Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam 2014 by Gallery 16

GRABNER KILLAM 2014

Grabner/Killam 2014 May 23-July 30 It has been an incredible year for Chicago-based artist, curator, and critic Michelle Grabner. She was selected as one of the three curators for the 2014 Whitney Biennial, the first artist to do so since Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the Museum’s founder. “I Work From Home,” a survey of her artwork over the past 20 years opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. And now, Gallery 16 is honored to present Grabner Killam 2014, a major installation by Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam. This is their sixth exhibition with Gallery 16. On the evening of May 23 the exhibiton opened with an artist talk moderated by Patricia Maloney of Art Practical. The discussion examined the artist’s remarkably diverse output of art making, criticism, and curating. And

touched on the distinctive values and ideas that drive Grabner’s practice, notably working outside of dominant systems.

Grabner is co-founder, with husband Brad Killam, of the acclaimed artist-run project space The Suburban, is an artist-run project space founded in 1999 by Grabner and Killam, situated between the artists’ home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois. The Poor Farm (est. 2009). The Suburban mixes sophisticated contemporary art exhibitions with backyard BBQs in the midst of a bustling family life. They developed it in response to the idea that the suburbs were an overlooked site for avant-garde activities.

Grabner works in variety of mediums including drawing, painting, video and sculpture. She is widely known for her abstract metalpoint works and her paintings of textile patterns appropriated from everyday domestic fabric. Michelle Grabner is a Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She co-directs The Suburban (est. 1999) an artist project space in Oak Park, IL. She writes for Artforum, X-tra, Art-Agenda among others. Her work is represented by Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Gallery 16, San Francisco and Anne Mosseri-Marlio, Basel. Brad Killam is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at College of DuPage. He co-directs the Suburban, with Grabner. He has written for publications such as Tema Celeste and New Art Examiner as well as published artist’s catalog essays. He has exhibited his work widely in North America and Europe since 1992. Michelle Grabner’s work is included in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, France; Milwaukee Art Museum

This current Gallery 16 exhibiton Grabner / Killam, follows a major retrospective of Michelle Grabner’s work titled “I Work From Home,” organzied by David Norr at MOCA Cleveland. That show presented work from the last 20 years, including paintings, drawings, prints, videos, and sculptures, positioning the studio as core to her practice.

“How do you represent someone” who is not only an accomplished painter, printer, sculptor, and video artist, Norr said, but who has also “curated hundreds of shows? How do you represent someone who has written 300 reviews, probably 75 catalogue essays, is a curator, is a teacher? How do you also represent that?” His answer proved to be a unique collaboration between artist and curator that does not simply survey Grabner’s physical works, but takes a stab at capturing the more difficult-topin-down parts of her practice, including curation and collaboration. Newer collaborative works include “mobile sculptures” made with Killam and a backdrop created by artist Gaylen Gerber on which some of Grabner’s relief paintings will hang. In addition, the museum is rebuilding the Suburban, a tiny project space next door to Grabner’s Illinois home, brick-bybrick. Norr considers the Suburban to be one of Grabner’s most remarkable achievements. “In the early suburban shows Matthew Barney and Bjork, Luc Tuymans were in her house,” he said. “Why are they going to Oak Park, Illinois, and staying in Michelle’s guest bedroom and doing a project in an 8-foot-by-8-foot project space? It’s the will and the agency that she brings to that kind of thing that’s not about second-guessing. It’s just about doing.” In an interview with Brooklyn Rail, Grabner discussed the Suburban; “The Suburban operates within the economy of our household. Brad and I are fortunately privileged to be full-time art faculty at two very different kinds of institutions here in Chicagoland. The Suburban has never entertained any commercial ambition. And on that rare occasion when somebody’s interested in buying a Walead Beshty glass FedEx box, we will direct that interested party to Walead, or to his commercial gallery. We support a lot of things at The Suburban but negotiating a commercial sale is not something that interests us. Rail: I’ve heard that it was Luc Tuymans who sought out The Suburban to exhibit, rather than the other way round, is that true? Grabner: It is true. And it is a good story about generosity and alternative thinking. Luc and his artist wife Carla Arocha attended an opening at Suburban. I believe it was an opening for an exhibition by David Robbins. They were in town because Carla just opened a show at a commercial gallery here. A couple of weeks later Luc emailed from Antwerp and asked if he could show one painting at The Suburban. Initially we were hesitant because we didn’t carry art insurance for our little space. But after discussing this, we determined that hosting a Tuymans painting in our concrete block gallery in the yard of our suburban house would be an exciting critical gesture for all parties. Needless to say we purchased an insurance rider. The painting went to an American collector and Luc’s Antwerp gallery, Zeno X, saw fit to donate a percentage of that sale to The Suburban. We put that generous gift into erecting another building on our property in Oak Park that includes two more exhibition spaces.

