Gabriel Sierra
May 3–June 28, 2015
Opening: Sunday, May 3, 4–7pm
Artist talk: 5pm
The Renaissance Society
at the University of Chicago
5811 S. Ellis Ave. Cobb Hall, 4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60637
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 10am–5pm,
Saturday–Sunday noon–5pm
Notice: the title of the exhibition will change every hour
10am: Monday Impressions.
11am: How the Outside Leaks into the Room.
12pm: Smells Like 100 Years Old.
1pm: The Room Is in My Eye. The Space under My Body.
2pm: In the Meantime, (This Place Will Be Empty after 5pm).
3pm: An Actual Location for This Moment.
4pm: Few Will Leave Their Place to Come Here for Some Minutes.
5pm: Did You Know Who Built Your House?
The Renaissance Society presents an exhibition of new works by Gabriel Sierra, the Bogotá-based artist’s first solo museum show in the United States. His project consists of a group of constructions to stand in or to walk over, which relate abstractly to the idea of inhabiting different moments of space and time.
Sierra is intrigued by the language of man-made objects and the dimensions of the spaces in which we live, work, and think. His practice employs a variety of techniques—from sculpture and spatial interventions to performance and texts—to examine how the human body functions in relation to its environment. Trained in architecture and design, and drawing on the history of Latin American Modernism, Sierra connects the perception of forms and materials to the construction of language, communication, and knowledge.
Sierra’s installation at the Renaissance Society features materials (for example, wood, stones, and plant matter) that have been isolated from their usual geographic situations, processed and domesticated for the context of the exhibition. By inviting visitors to walk over and among the constructions with no determined path, the artist sets up a series of areas that refer to the transitional space of the antechamber. They are not destinations in themselves, but passages of experience leading from one to another, momentary neutral zones.
The exhibition’s title will change every hour to frame the specific moment in which the visitor experiences the work. Like the various constructions Sierra offers, this shifting title experiments with the ways in which environments, and the exhibition in particular, are perceived across time.
An exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Douglas Fogle and Irene V. Small and documentation of the installation is forthcoming.
The Renaissance Society is an independent, non-collecting museum of contemporary art located on the campus of the University of Chicago. It is committed to supporting ambitious artistic experimentation, primarily through the commissioning of new works, and to fostering a rigorous, interdisciplinary discourse around it. In addition to the gallery program, it hosts a dynamic range of concerts, performances, lectures, screenings, and readings.
The Renaissance Society turns 100 years old this year and will celebrate with a special Centennial program of exhibitions and events from September 2015 to January 2016.
All of the Renaissance Society’s exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.
Related events:
Opening
Sunday, May 3, 4–7pm
This event features a conversation between Gabriel Sierra and Megan Sullivan at 5pm in Kent Hall, Room 120. Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago, and her scholarship focuses on 20th-century Latin American art with an emphasis on modernism and abstraction.
Gallery walk-throughs
Tuesday, May 12 at 6pm with Zoë Ryan, John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago
Sunday, June 7 at 2pm with Solveig Øvstebø, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Renaissance Society
