Museum of Contemporary art, Chicago
Gillian Wearing: Mass Observation; Archigram: Experimental, Architecture 1961-1974; Franz Ackermann: TheWaterfall.
Gillian Wearing: Mass
Observation
October 19, 2002January 19, 2003
Gillian Wearing has emerged
as one of the foremost
British artists of her
generation, creating video
installations and
photographic works that
explore the strange humor
and wrenching tragedy of
everyday life. Winner of
Britains prestigious Turner
Prize in 1997, Wearing has
exhibited extensively in the
United States and
internationally. Her work
often uses the techniques of
documentary films and
television to frame
alternately unsettling, disturbing, comical, and
unpredictable actions and words of various people drawn
from the general populace of London. The MCA exhibition
will be the first solo museum exhibition of Wearings work in
the United States, presenting a survey of her photography
and video work from 1996 to 2002.
This exhibition is generously supported by Margot and George Greig,
Robert and Sylvie Fitzpatrick, The Elizabeth Firestone Graham
Foundation, and The British Council.
Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the official airline of
the Museum of Contemporary Art.
________
Archigram: Experimental
Architecture 1961-1974
October 19, 2002January 19, 2003
The swinging sixties in Great
Britain gave rise to such
pop-culture icons as The
Beatles and The Rolling
Stones, James Bond, The
Avengers, and the
experimental architecture
collective Archigram. A common undercurrent in the
production of culture during this time was the ambivalent
representation of technology as a gloriously romanticized
convenience or demonized harbinger of doomtechnology
capable of efficiently facilitating pleasure, pain, and even
death with the push of a button. Archigram was more
interested in the pleasurable aspect of technology,
characterized by the automated love-nests of Barbarella
and James Bond or Peter Blakes whimsical cover for Sgt.
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, Archigram also
addressed real social problems, transcending mere fantasy,
and offered sometimes outrageous and sometimes prescient
solutions.
Although none of their major projects were ever built,
Archigrams utopian visions of modular communities such as
Walking City (1964), Plug-In City (1965), and Instant City
(1968) anticipated the mobility, interconnectivity, and
technology of the information age and globalism. Although
coming squarely out of Londons swinging sixties, both
sharing and inspiring design aesthetics of the time,
Archigram projects remain fresh today and continue to
inspire contemporary architects, designers, and theorists.
Their legacy has inspired works by such architects as
Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Renzo Piano and is
considered the direct source for Rogerss and Pianos
renowned Centre Pompidou.
Archigram: Experimental Architecture 19611974 will
feature hundreds of original drawings and sketches, over a
dozen scale models, and an integrated multi-media arena
with slide projections, videos, music, and sound recordings.
This exhibition was organized by the Archigram Archives, London.
Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the official airline of the
Museum of Contemporary Art.
________
Franz Ackermann: TheWaterfall
October 19, 2002 September 28, 2003
The Waterfall is the title of German artist Franz
Ackermanns site-specific wall painting which will be
executed in the MCAs second floor lobby. Painted directly
on the 24-foot-high North lobby wall, Ackermanns vibrant
network of bold colors and forms will greet visitors as they
enter the museums main entrance. Visually dazzling and
disorienting, Ackermanns paintings vacillate between
abstract composition and representational cityscape or
landscape and present the artists own fleeting impressions
of particular places to which he has traveled. Embodying
the excitement and flux of cities in todays increasingly
globalized society, Ackermanns work also reflects the flurry
of building activity, economic fluctuation, and cultural
readjustment in his home base of Berlin. This will be the
first time Ackermanns work will be presented in Chicago.
This exhibition is curated by Associate Curator Staci Boris.
Museum of Contemprary Art
Chicago