The Suburban, Oak Park, IL. Outside text design by Lars Breuer for an exhibition by Konsortium, 2009. Photo: Lars Breuer. Courtesy of The Suburban.

Gallery 16’s commitment to Grabner and Killam’s work dates back to the mid 1990’s when we hosted a number of exhibitions that displayed the couple’s domestic lives as parents and it’s influence on their art practice. Critic Mark Van Proyen recalls “One exhibition that was particularly memorable from Gallery 16’s years on 16th street was a collaborative presentation from the spring of 2003 titled Oak Park Family Works, featuring the work of Grabner and Brad Killam, with imaginative contributions from their two sons Pete and Oliver. The components of this exhibition sprawled about the gallery, with no signage pointing to the specific authorship of any given object—thereby suggesting that everything in the presentation was the product of a collaborative project. Grabner had already exhibited her post-hypnotic abstractions at Gallery 16 in 1997. Clearly, both she and Killam were impressed by Griff Williams’ imaginative approach to running a gallery. Thus, when they set up their own exhibition space (called The Suburban) adjacent to their Oak Park Illinois residence in 1998, Griff ’s project was not far from their thinking. In a email sent to me, Grabner elaborated on the influence: “I do know that G16 was and is an important model for The Suburban. We are currently celebrating our 15th anniversary, five years shy of G16’s 20th. The Suburban’s anti-curatorial stance was underscored by the working pragmatics of a space like G16 whose profits are not dependent on exhibitions but are generated instead in parallel work: Printing, publishing, design and Griff ’s own studio practice. Teaching, studio work, and writing for Brad and me provide us with the resources to run The Suburban. That means pure freedom in the exhibition facet of G16 or The Suburban. It also means that we can examine the ethical position of framing our spaces as anti-curatorial. Our galleries and their programming reveal both our responsibility to artists and their practices and our desire to contribute to contemporary art discourse in a way that is different than the interests of commercial galleries or non-profit spaces. And not to be underestimated is the fact that we both value families and find pedagogical value in what we do, thus interfacing many aspects art-making and its apparatus with parenting.”

Installation view of a 1997 exhibition at Gallery 16, titled Prep. It included Grabner/Killam, Arturo Herrera, Nick Frank and Gary Cannone. 5

Installation view of a 1997 exhibition at Gallery 16, Grabner/Killam.

In a 2006 Survey of Grabners work “Remain in the Light,” Michelle’s form of abstract paintingwas discussed. “Throughout the 1990s, Grabner’s subtle and sensuous paintings re-articulated the initial intrinsic beauty of patterns found in household items such as blankets, placemats, weavings, grapefruit bags, and colanders. Domesticity was brought literally to the surface in these paintings: Grabner spray-painted through porous or perforated materials directly onto canvas, then systematically filled in each faint “stencil” mark by hand with enamel or flocking. To most eyes, the paintings were abstract, yet, paradoxically, their surfaces were realistic evidence of the household objects from which they were generated. Suffusing the practical with the formal, the playful with the useful, these paintings extended the Modernist trope of the pure grid into the realm of everyday life. Over the years Grabner’s work has evolved from the tangible to the philosophical, finding inspiration in concepts of “goodness” from Plato, Wittgenstein, and Dewey. The artist’s Goodness Paintings (2001-2004) engage the immaterial world of rainbows, visible light, and thought. Radiating from each painting’s center, a succession of undulating bands of pastel color relate to Dewey’s concept of reflective thought as a “consequence of consecutive ordering in which each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors.” “I was not very interested in them as domestic middle-class signifiers. I started receiving a great deal of critical response to these paintings in terms of the politics of “women’s work,” and how that was intertwining with ideas in contemporary abstraction. But it was really Platonic ideals of routine and orderliness I was seeking to find by rearticulating my domestic backdrops.”

Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Down Block, 2010 Steel, paint, car parts, flashe, gesso, wood.

Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Down Block (Detail) , 2010 Steel, paint, car parts, flashe, gesso, wood.

Untitled (Silverpoint), 2010 Silverpoint and gesso on canvas 50'' x 50''

Michelle Grabner/Brad Killam - Head Gear #1, 2010 Paint, metal, silverpoint, gesso and wood 24’’ diameter x 1’’

Jason Foumberg wrote “Both the art world and the sports industry are built on foundations of fantasy, faithfully maintained by legions of fans. Michelle Grabner’s seven untitled cell-phone pictures of a televised football game magnify the hall-of-mirrors experience of watching from multiple sidelines (the living room, the gallery). But they still embody the thrill of being on an extended team of players and spectators, in that Grabner’s football. Nancy Holt, as a girl, was told by her parents she could not watch televised sports because she was a girl. Later in her career, Holt snapped photos of televised football games in reflective revolt. Grabner revives Holt’s project with her own images, “What I am interested in is how appropriation can reroute the relationship between myself as a maker and the things that exist in the world.” Grabner further championed Holt’s revolt by rephotographing all 24 images. Grabner’s took photos of the book pages from the obscure paperback, Nancy Holt’s “Time Outs (1985)”, published by Visual Studies Workshop. She then enlarged the images and published a new limited edition series of silkscreen prints. Her goal through reproducing a reproduction was to discuss the concept of originality, authorship and spectatorship. It is a testimony to her support of artists who inspire her and an elevation of Holt’s original inquiry.

