Illinois State University Wonsook Kim School of Art presents the fall 2020 Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Beginning August 25 and running every Tuesday through October 27, each lecture will begin at 7 p.m. and feature the following artists. Lectures are open to the public and will be offered via Zoom (Meeting ID: 951 6821 0899).
Mel Cook, Scream Dream, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, August 25
Mel Cook is a visual artist currently living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Her work explores the relationship between language and femme bodies being pushed up against systems of (re)production. Charting the ever expanding constellation of misogyny her work seeks to create new trajectories for thinking and making within the field of painting. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2016), received her M.F.A. from Illinois State University (2012), and B.F.A. from Bowling Green State University (2009).
Jesse Malmed, Vague Magazine, 2018. Digital Image. Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, September 1
Jesse Malmed is an artist and curator living and working in Chicago, Illinois. His work in moving images, performance, text, and occasional objects has been exhibited widely in museums, cinemas, galleries, bars, and barns. His platformist and curatorial projects include the Live to Tape Artist Television Festival, programming at the Nightingale Cinema, instigating Western Pole-the mobile exhibition space and artist bumper sticker project Trunk Show (with Raven Falquez Munsell), programming through ACRE TV, and organizing exhibitions, screenings, and performance events both independently and institutionally. His writing has appeared on and in Bad at Sports, Cine-File, Incite Journal of Experimental Media, The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature, Temporary Art Review, Big Big Wednesday, and YA5.
Tuesday, September 8
Herman Aguirre is a Mexican American artist born and raised in Chicago. He grew up in the South Side of Chicago where he continues to live and work. He received both his B.F.A. (2014) and M.F.A. (2017) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he currently teaches in the Painting and Drawing Department while continuing to exhibit in various galleries and art fairs throughout the United States. Aguirre is represented by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago and the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee. Work pictured above.
Caroline Kent, A slow turning of events, 2020. Acrylic on unstretched canvas, 108 x 80.” Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, September 15
Caroline Kent is a Chicago based visual artist that explores the relationship between language, translation, and abstraction through an expanded painting practice. Developed through an on-going archive of works on paper, the paintings build-out of this context to exists in the multiple forms of drawings, paintings, sculpture, and performance. Kent labors to expand the discourse of abstraction to include alternative logics that move beyond surface and frame through each act of translation from one medium to the next. She received a B.A. at Illinois State University (1998) and her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota (2008). Kent is represented by Kohn Gallery based in Los Angeles.
Larry Lee, Waiting for Earl Derr Biggers and Chang Apana in front of the Pui Tak Center (formerly the On Leong Merchant Association Building) on Wentworth, 2008. Digitally manipulated photograph on canvas, 32″ x 18.” Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, September 22
Larry Lee is a multimedia artist, independent curator, and writer who earned his B.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his M.F.A. in sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he also teaches Art History, Theory, and Criticism. His practice includes sculpture, video, installation, and painting that “remakes” his personal history in specific and the Asian American experience in general into stylized multimedia objects and images he facetiously terms “orientalia.”
Giovanni Aloi
Tuesday, September 29
Lucian Freud: Plants, Painting, and Silence
Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in environmental subjects and the representation of nature in art. He has published with Columbia University Press, Phaidon, Laurence King, and Prestel and is co-editor of the University of Minnesota series Art after Nature. Since 2006, Aloi has been the Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. He is the author of Art & Animals (2011) and Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (2018), Why Look at Plants? – The Vegetal World in Contemporary Art (2019), and Lucian Freud Herbarium (2019). He is a radio contributor and a regular public speaker at the Art Institute of Chicago and has curated exhibitions including photography, digital, and time-based media. Aloi currently lectures on modern and contemporary art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and London.
Work by Sky Cubacub (left), featuring Alice Wong and Nina Litoff. Photo by Grace DuVal. Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, October 6
Sky Cubacub is a nonbinary queer and disabled Filipinx human from Chicago. Rebirth Garments is their line of wearables for the full spectrum of gender, size, and ability. They maintain the notion of Radical Visibility, a movement based on claiming our bodies and, through the use of bright colors, exuberant fabrics, and innovative designs, highlighting the parts of us that society typically shuns. They are the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a magazine for queer and disabled teens to celebrate their identity. They have had over 40 fashion performances and lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Utah, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Northwestern University.
Valentina Zamfirescu
Tuesday, October 13
Valentina Zamfirescu is a co-founder and co-director of 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago. Zamfirescu received her B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her M.F.A. in sculpture at Yale University.
Ann Toebbe with examples of her work. Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, October 20
Ann Toebbe is an artist living and working in Chicago. Her meticulously designed collages depict the interior views of spaces. Originally from Cincinnati, she received her B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art (1997), her M.F.A. in painting from Yale University (2004), and a DAAD Scholarship to the Universität der Kunst in Berlin, Germany (2004-2005). Toebbe is represented by Tibor de Nagy in New York City and Steven Zevitas in Boston.
Kellie Romany, A Series of Interruptions , 2019. Oil on Board, 24” x 24.” Courtesy of the artist.
Tuesday, October 27
Kellie Romany is an abstract, nonrepresentational, figurative painter interested in bodily representation, materiality, and the history of the painting process. Using a color palette of skin tones, Romany creates objects that act as a catalyst for discussion about human connections, femininity, and race and the systems surrounding these themes. She received an M.F.A. in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011) and a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2008).
For more information about the Visiting Artist Program email VisitingArtists@IllinoisState.edu.
