Praeterita

I'm in Paris, France, for three weeks, teaching on Columbia College Chicago's study abroad program. The students don't arrive until the weekend, so I'm just relaxing in the city and our rented apartment in Montparnasse, on an easy schedule of one museum per day followed by a nap and a light dinner (with wine, of course). On Wednesday, we went to the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, near the Place de l'Alma. Half of the permanent collection was closed, but I still saw some seminal twentieth century works. From the first third of the century, there was the giant canvas-mural La Danse, the second version, painted for an American patron in the early 1930s. Inside the vast room that housed the works, there were two small cabinet with some fascinating photos, such as this one of Matisse sketching the mural: When you enter the hall where the paintings are displayed, you first see the sketched version: On the right, you can just about see one of th...

1 . This is the fifth year that the giant exhibition hall at the end of Chicago's Navy Pier has hosted the Expo Chicago art fair, and according to its organizers and PR people, it was the biggest and most successful of all, in terms of participating galleries, attendance, and sales. 2 . I could not tell whether the impressive, shiny, well-produced art on display was any different from what I saw on the walls last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that. But a couple of things with lots of texture and loose execution caught my eye, nevertheless: Rose , Donald Baechler Mica Painting (Sunflowers) , Catherine Howe 3 . The special projects, ranged around the sides of the hall, were dedicated to more experimental works created by exhibiting artists. I liked this piece by Cody Hudson: Hold It Up to the Light , 2016 4 . Why does anyone go to art fairs? It's about as much fun as going to Walmart. Yes, there is a lot of contemp...

My installation COALTOWN is now on show at Terrain Exhibitions, an experimental outdoor art space in Oak Park, Illinois (which is adjacent to Chicago going west). I spent a long day in the studio last Saturday getting the diorama finished. This is a short video I made at the end of the day: And here is how it looks in situ , together with some pieces installed in the garden/yard in front of the house: The work originates in memories of growing up in a mining town in the north of England, and is preoccupied with how to represent memory, industry, violence, death. You know, small subjects.

Here are some things I've been assembling in my studio for a forthcoming exhibition: large scale (up to 6 feet high) and small scale models, some of which will have moving parts with the aid of tiny motors, wheels, and pulleys.

"My Coal Curtain" is an installation that I created in 2007 for the Art on Armitage gallery in Chicago. Artist and gallery owner Mary-Ellen Croteau invites artists to hang work, and create installations, even performances, in this shop-window-style space. This piece came from several childhood memories: my grandfather, who was a working miner; the vinyl strips that hung down over one doorway instead of a door. I drilled holes in dozens of pieces of coal and strung them together using monofilament. I suspended them a foot apart from the ceiling, then positioned the lights to create dramatic shadows, which become part of the piece. This came back to me as I start to think back over the work I've done since then, particularly my attempts to get back into painting. I keep returning to this pattern of coal, which sometimes is abstract circles, but always has this memory of coal in it somewhere. Sometimes the answer to what to do next is staring you in the face.   ...

Meditation number 47 of the year is on the estimable feminist installation artist, Kiki Smith.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

My 46th web-talk is also my 400th blog post of the year.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Participant's photo: family at the Washington Monument, 1957 Monday night was the second workshop for the community memoir/public art project. We led seven participants through two hours of writing exercises, asking them to write at least a dozen one line moments of memory which were either directly related to the photos they brought along, or spinning off from them. With this larger group of people, things began to get interesting, and people were writing really moving things. One woman grew up in Canada, and most of her sentences related quite piercing and personal moments of a difficult childhood growing up in a large family as the youngest, somewhat put-upon sister. We wish we had more time to work with the material that people created, as we would in a full writing workshop. But because of time and budget, we have to content ourselves with getting as much as we can in a shorter session. It's been a good start, and after the next couple of workshops, the public art insta...

This week's Meditation is on a stunning installation by Richard Wilson, which is back on show again at the new Saatchi Gallery in London, for which the piece was first created in 1987.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on an installation series by French artist Christian Boltanski, whose work deals with memory, loss, and death, often arising from references to the Holocaust:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a piece by Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto that combines installation and performance:    Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Deborah Doering talking about a show of her own work at Finestra Art Space What's it like to be a working artist, and also to run your own gallery? I posed this and other questions to Chicago artist Deborah Adams Doering. In addition to having an impressive exhibition record, Deborah has run a highly-regarded gallery out of the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, for a few years. This is the first in a series of interviews with artists and gallery owners who reflect on what makes them tick. Philip : Tell us a little about yourself. You're an artist who runs a gallery, yes? Deborah : Yes, first and foremost I consider myself a visual artist. I create three-dimensional installations, based on my two-dimensional drawings, paintings and prints. In the past few years, I have used a "core language of form," which I also call "Code" as a point of departure for both 2D works and the installations. My installations evolved from having rente...

'Notes to Nonself', multimedia installation by Diane Christiansen + Shoshanna Utchenik, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago You enter a long, high-ceilinged gallery filled with six-foot high fir trees, their outlines cut from plywood in the simple zig-zag shapes of a child’s drawing. Stuck to the surface of the trees are hand-written phrases, drawings, and linocuts representing people, skulls, prayer flags, organic shapes. Overhead float clouds cut out from paper, hand-painted, and suspended in the air by monofilament. You pick your way through the slightly menacing forest and come upon a life-size pink octopus occupying the centre of the gallery. At the back of the room is a clubhouse, about five feet in each dimension, raised up nearly six feet from the ground, with a ramp leading from ground level up to the entrance. Dominating the space is an animation, projected on the mezzanine wall and running the entire thirty feet length of the room. Welcome to ‘Notes to Nonself’...