independence.

Image: Jean Francois Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin, FIDAK - Foire Internationale de Dakar, 1974, Dakar (Senegal). Photo © Iwan Baan.

For more information on the exhibition, Architecture of Independence: African Modernism, click here.

To conclude our current exhibition, Barbara Kasten: Stages, please join us for a conversation between Barbara Kasten and Chicago-based artist Chelsea Culprit. The discussion will be accompanied by a special screening of Inside Outside / Stages of Light (1985), Kasten’s collaborative performance with noted choreographer and dancer Margaret Jenkins, which marked a critical moment in the artist’s interests in theatricality, the prop, and architectural scale.

Barbara Kasten received her BFA from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1959 and her MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, in 1970. She has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the International Center of Photography, New York, among others. Her work is in numerous museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Chelsea Culprit is a Chicago-based artist and curator whose practice spans multiple disciplines. Her recent solo projects include Cloud Illusions I Recall at Born Nude, Chicago and ella, ella, ella... at Johannes Vogt Gallery, NY, among others. Culprit has performed at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The New Museum; and The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. She is Co-Director with artist Ben Foch of New Capital, a Chicago-based exhibition space and curatorial project. Culprit graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a dual degree in Studio Art, Art History Theory and Criticism.

Image: Inside Outside/Stages of Light, 1985. Still from the video documentation of a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Courtesy of the artist and Margaret Jenkins. Collection of the BAM Hamm Archives, Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Please note: Seating is first-come, first-served and RSVP does not guarantee entry, so please plan to arrive early.

For more information on the exhibition, Barbara Kasten: Stages, click here.

*This performance will take place at Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave, Chicago (map).*

In his Chicago debut, artist and Graham grantee James Hoff will present a new four-channel work using computer viruses to infect beats, where the mutated results become the building blocks for new compositions.

His interest in computer viruses lies in their ability to self-distribute through (and ultimately disrupt) networks of communication, and Hoff’s agency as an artist centers on placing these parasitic forms into pre-existing genres, such as dance music.

“Viruses, like art, need a host. Preferably a popular one,” he writes.

James Hoff is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His work encompasses painting, sound, writing, performance and publishing, among other media. Taking cues and inspiration from the computer works of Emmett Williams, BP Nichol and Jackson Mac Low; conceptual writers Vito Acconci, Aram Saroyan and Douglas Huebler; and early to late computer viruses (from Pervade to Flame), Hoff works with malware to infect media files as a compositional strategy for painting and music.

Hoff is also a co-founder of Primary Information, a nonprofit arts organization devoted to publishing artists’ books and art historical documents. Primary Information is the recipient of three Graham Foundation grants, most recently in 2015 for “Dan Graham and the Static,” a limited-edition cassette featuring the unique recording of a seminal artwork by Dan Graham that connects architecture, performance, and music.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo and Rebuild Foundation. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects. Rebuild Foundation is a nonprofit organization that endeavors to rebuild the cultural foundations of underinvested neighborhoods and incite movements of community revitalization that are culture based, artist led, and neighborhood driven.

Related Talk: On Saturday, December 12, at 2:30pm James Hoff will discuss the history of artists’ books and Primary Information, the organization he co-founded to publish books and writings by artists. He will have a small selection of his artists’ books on hand to share with the audience. This talk will take place at Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank. For more information, click here.

Related Grants: 2015 Organizational Grant to Primary Information for “Dan Graham and the Static” (2016); 2014 Organizational Grant to Primary Information for “Fantastic Architecture” (2015); and 2013 Organizational Grant to Primary Information for “The Sound Works of Vito Acconci” (2016).

Image: James Hoff, Skywiper No. 3 (detail), 2014. Chromaluxe transfer on aluminum, 30 x 16 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, New York.

In a performance at the Madlener House on November 21, Norwegian artist and composer Stine Janvin Motland, will present her solo project In Labour. Motland’s piece challenges the concert format, raising questions about how we listen within and without the designated performance space. Using an omnidirectional, wireless microphone, the remarkable vocalist will move between the main performance space of the Madlener House ballroom and the adjacent rooms, transmitting her vocal abstractions and the surrounding ambience live to the audience. In addition, Motland will perform a solo improvisation during the event.

Please note: Due to the installation of artwork for our current exhibition, seating for this performance is extremely limited. RSVP is required and event entry is first-come, first-serve, so please plan to arrive early. Doors will open at 7:30pm.

Stine Janvin Motland is a vocalist, improviser, and composer based in Stavanger, Oslo and Berlin. Using highly original, extended vocal techniques and elements of physical theater, she pushes the natural acoustics of the human voice and thus, the definition of the singer, to explore its limits and its implications. Motland’s ongoing projects include her solo piece In Labour; Native Instrument with Felicity Mangan; and the Brigitte & Paula band with Maria Ramvi and Camilla Vislie. She also works with artists such as Lasse Marhaug, Maja Ratkje, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Mats Gustafsson in a number of interdisciplinary projects. Selected recent performances include the Unsound Festival, Krakow; Performa 13, New York; Music Unlimited, Wels; Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Oslo; Festival CRAK, Paris; International Theater Festival MESS, Sarajevo; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Festival Densités, Fresnes-en-Woëvre; Jazz á Luz, Luz-Saint-Sauveur; Nya Perspektiv, Västerås; and All Ears Festival, Oslo.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo, with support provided by the American-Scandinavian Foundation. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects. Visit www.lampo.org.

**Please note: The talk will take place at the International Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 N Lake Shore Drive. Doors open at 5:30pm and seating is first come, first serve. Following the talk, join us for a reception in the Graham Foundation galleries, where the exhibition "Barbara Kasten: Stages" is on view.**

In conjunction with our new exhibition Barbara Kasten: Stages, art historian and critic Alex Kitnick will explore the critical stakes of Barbara Kasten’s photographic series from the 1980s that artfully staged important works of American architecture, including Arata Isozaki’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Richard Meier’s High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Created at the height of postmodern theory, Kasten's Architectural Sites submits iconic buildings to distorting angles and colored lights, thus transforming already vertiginous structures into truly illusory spaces. Kitnick argues that these photographs offer a unique form of criticism that seek to heighten—rather than deconstruct—the effects of an emerging Postmodernism, and that these effects that are increasingly familiar today.

Alex Kitnick teaches at Bard College, where he was recently appointed the Brant Family Fellow in Contemporary Arts. In 2010 he received his PhD from the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. From 2011 to 2012 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Kitnick's work frequently focuses on the intersection of art and architecture. He has edited numerous volumes including a collection of John McHale’s writings, The Expendable Reader: Articles on Art, Architecture, Design, and Media, 1951-1979, which was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation, and October 136 on New Brutalism. He is a frequent contributor to Artforum, October, and Texte zur Kunst, among other publications.

Related Grant: 2011 Individual Grant to Alex Kitnick for the publication “The Expendable Reader: John McHale on Art, Architecture, Design, and Media, 1951-1979" (Sourcebook Series, GSAPP Books, 2011).

Image: Barbara Kasten, "Architectural Site 17, August 29, 1988", 1988. Cibachrome. 60 X 50 inches. Location: High Musem of Art, Atlanta, GA. Architect: Richard Meier. Courtesy of the artist.

For more information on the exhibition, Barbara Kasten: Stages, click here.

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