Set up view of labor by Rebekka Federle (all photos Jen Torwudzo-Stroh until in any other case famous)
CHICAGO — College campuses present a protected area for mental, artistic, and private exploration. The work produced in such areas may be questioning, probing, and considerate — however not essentially absolutely fashioned. Substitute Equal Quantities presents the work of seven graduate college students and rising artists from the College of Chicago on the Reva and David Logan Middle for the Arts.
Even on the highest degree, group exhibits are an unwieldy endeavor with every artist bringing completely different views. Half One makes an attempt to unify the concepts offered via an exhibition textual content riddled with statements like “[a] cliche knows it’s worn out before it ever enters us — its melody teleological; its yet unsated obviousness: panging” and different equally poetic however tough to parse traces. In each situations, the present is greatest approached not as a complete, however piece by piece. Laveen Gammie’s tiny ghostly ceramic bunnies and odd sculptures made partially from thrift retailer bric-a-bracs lead you round Rebekka Federle-McCabe’s playful but heavy geometric wooden canine sculptures. In the meantime, Susan Jablonski’s handmade ceramic vessels and placing explorative prints grasp on the partitions, feeling nearly totally separate from the opposite work.
Set up view of works by Laveen Gammie
Set up view of labor by Susan Jablonski
Half Two follows a equally offbeat trajectory. It’s, the press launch claims, “linked by an impulse to draft a character primed to rebuff the projections they are prone to solicit.” Magicfeifei’s vibrant and synthetic anime-inspired works distinction with Eleonore Zurawski’s hued landscapes and prairie-inspired sculptures. Alice Ding’s black and white polaroids, summary prints, and minimalist drawings are all coolly analytical, whereas Drew Parkinson’s rough-hewn canvas and rock sculpture conjure a extra tactile, bodily expertise.
Set up view of labor by Susan Jablonski
Although artworks on the wall, ground, and ceiling inevitably interrupt and speak over each other, there are robust particular person items to be discovered. I adored Zurawski’s “lost at a lawn” (2025), which suspends a prairie of dandelions from the gallery ceiling. Delicate and ethereal, the white puffs dangle above a rectangle of discovered tiles, soiled and rust-colored. Two fluorescent lights illuminate the sculpture. In its juxtaposition of the ephemeral textures of nature with the enduring permanence of trade, it’s weighty and light-weight, arduous and tender, delicate and brutal suddenly.
Set up view of Substitute Equal Quantities, half 2
Federle-McCabe’s “Slapstick” (2025) hangs framed pages torn from a canine coaching guide. Ripped from context, the banal recommendation takes on new that means. One web page advises that “You must be heartless that first night. Let him howl and cry. If you break down and take him to bed with you, he will keep you up all night ….” One other entry explains that “[h]e will actually crave to satisfy you one [sic] he has been properly taught.” A framed silver chain hangs close by. Utilizing language and props, Federle-McCabe blurs the road between pet possession and sadomasochism in ways in which verge on the express however preserve tenderness.
Set up view of labor by Eleonore Zurawski
In the end, this exhibition presents as what it’s: a remaining undertaking. Some concepts had been overwrought, some had been incomplete, some went over my head totally — and a few had been profitable. Besides, I don’t need to make a behavior of “grading” MFA exhibits. They’re much less about presenting a totally fashioned creative assertion than about showcasing a second — an open home of the zeitgeist. A time for these artists to have fun their arduous work and exhibit a little bit, simply earlier than they dive headlong into the skilled artwork world. We’re witnessing the early drafts of careers — and these early makes an attempt are uneven, however promising.
Work by Magicfeifei
Work by Magicfeifei (© Sarah Elizabeth Larson, courtesy Division of Visible Arts on the College of Chicago)
Work by Drew Parkinson (© Sarah Elizabeth Larson, courtesy Division of Visible Arts on the College of Chicago)
Substitute Equal Quantities, half 2 of the College of Chicago Division of Visible Arts 2025 Masters of Positive Arts Thesis Exhibition, continues at Logan Middle Exhibitions (915 East sixtieth Road, Chicago, Illinois) via June 15. Half 1 befell in the identical area from Might 2–18.
