University Galleries has opened four new exhibitions, which will be on view through October 8.
Alice Hargrave: Paradise Wavering presents 17 new and recent works by Chicago-based photographer Alice Hargrave, including Biosphere, a wall-scale, emerald-hued image of a tropical forest printed on fabric. The artist says this series is informed by “the vulnerability of our planet’s biodiversity, the fragility and shrinking of natural habitats, and a desire to express the sublimity and wonder of the organic world.” University Galleries is collaborating with The Nature Conservancy, the ParkLands Foundation, and the Children’s Discovery Museum to develop public programming in conjunction with this exhibition.
Amy Cousins: You Will Never Have the Comfort of Our Silence Again features large-scale sculptures and installations based on the artist’s research into rare protest ephemera, out-of-print feminist newspapers, and first-person accounts of radical queer histories. From the “Lesbian Feminist Declaration of 1976” to the Gay Liberation Dances that emerged across the U.S. in the 1970s, Cousins reimagines these remarkable yet poorly documented events and reveals captivating examples of inventiveness in queer protest. Cousins was the Curators’ Choice Award Winner for Normal Editions Workshop’s 40th anniversary exhibition, Beyond the Norm.
Gina Hunt: Stereo Vision is a site-responsive project dedicated to the artist’s use of hand-dyed theater scrim as a filter and mediator of natural light. The gauze-like fabric, which Hunt notes, “has the magical ability to become either translucent or opaque, depending on the light source,” is dyed red, green, and blue by the artist, layered and stretched across frames, then placed over each window. Hunt received her M.F.A. from Illinois State University’s School of Art in 2015.
American Masters from the Kattner Family Collection presents eight works of art from the collection of Keith and Nita Kattner that exemplify several important movements and styles in American art between 1891 and 1945, including Impressionism, Symbolism, Regionalism, and the group known as “The Eight.” The exhibition includes paintings and drawings by Robert Henri, Reginald Marsh, John Frederick Peto, Robert Lewis Reid, Ralph Albert Blakelock, George Inness, Arthur B. Davies, and John Steuart Curry. Keith is an Illinois State University alumnus and former neurosurgeon now working as an artist.
Hargrave’s, Cousins’, and Hunt’s exhibitions are sponsored by the Harold K. Sage Foundation and the Illinois State University Foundation Fund. Amy Cousins’ dance party is co-sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies.
