Opening September 7, 2023
DePaul Art Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Life Cycles includes artworks from DPAM’s permanent collection in conversation with contemporary Chicago artists not yet represented in the museum’s collection. With more than fifty artists, Life Cycles will feature paintings, sculptures, video, photography, drawings, installation, and other multi-media work. This exhibition focuses on the processes and materials that structure and subtend life while also examining the life of art objects. In so doing, the time of life no longer has a linear structure, but comes into view as a marvelous tangle, where there is no beginning or end, where death is not the opposite of life, nor the truth or fulfillment of it.
Life Cycles is part of the Learning Studio initiative in partnership with Chicago artist Jim Duignan and Stockyard Institute, piloting a radical and groundbreaking approach to engagement, learning, and experimentation within DPAM’s galleries, collection, and beyond. This unique art education model champions intergenerational exchange and experimentation across our city through the mutual sharing of ideas and resources amongst artists, teachers, and students, with a fundamental shift and redefinition of our current educational hierarchies and frameworks. With this in mind, Life Cycles is curated in collaboration between DPAM’s staff and DePaul University’s undergraduate students to both select artworks from the collection, write educational texts, and plan public programs.
Artists include Gertrude Abercrombie, Selva Aparicio, Iris Bernblum, Hugo Brehme, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Barbara Crane, Brendan Fernandes, Theaster Gates, Leon Golub, Nancy Hild, Laurie Hogin, Elnaz Javani, Jenny Kendler, Mayumi Lake, Nathan Lerner, Laura Letinsky, Natalia Villanueva Linares, Maryan S. Maryan, Devin T. Mays, Susan Michod, Abelardo Morell, Elsa Muñoz, Laurel Nakadate, William J. O’Brien, Sabina Ott, Angel Otero, Chris Pappan, Dan Peterman, Michael Rakowitz, Seymour Rosofsky, Hollis Sigler, Bibiana Suárez, Julia Thecla, Alberto Ortega Trejo, Selina Trepp, Chris Vasell, Miwa Yanagi, Nate Young, Claire Zeisler, and more.
Life Cycles is curated by Ionit Behar, Ph.D., Associate Curator, with contributions by David Maruzzella, Ph.D., Collection and Exhibition Manager, and DePaul University students Spencer Bolding, Chiara Conner, Charlie Delgado, Zoe Hamilton, Ellie Naughton, Eli Schmitt, and Bernardo Soares.
