vanessa german: Gray Center Fellowship supported by the Joyce Foundation

*see below for image caption

Gray Center Fellowship Exhibition

vanessa german:
At the end of this reality there is a bridge—the bridge is inside of you but not inside of your body. Take this bridge to get to the next _______, all of your friends are there; death is not real and we are all dj’s.
 
 

Logan Center Exhibitions
915 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
Free and open to the public
July 19 - December 15

Opening Reception
Friday, July 19 | 5:00-8:00 PM

Artist Conversation
Friday, July 19 | 6:00-7:00 PM

The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is thrilled to present the first solo museum exhibition in Chicago of self-taught citizen artist vanessa german (b. 1976), opening Friday, July 19, and featuring a new body of monumental rose quartz and precious gemstone sculptures as part of a multi-disciplinary installation developed during her Gray Center Fellowship supported by the Joyce Foundation. Guided by the principal of paraäcademia, a new term coined to address bodies of knowledge and practices that have historically been excluded from recognized institutions of higher education, the exhibition enacts various spells both intended for and composed by the living breathing people encountered during her residency. Created over the course of several months, the works on view embody the site of Chicago as an energetic locus for production—foregrounding the interpersonal linkages formed through art as a form of social healing, meditations on the political histories and methodologies of magic, and spiritual activations that embrace love as an original and infinite human technology. 

The exhibition is anchored by four freestanding sculptures intricately encrusted in rose quartz crystal. These sculptures will be shown alongside works of photography and film that straddle the space between meditation and documentary, made during the artist’s Gray Center fellowship. With a focus on what she terms “The Artist as The Complete Technology of Whole Being-ness,” german led an experimental seminar course in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Art in the Winter of 2024, implementing a method of teaching that broke down distinctions between art, magic, knowledge, and spirituality. Working with a range of students—from high school to undergraduate, MFA to PhD candidates—the exercises and meditations developed through this course have both informed, and become components of, the exhibition.

As the artist describes:

There is a monumental rose quartz head. There is also a creature— a four-legged creature with a kind of sigil rising from what would be located as crown-chakra region. (We are thinking here about how the magic takes shapes being that we were intentional with our attentions in this course, so the ideas/visions that were formed came *through* our time together. This is how this creature came through, on a flight to chicago. 

There is a large scale master blaster boom box in lapis, sodalite, sapphire, pyrite and glass— thinking about Sun Ra preaching on the corner. The preach-songs of music. The sidewalks soundtracks of freedom and how music is math and math is the universe and Sun Ra was here/there the whole entire time making a womb of his mouth and giving birth to the elements of hip hop along with all of the other humans bursting out of their own ordinary and into entirely new sound forms. 

And, then there is a 4 sided pyramid— thinking about the panel discussion  that I went to around Sun Ra and all of the other outer-space focused humans who created a universe of their own liberty. 

Lastly, in the matter of monumental works we have a double figure which will call into its ingredients the small power beads made throughout our studio time in the course.

Presenting Partners

The Joyce Foundation 
The Joyce Foundation is a nonpartisan private foundation that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.
www.joycefdn.org  

Logan Center Exhibitions
Logan Center Exhibitions presents international contemporary art programming at the Logan Center Gallery and throughout the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Reflecting the spirit of inquiry at the university, Logan Center Exhibitions focuses on open, collaborative, and process-based approaches to cultural production. Working closely with artists, students, scholars, and community members, Logan Center Exhibitions presents innovative exhibitions by emerging and established artists; supports ambitious new commissions and research projects; disseminates knowledge through publications; and facilitates connections through talks and other public programs.
loganexhibitions.uchicago.edu

More information on the exhibition and visiting Logan Center Exhibitions can be found here.

* vanessa german, skateboard memorial to tyre nichols who screamed out for his own mama to come for him while the police were jumping on his back and taking his name out of his soul and making him dead with their own looseness of being and in the brutality of this separation unaliving him for no reason other than _________. Well. Or, skateboard as grief., 2023. grief, salt, sore throat from all the screaming, shoes wore out in the soles from marching and begging— then, a beautiful son gone, a beautiful son and his name become a hashtag in the ever-expanding digital memorials of children killed by ..., i don’t really know what to say y’all, ok: heartbreak, fear, rage, tears, crane hood ornament, rhinestones, adhesives, cloth, rose quartz for the how the entire universe is held together like how a womb. holds an entire human together within an. Entire human. 12 1/2 x 26 x 9 inches © 2024 vanessa german. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York. Photo by Charlie Rubin.