A grab bag of "un-lectures" about a myriad of topics that create a variety show-like evening of artist presentations curated by Threewalls.

During its forty-year history, the MCA has distinguished itself with groundbreaking exhibitions that have contributed substantially to the evolving history of contemporary art. These exhibitions have, in turn, stimulated the museum and its supporters to acquire important and often numerous pieces by these artists. A resulting hallmark of the MCA's collection is the presence of significant, in-depth bodies of work by artists. By displaying several examples of an artist's work, visitors can gain a better understanding of their working process and development of ideas over the span of several years. Rewind presents concentrations of work by artists whom the MCA has ...

The InCUBATE-curated portion of the Cabinet of Curiosities series at the MCA, The Metaphysical Club, is a one-night-only re-convention of the historic conversational society that was active throughout the 1870s in Cambridge, MA. It counted among its members future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, psychologist William James, and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce. It was here that American Pragmatism was born as a "half-ironic half-defiant" reproach to European metaphysics. The event will feature presentations by Rozalinda Borcila, Joe Grimm, Liz Joynt-Sandberg, People Powered (Lora Lode & Kevin Kaempf), Bert Stabler and Fereshteh Toosi. We might think of ...

Featuring Nikhil Chopra, John Neff and Amanda Ross-Ho. Transformation, mediation, gesture, embodiment. The artist is both performer and observer in the studio, and the protagonist of the myths that surround this space. Three artists in the MCA exhibition Production Site: The Artist's Studio Inside-Out, discuss their own works in the show, using them as a springboards for reflecting on the creative acts of the studio.

Throughout art history, artists have reflexively looked at the very site where art work is produced–the studio–as a source of inspiration for their work. Production Site reexamines the artist's studio as subject, presenting work that documents, depicts, reconstructs, or otherwise invokes that space, revealing how the studio functions as a place where research, experimentation, production, and social activity intersect. The exhibition reflects and addresses the pivotal role of the studio in artists' practice while alluding to its enduring status in the popular imagination. The works that comprise Production Site include multi-channel video projections, photographic light-boxes and installations, and life-sized fabrications of ...

With a keen sense of humor, Aspen Mays explores the relationship between scientific investigation and the photographic medium to question what knowledge can be gained through systems of cataloguing, classification and documentation. For her UBS 12 x 12 exhibition Mays produces a site-specific photographic installation titled Every leaf on a tree. The installation consists of two recent bodies of work: Every leaf, which documents every leaf on a tree outside of the artist's studio and consists of over 900 individual color photographs; and Every book, a series of photographs that document every book about Albert Einstein available through the Illinois ...

No Coast presents Heaven is Real, a collection of performances, presentations and activities themed around our abnormal/paranormal/celebratory/transcendent relationship with death and dying, as part of the Cabinet of Curiosities series. The MCA describes the event as "A grab bag of ‘un-lectures’ about a myriad of topics that create a variety show-like evening of artist presentations curated by different groups from around Chicago." We like to think of it as a morbidly fantastic show-n-tell. Featuring performances by Acephalous, Andre Callot, Aaron Dicks & Colin Self, Andrea Fritsch, Rebecca Gordon and Brandon Joyce, Ted Marino and Carnal Torpor. Hosted By Lil ...

Chicago artist Carrie Schneider discusses her work on view in the UBS 12 x 12: New Artists / New Work series in the gallery at 6 pm.

Working in ambiguously narrative photography and video, Carrie Schneider mines the complexities of relationships -- both romantic and familial -- nature, and the self. Her images, which often depict herself and her brother, are quietly mysterious and anxiety-provoking as they seductively probe what is considered "appropriate" behavior. Beyond this, the figures can be considered a doubled self which acts as a point of entry for psychological and emotional negotiations. In the series Derelict Self, the artist explores the idea that mimicry can be a way to both gain and lose a sense of oneself. Images from her Fallen Women series ...

Liam Gillick curates a small selection of works from the MCA's collection as a complement to his major solo survey exhibition. The collection exhibition provides an institutional and historical context for the presentation of Gillick's own work while bringing an unexpected approach to presenting the collection into play. Over the past 20 years, Gillick has created a multi-dimensional body of work characterized by an ongoing study of the aesthetic aspects of social systems, focusing on how and why those aspects are produced rather than used and consumed. He emerged in the early 1990s along with artists such as Rirkrit ...

