EXPO CHICAGO is proud of our partnership with Hyde Park Art Center, an important Chicago institution and contemporary art space. Hyde Park Art Center presents innovative exhibitions of new work by primarily Chicago-based artists, along with community programming that cultivates a more vibrant and inclusive arts community.

A new group exhibition opened at Hyde Park Art Center on April 22, Hairy Blob. Curated by Adelheid Mers, the exhibition features work by Becky Alprin, Nadav Assor, Deborah Boardman, Lauren Carter, Sarah FitzSimons, Ashley Hunt in collaboration with Taisha Paggett, Judith Leemann, Kirsten Leenaars, Faheem Majeed and Emily Newman.

Lauren Carter, Sunsets, encyclopedias, 72 ½ x 39 x 20 inches, 2011. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center.

In their work, these artists explore the concept of time through the use of video, sculpture, drawing, installation, movement and sounds. Viewers can interpret Hairy Blob in many different ways, as the exhibition represents how we must interpret everything in order to understand the world around us.

The idea behind Hairy Blob is to question our typical conversations about time and open the dialogue up to new interpretations of the concept. Our understanding of history is always shifting, based on an interpretation of events throughout time. These interpretations change, causing history to be fluid. In ways both playful and serious, the exhibition highlights this process of interpreting our world to create meaning for ourselves.

Faheem Majeed, Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden, cedar and appropriated ephemera, dimensions variable, 1938 – 2012. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center.

At the entrance of Hairy Blob, the viewer is met with Lauren Carter’s sculpture, Sunsets.The sculpture transforms a stack of gilded encyclopedias into a mirror. A photo installation, Pier, by Sarah FitzSimons, features a mysterious structure in a long-empty lake basin, representing both geologic time and a future where land is covered in water.

The exhibition also includes the filming of a “soap opera” by Kristin Leenars, a concert performed by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) in Faheem Majeed’s installation, and a live performance with Nadav Assor collaborating with Israeli artist, Daniel Davidovsky.

Nadav Assor, Stills from Strip / Lakeshore East, time delayed panoramic video, 1 hour 28 minutes, 2012. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center.

Hairy Blob is curated by Adelheid Mers, an artist and faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hairy Blob is on view through July 29, 2012.

The Hyde Park Art Center is located at 5020 South Cornell Avenue. For more information, call 773.324.5520 or visit their website.

Emmaline Niendorf is an Integrated Marketing Associate with Otherwise Incorporated.