January 30, 2012 | Details | Comments (1)
This Thursday, we will be hosting acclaimed filmmaker J.J. Murphy for a screening of his rarely seen, seminal film, Print Generation, which raises questions about perception, memory, time and the transmission of information. The film, which duplicates the same one-minute piece of film 50 times, maps the deterioration of each generation from abstract to concrete and back again.
The screening will start at 6 p.m. in the MoCP at 600 S. Michigan Ave. Afterward, Murphy will answer questions from the audience.
January 19, 2012 | Details | Comments (1)
With less than a week between shows, the MoCP team has been hard at work putting together its newest exhibition, Limits of Photography. Take a look at the photos below to see the MoCP staff hard at work during this short install time, and catch a glimpse of the artwork featured in Limits of Photography, which opens on Saturday!
January 11, 2012 | Details | Comments (0)
Christian Patterson, Storm Cellar, 2008
Crime Unseen closes on Sunday, but that doesn't mean you have to stop enjoying the exhibition.
Exhibiting artists Christian Patterson and Deborah Luster recently released books containing their works showcased in Crime Unseen. Each book takes a different spin on chronicling real-life murder.
In his book, Redheaded Peckerwood, Christian Patterson melds documentary style with creative storytelling as he follows the trail of teenage lovers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, who, in the winter of 1957-58, committed a string of murders in Nebraska and Wyoming. By taking photographs and documents stemming directly from their crimes, Patterson focuses on the inherent emotional responses people have toward these objects even before they know the objects' dark origins. MoCP Curator and Associate Director Karen Irvine wrote the book's forward.
In Tooth for an Eye: A Chronology of Violence in Orleans Parish, Deborah Luster explores New Orleans, a city where the murder rate is eight times that of the national average. Each image in the book brings the viewer in through the gun sight to the murder location, which teems with disruptive energy. In this way, Luster––whose own mother was a victim of violent crime--creates a complex and vivid portrait of loss and remembrance.
Visit our online shop to purchase these books, or any other title from our bookstore. For more information about Crime Unseen, please visit our website.
January 3, 2012 | Details | Comments (1)
Featured on PBS News Hour and Time Magazine's LightBox blog, our current exhibition, Crime Unseen, is open until January 15, leaving anyone who has not yet seen it less than two weeks to stop by and take a look at what New City Art is calling one of Chicago's Top Five Exhibitions of 2011.
Need more enticing? Take a look at what other people are saying about Crime Unseen:
Angela Strassheim, Evidence No. 4
"Crime Unseen offers a thoughtful multi-dimensional approach to the genre of crime photography." Art Slant
"Gothic-inspired and visually stunning... Crime Unseen is a large show, but each element is strong and adds to the overall narrative." CBS Chicago
"Dazzlingly obscene...Most of the images are deadpan, at first glance, presenting locations haunted by crimes ranging from white-collar to terrorism." Photograph Magazine
"Crime Unseen is an excellent exhibition because its depictions of violent crime...murders, in most cases, are not horror-film perverse...Most of the photographs on view here are open-ended, as if artists have extra sensitivity for interpreting a crime scene, reopening old cases by coloring their terrible realities with attractive presentations." New City Art
"I was struck by two things: the artistry and patience of the photography, with its noticeable attention to tonal balance and symmetry of the different picture areas; and a feeling of guilt, of being slightly appalled at myself for looking at evidence of such a grisly act and getting a real aesthetic pleasure from it." Hyperallergic
"There is no slasher movie-like gore in the Museum of Contemporary Photography's Crime Unseen as one might expect guess from the title, but that makes it all the more eerie." FlavorPill Chicago