This exhibition, copresented by the MCA and the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, explores Italian art and creativity from the late 1960s to the present. It offers an unprecedented look at the artistic production of a country where cultural change has often been defined by the persistence of the past, revealing a deep sense of originality and vitality on the part of numerous artists whose work spans all media. Whether embracing classical roots or breaking away from traditions, Italian artists active during the past forty years are at ease with the realities of social transformation. Reflecting the idiosyncratic paths carved by Italian artists ...

Since their first riotous appearance in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have dedicated themselves to exposing sexism, racism, and corruption in the art world, the film industry, and popular culture. Adopting the names of dead women artists and decked out in full jungle drag, these anonymous avengers use facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to skewer institutional bias and inequality. In this program, the Guerilla Girls give a guided tour through the history of their many public interventions, perform satirical skits, and inspire us to create our own sophisticated acts of aesthetic resistance.

Using analogue sound technology and found images, experimental musicians Haptic (Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg) and video artist Lisa Slodki (a.k.a Noisecrush) collaborate to create real time, improvised, audiovisual environments. Characterized by a rigorous attention to sonic detail, Haptic creates densely textured soundscapes that range from stark minimalism to carefully controlled chaos. In response to Haptic's music, Slodki uses VCRs, video monitors, and projections of digitally manipulated found footage to generate images that emphasize subtle emotions and gestures. In addition to a collaborative sound and video installation, Haptic and Slodki perform live each Tuesday evening in the ...

A series of 7 minute micro-lectures by Chicago's most creative minds. Featuring Christopher Roeleveld, Paige K. Johnston, Hunter Husar, Nicholas O'Brien, Greg Stimac, Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder. Marco Kane Braunschweiler and Martine Syms will emcee. In conjunction with the event Golden Age will be publishing A CULTURAL READER containing images and footnotes from the presentations, as well as content that didn't make it into those 7 minutes. Pick up your copy at the lecture or at Golden Age.

This extension of the MCA's continuing Artists in Depth series of presentations of works from its collection places its holdings of Liam Gillick's work into the context of work by important predecessors such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Jenny Holzer. The exhibition, seen together with Liam Gillick: Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario, demonstrates not only the diversity of Gillick's production but also suggests the profound influence of Minimalism, Conceptualism, and feminist art on a current generation of artist practitioners.

Born in the 1960s in England, artists Jeremy Deller and Liam Gillick have engaged the economic, cultural, and political conditions of the last two decades in markedly different ways. The two join MCA Curator Dominic Molon for a conversation about their concurrent exhibitions at the MCA, their artistic strategies, and the ideas that inform their work.

Liam Gillick emerged in the early 1990s as part of a re-energized British art scene, producing a sophisticated body of work ranging from his signature "platform" sculptures -- architectural structures made of aluminum and colored Plexiglas that facilitate or complicate social interaction -- to wall paintings, text sculptures, and published texts that reflect on the increasing gap between utopian idealism and the actualities of the world. His work joins that of generational peers such as Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno in defining what critic Nicholas Bourriaud described as "relational aesthetics," an approach that emphasizes the shifting social role and function ...

Jeremy Deller: It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, is a new commission by British artist Jeremy Deller as part of The Three M Project. In an effort to encourage the public to discuss the present circumstances in Iraq, a revolving cast of participants including veterans, journalists, scholars, and Iraqi nationals who have expertise in a particular aspect of the region and/or first-hand experience of Iraq have been invited to take up residence in the museum gallery space with the express purpose of encouraging discussion with visitors. Objects meant to stimulate discussion share the gallery with the resident guest ...

As part of its participation in the 3M Consortium Project with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the MCA has commissioned a work by the London-based American artist Daria Martin. Her elusive enigmatic films combine intense ritualistic performativity with a rigorous yet detached photographic approach. Her 16mm film, Minotaur, runs approximately 10 minutes and pays tribute to the work of dancer Anna Halprin, one of the key pioneers of postmodern dance and movement along with Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer. Halprin's life and work has had ...

How do immersive artworks, such as those created by Olafur Eliasson, play upon our attraction to the spectacular and a fascination with the mechanics of how things work? This afternoon program features presentations by three internationally renowned speakers who will trace the history of this phenomenon in art and science, and relate it to wide-ranging developments in consumer culture, optics, psychology, philosophy, and technology. Madeleine Grynsztejn, MCA Pritzker Director and curator of Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, introduces the program.

What does diversity mean today? What are the implications for museums, artists, and their audiences? And what hard work still lies ahead as we create opportunities for people to grapple with culture and identity through the artworks we present, and engage artists and audiences on equal terms? Madeleine Grynsztejn, MCA Pritzker Director, leads the discussion with political scientist Melissa Harris-Lacewell, artist Glenn Ligon, and interdisciplinary artist Tania Bruguera.