dayton is not in ohio

There’s a good reason for my infrequent posting lately. In addition to making plans and preparations for my MFA project, I’ve been hard at work curating a small show at Alogon Gallery here in Chicago.

The show is titled The Strange Place, a reference to School of the Art Institute art history professor James Elkins‘ book, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. In a nutshell, the show presents the artwork of eight Christians in a venue that is not religiously affiliated. Considering the discourse surrounding ‘religion and contemporary art,’ my goal was simply to bring the two spheres together, not in an abstract sense, but in a concrete instance. It’s not meant to be understood as a solution to the very complex dynamics of the relationship, or even as a proposition, but simply as an intersection and point of reference in the ongoing conversation.

I’ve invited three people to write essays responding to the show, and to each other: Elkins, Kevin Hamilton, asst. professor of new media and painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Daniel Siedell, asst. professor of art and art history at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

The artists in the show are: Wayne Adams, Keith Crowley, Mark Dixon, Rubens Ghenov, Tim Gierschick, Rob Matthews, Alert Pedulla, Gene Schmidt, and Ben Volta.

Here’s a really good piece by Daniel Siedell if you’d like to read a take on this intersection of religion and contemporary art from a very thoughtful Christian perspective. This nails it for me.