Readings in memory of Kathryn Hixson, 1955 – 2010:
Sunday 10 April 2011
1-4pm

“I wish to believe that Bruce Nauman’s work is more about shitting in your pants than about mystical transcendence.” -Kathryn Hixson

This exhibition is dedicated to Kathryn Hixson who passed away in the Fall of 2010. Kathryn was one of the most distinguished art critics in Chicago, an amazing teacher, advisor and good friend. Kathryn was finishing a PhD dissertation at the University of Texas Austin on the role of humor in the work of Bruce Nauman and Richard Prince.

In the spirit of her spontaneity, criticality and wise-ass attitude, recent M.F.A graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago pay tribute to Kathryn and her influence on the latest generation of emerging artists. No Joke presents work that is both conceptual and playful, riding a pendulum that swings between raw irony and the sweet sublime. This exhibition embodies odd couplings through mediated experiences of nature and the body, reflections on perception and image, space and time, slapstick humor and poetic gesture.

One year ago, Kathryn wrote a curatorial statement for the artists in this exhibition when they last presented their work together for the show, “Killing Time.” The following is an excerpt from that text:
“…Banking on the cohesion of popular memory, some tenderly quote the past, resuscitating it. Identity and difference are presented as space, weight, and time, continually constructed and reconstructed. Each ventures to share with the viewer a direct, sensual and sensuous experience that is decidedly in the present. Through immersion into each crystalline moment of their constructed experiences, one can feel the immanence of the past within the contemporary, to perhaps enliven our perceptions, and our ambitions for art, in the future.”

Opening Reception
Saturday 2 April 2011
6-10pm