Courtesy of Saya Woolfalk

Saya Woolfalk, Ethnography of No Place Chapter 5: Meeting, production still, 2008. Courtesy of Saya Woolfalk and Rachel Lears

Listen to the podcast

Tuesday, February 2, 6:00pm
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive
SAIC alumna Saya Woolfalk (MFA 2004) will present her ongoing project No Place, a multimedia, fictional future that reworks tropes of sexual, racial, and gender difference. The characters and stories in Woolfalk's constructed reality evoke travel narratives, science fiction, and the rhetoric of anthropology to investigate human possibilities (and impossibilities). Through diverse forms of installation, video, painting, drawing, performance, and sound, she reflects on human life and its future through configurations of biology, sociality, and the environment. Woolfalk's selected exhibitions include PS1/MoMA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; Studio Museum in Harlem; and Momenta Art. She has been an artist in residence at Skowhegan, Yaddo, Sculpture Space, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Presented in collaboration with SAIC Alumni Relations.

Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

Doug Aitken, Sleepwalkers,  2007, 5 channel video installation. Installation view at MoMA, NY. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

Listen to the podcast

Monday, February 22, 6:00 p.m.
Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave. FREE Admission
Widely known for his innovative fine art installations, Doug Aitken is at the frontier of 21st-century communication. Utilizing a wide array of media and artistic approaches, Aitken's eye leads us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts. Aitken's work effortlessly slips into our media-saturated cultural unconscious allowing the viewer to experience cinema in a unique way by deconstructing a connection between sound, moving images, and the rhythms of our surroundings. Treating the world as his studio, he edits together frenetic and unique models of contemporary experience. Aitken has had numerous screenings, and solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the 1999 Venice Biennale, where he won the International Prize for his acclaimed installation "electric earth." He's exhibited work in institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Courtesy Amy Franceschini

Amy Franceschini, Victory Gardens Seed Library, 2007, laser-cut maple plywood, glass and mixed mediums, 10 x 7 x 1 3/4 inches closed

Thursday, March 11, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Amy Franceschini is a pollinator who creates formats for exchange and production that question and challenge the social, cultural, and environmental systems that surround her. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between humans and nature. Her projects reveal the ways that local politics are affected by globalization. In 1995 Franceschini founded Futurefarmers, an international collective of artists. In 2004 Franceschini co-founded Free Soil, an international collective of artists, activists, researchers, and gardeners who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political, and environmental organization of space. Her solo and collaborative work have been exhibited internationally at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, among others.

Doris Salcedo. Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin

Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth, 2007, concrete and metal, length: 548 ft/ 167 m. Installation: Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, October 9, 2007-April 6, 2008. Photo: Tate Photography, London. Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin

Monday, March 15, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Free Admission
Colombia-based artist Doris Salcedo explores the significance of everyday objects and their power to implicate history. Her sculptures and installations infuse domestic materials with gestures of political and psychological archeology, and their sense of absence hovers in the space between the empowered and voiceless. Salcedo's work has appeared in major exhibitions at Tate Modern, London; Castello de Rivoli, Turin; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, among others. She has participated in the T1 Triennial of Contemporary Art, Turin; Documenta; 8th International Istanbul Biennial; and the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. This lecture is co-presented by the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lectureship in Fiber and Material Studies at SAIC and is part of the Common Languages lecture series.

Matt Keegan, March 17, 2009, 2009, 37 3/4 x 30 inches, mounted and framed digital c-print. Courtesy of the artist and D'Amelio Terras, New York

Tuesday, April 6, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Matt Keegan works mainly with photography, collage, printmaking, and sculpture. Recently, he has been thinking about the myriad possibilities of archives, social history projects, cities, and ways to map and record time. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco and D'Amelio Terras, New York. He was included in The Generational: Younger Than Jesus group exhibition at the New Museum, New York; Picturing the Studio, at SAIC; and The Reach of Realism at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL. He is the co-founder and publisher of North Drive Press. NDP#5, will be released later this year, and is the final issue of this annual art publication.

Ryan Trecartin, Sibling Topics (Section A), 2009, HD Video, Duration 50 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee, New York.

Wednesday, April 14, 6:00 p.m. - Artist Talk (FREE admission)
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Thursday, April 15, 6:00 p.m. - Screening
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
Ryan Trecartin's video practice both in form and in function advances understandings of post-millennial technology, narrative and identity, and also propels these matters as expressive mediums. His work depicts worlds where consumer culture and interactive systems are amplified to absurd or nihilistic proportions and characters circuitously strive to find agency and meaning in their lives. The combination of assaultive, nearly impenetrable avant-garde logics and equally outlandish, virtuoso uses of color, form, drama, and montage produces a sublime, stream-of-consciousness effect that feels bewilderingly true to life. - Kevin McGarry

Trecartin is the recipient of the first Jack Wolgin Prize in the Fine Arts (2009), presented by Temple University's Tyler School of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, among others. Organized by the Visiting Artists Program and Conversations at the Edge, in this special two-evening presentation, Trecartin will present selections from his newest body of work, Trill-ogy Comp (2009-10): K-Corea INC. K (Section A), Sibling Topics (Section A), and P.opular S.ky (section ish).

Screening admission $10 general public, $7 students, $5 members, $4 Art Institute of Chicago staff and SAIC faculty, staff, and students. Advance tickets available at GSFC box office or via Ticketmaster.