ON DRAWING DRAWING ON

Participants: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Fadi Baki, Alison Bechdel, Sara Black, Bill Brown & Ted Brown (STUDIO R-A), James Carpenter, Hillary Chute, Romi Crawford, Marc Downey, Samantha Frost, Hannah B Higgins, Ghenwa Hayek, Theaster Gates, Amber Ginsburg, Sean Griffin, Paul Kaiser, Omar Khouri, Julia Kuo, George E. Lewis, Antoni Miralda, W.J.T. Mitchell, Sidney Nagel, Stephan Palmié, Monica Peek, Pope.L, Dieter Roelstraete, Cauleen Smith, Jessica Stockholder, Catherine Sullivan, Garland Martin Taylor, Augusta Read Thomas, Elizabeth Tung, Anne M. Wagner, Yao Chen, and Judith Zeitlin.

ON DRAWING DRAWING ON: Ten Years of Fellowship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry presents works from numerous Gray Center Fellows in celebration of the first decade of experimental collaboration.

Drawing is at once a catalyst for shaping reality, a middle place between being and becoming, and a fully realized work of art in its own right. It brings things into the world, pulls us into worlds, and, as such, is an ideal emblem of the collaborative and experimental work that has taken place at the Gray Center in the past decade. Moreover, it is hard to pin down what constitutes drawing in the 21st Century—it evades definition as practitioners across the disciplines make use of the medium to spell out musical notation, choreograph theater, or create a video game.

Much like the Gray Center itself, drawing is simultaneously disciplined and un-disciplined, creating forms as it goes. Over the last ten years, artists and scholars have come together to draw on each other’s minds and to create new genres at the borders of art and scholarship. Necessarily sketchy at their inception, Gray Center Fellowships have experimented with what is possible at the meeting point between the arts and academic life.

Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors will first encounter a reading room where they can listen to interviews with Gray Center Fellows and read through issues of Portable Gray—the Gray Center’s magazine—as well as other publications and pieces of ephemera. Visitors are then welcomed into the main gallery where they will find an expansive selection of artworks that represent a variety of approaches to drawing. Occurring throughout the run of the exhibition will be a series of special screenings in the Logan Center’s Performance Hall that will feature film and moving image works by Gray Center Fellows. 

Related programs
Exhibition conversation:
February 9, noon CST, On Drawing, online, streaming link posted day-of here.

One-day film screenings:
February 17, noon–9pm, Cauleen Smith, Three Songs About Liberation 
March 2, noon–9pm, Marc Downey & Paul Kaiser w/ Ken & Flo Jacobs, Ulysses in the Subway 
March 9, noon–9pm, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 1000 White Plastic Chairs 

*Please read our COVID-19 updates for current information on building access and health & safety protocols.

ON DRAWING DRAWING ON is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Zachary Cahill, Director of Programs and Fellowships, and Mike Schuh, Assistant Director, Fellowships and Operations at the Gray Center. This exhibition is made possible by support from Richard and Mary L. Gray and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the Revada Foundation, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, and friends of the Logan Center.

About the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is a forum at the University of Chicago for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars. Gray Center activities take place all over campus (encompassing various divisions, departments, and programs), across the community, throughout the city, and beyond. Through its various programs—including the Mellon Residential Fellowships for Arts Practice and Scholarship, exploratory research initiatives, the monthly Sidebar conversation series, Gray Sound, an experimental music and sound performance series, and the arts and ideas journal Portable Gray, international conferences, and institutional collaborations—the Gray Center seeks to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation at the intersection of arts practice and scholarship.

Press contact: Mike Schuh at mikes1 [​at​] uchicago.edu