On Thursday, August 10, artist Phillip Chen will be in Normal to give a tour of his exhibition at University Galleries, “No Ideas but in Things,” and to lead a workshop based on the methods he used to make the works on view.
The tour will begin at 2 p.m., last for an hour, and be followed immediately by the workshop. Slots are limited for both, and registration is required. Participation is free and materials will be provided for the workshop.
Chen’s exhibition opened on June 5, and will close on August 13. The tour and workshop on August 10 will be followed by a closing reception for the exhibition at 4 p.m.
Chen has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, and his work is in the collections of institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library, Carnegie Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. Chen is the recipient of both the Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Award and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and in 2018 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award, the largest prize given to an artist working in print media worldwide. His exhibition at University Galleries includes prints and paintings from the whole span of his four-decade career.
The August 10 workshop, co-led by University Galleries’ Curator of Education Tanya Scott, will take participants through a simplified version of Chen’s photomechanical relief etching process. Chen combines photographic and drawn images on metal plates, which he inks and presses onto beige paper to create his dark, cerebral prints. Workshop participants will have the chance to create their own relief prints using cardboard plates and light-sensitive paper.
The tour, co-led with exhibition curator Troy Sherman, will give participants insight into Chen’s methods and philosophy for making art, and how these have evolved since the early 1980s. Chen will speak on his methodology, his teaching practice, his intellectual and artistic influences, and the influence on his art of his family’s history of migration between China and the United States.
For additional information contact Troy Sherman, curator at University Galleries, at tfsherm@IllinoisState.edu.
