2008  
Department (Store). 

Sullivan Galleries. School of the Art Institute Chicago, IL. Curator/Director, Mary Jane Jacob.

Department (Store)

Dimensions variable

Mixed media

2008

A research project, and inaugural solo show for Sullivan Galleries in the old Carson Pirie Scott department store Building on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. Now an extension of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, curated by Mary Jane Jacob, the project was a response to the contemporary exhibitions in New York and Chicago on the history of Modernism. The seventh floor became the site of a new kind department store, where I developed a series of algorithms, based on the building, Louis B. Sullivan, and the history of the department store. An invitation, what is important, in an open invitation to display a response to the inquiry. An elaborate social engagement as a moving system, a giant board game interconnecting the departments of SAIC, several cultural organizations in the city of Chicago, and the hundred, thirty showcases as a complex labyrinth; each case study allowed for changes, and moves that allowed the modernist, Donald Juddian grid of cases fall into a pattern of chaos in the space. This is the gaming wall, one of several wall drawings and installations, where the game was charted out in a Sol Lewittian manner, with Sullivan/Shroeder designs of the building, guiding the movements algorithmically.

Over a period of several months, the cases were moved at every lunar phase, and participants arranged the cases accordingly until the space was full of literal case studies, hundreds of individuals, things and manifestations of conflict and resolution, and the room in a state of flux.