Artist Run at Hyde Park Art Center

May 10 – July 5, 2009, Gallery 1

Featuring 1/Quarterly, 65GRAND, Alogon, Antena, artLedge, Butchershop, Co-Prosperity Sphere, devening projects + editions, Deluxe Projects, Dogmatic, Fraction Workspace, Fucking Good Art (FGA), Green Lantern, He Said-She Said, HungryMan, joymore, Julius Caesar, Law Office, LiveBox, Margin Gallery, Medicine Cabinet/Second Bedroom Project Space, mini dutch, Modest Contemporary Art Projects, NFA Space, Normal Projects, Old Gold, Polvo, Roots & Culture, Scott Projects, Standard, Suitable, Swimming Pool Projects, Teti, The Suburban, and VONZWECK.

Artists Run Chicago is an exhibition showcasing the energy and audacity of some of the most noteworthy artist-run spaces that have influenced the Chicago contemporary art scene over the past decade. Chicago has long been known for cultivating a strong entrepreneurial/Do-It-Yourself spirit in business and the arts. The participating artist-run venues have transformed storefronts, sheds, apartments, lofts, industrial warehouses, garages and roving spaces into contemporary art galleries testing the notion of “exhibition” while complicating the definition of art. Coinciding with the Hyde Park Art Center’s 70th anniversary, Artists Run Chicago reconnects the Art Center to its beginnings as an artist-run space by showcasing spaces that continue the legacy. (Hyde Park Art Center website)

LiveBox is thrilled to be participating in this extraordinary exhibition. This exhibition is curated by Britton Bertran and Allison Peters Quinn with assistance from Jacob C. Hammes and Francesca Wilmott. A program of events related to the exhibition will coincide with the Hyde Park Art Center’s 70 days for 70 years programming series commemorating the Center’s anniversary. Activities will range from bike tours of the artist-run spaces, cookouts, panel discussions, and public performances and more. Check out the Hyde Park Art Center website for information on events.

LiveBox will be exhibiting "Best Friends and Muse" as its contribution to Artist Run

From earliest records, man has cultivated a circuitous and conflicting relationship with animals; they simultaneously provide food, friendship, protection, and service. We cannot imagine our lives with out them and we could not survive in their absence. Hollywood and Madison Avenue have spawned an intriguing oddity in that we see more images of animals than we observe or relate to in the real world. Many artists also find their Muse in animals, both conceptually and as a medium. Best Friend and Muse includes work by Krista Birnbaum, Tim Geers, Katy Higgins, and Julia Oldham. These artists have created fresh and compelling projects with animals as their primary inspiration, metaphor, or medium.

“Darkling”, “Breeze and Twiddle”, “Dead Stop”, “Balmy”, “Bramble Standoff”, Julia Oldham, 2008/9 collection of single channel videos.

Oldham is interested in inhabiting the mental space of animals, particularly those that are hardest to relate to: birds, insects and invertebrates. She translates the movements, behaviors and mating rituals of invertebrates and other small animals into choreography that she performs in front of the camera. The resulting videos are concerned with playful anthropomorphization.

“Constance”, 3:00 min, Krista Birnbaum, 2006.

The artist’s work with pet mice displays ideal miniature lives. Birnbaum envisions alternative methods of interacting with and appreciating nature. She deploys traditional notions of decoration and design, attempting to find a balance between two worlds, while pointing out the incongruency of such a union.

Jellyfish Tracing (red spotted), 50 sec, Jellyfish Tracing (two moon), 1:35 min Katy Higgins, 2006-7.

These pieces are part of a project in which Higgins mapped the undulating motions of jellyfish and other sea creatures using a video effect called motion tracking. By applying a paint effect to the resulting path, Higgins generated a kind of tracing, that in effect employs the Jellyfish as drawer.

Looking, 5:12 min, Katy Higgins, 2008

“Eleanor”, 3:11 min, Tim Geers 2007