In his essay Michelle Grabner Works From Home, David Norr wrote of Grabner and Killams Bleacher sculptures â&#x20AC;&#x153; It consists of aluminum bleachers upon which two copies of a family photograph and two television monitors are carefully nested. The monitors play what could be described as a home movie,..brings these collected elements together in a hovering, sidelong conglomeration about watching, gathering, and moving as a unit. Symbolic of Grabnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s passion for sport (she is an avid fan of the Green Bay Packers football team), the bleachers call up comfortable spectatorship through a hilarious reversal of positioning.

Gallery 16 Editions is pleased to announce a limited edition by Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Oyster Multiple. It is made on in conjunction with the Grabner / Killam 2014 exhibition at Gallery 16, San Francisco. The artwork is designed to function as a bookshelf that supports a classic Grabner/Killam mobile. The bookshelf, made of powder coated sheet metal, houses the monograph “Can I Come Over to Your House”, a history of the first fifteen years of the internationally acclaimed art space The Suburban. As well as an audio CD by Brad Killam and Darnell Thomas. The mobile is constructed from a hammered aluminum trash can lid upon which Grabners’ original paintings and silverpoint drawings are attached. Ken Johnson of the New York Times wrote of Grabner and Killam’s Oyster, “The basic structure is a disc made by flattened pieces cut from shiny metal garbage cans. Hanging by a cable, it turns freely this way and that. Attached to the disc are small paintings of gingham patterns and of radiating lines. For all the impressive physicality of Ms. Grabner’s piece, it’s the puzzling interplay of disparate signs that matters most. The garbage cans, the gingham patterns, the natural wood plank and the backyard photograph variously evoke suburban nostalgia. Ms. Grabner is not pining for a lost way of life, however. Rather, she presents a mind-teasing, rebus-like constellation of sociologically suggestive icons for viewers to sort out and make sense of for themselves.”

The mobiles are building blocks to which other artworks and objects are attached, creating new dependencies. The serializing of their mobile form neatly fits into other concerns, namely, pattern and repetition, which is really order and chaos.”

Cover: Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Oyster No. 7, 2014 Aluminum, gingham cotton, silverpoint and black gesso on wood, inkjet print, 131” x 128” Page 2: Grabner/Killam 2014, Gallery 16 Installation detail. Page 4: The Suburban, Oak Park, IL. Outside text design by Lars Breuer. Photo: Lars Breuer. Courtesy of The Suburban. Page 5-7. Installation view, Prep, Gallery 16,1997. Grabner/Killam, Arturo Herrera, Nick Frank and Gary Cannone. Photo: Griff Williams. Courtesy Gallery 16. Page 8. Michelle Grabner, Drawing (2), Flocking on Color Aid Paper, 1998. Page 9. Michelle Grabner, Drawing (3), Flocking on Color Aid Paper, 1998. Page 10-11. Michelle Grabner, Scallop Weave, Flocking on MDF, 32x36. 1999. Page 13-14. Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Down Block, 2010 Steel, paint, car parts, flashe, gesso, wood. Page 15-16. Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Down Block (Installation Detail) , 2010 Steel, paint, car parts, flashe, gesso, wood. Page 17. Untitled (Silverpoint), 2010 Silverpoint and gesso on canvas, 50’’ x 50’’ Page 18: Michelle Grabner/Brad Killam - Head Gear #1, 2010 Paint, metal, silverpoint, gesso and wood, 24’’ diameter x 1’’ Page 19-20. Family Portrait, Grabner/Killam, 2014. Page 21-22. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Installation view, Gallery 16, 2014. Page 23-24. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Oyster No. 7, 2014 Aluminum, gingham cotton, silverpoint and black gesso on wood, inkjet print, 131” x 128” Page 25-26. Michelle Grabner, Untitled (Nancy Holt), 2013, Silkscreen prints on museum etching paper, 30” x 40”. Page 27-28. Untitled (Nancy Holt) Detail View, 2013, Silkscreen prints on museum etching paper, 30” x 40”. Page 29-30. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Bleachers No. 2 , 2014, Aluminum, flashe and black gesso on canvas, video photograph by Barry Underwood, 1993 Page 31. Brad Killam, Untitled, 2014 Black and white gesso on canvas, 13.25” x 11”

Page 32. Michelle Grabner, Untitled, 2013 Silverpoint and black gesso on panel Diameter: 12 “ Page 33. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Bleacher No. 3, 2014 Aluminum, flashe and black gesso on canvas, video photograph by Barry Underwood, 1993 Page 34. Brad Killam, Untitled, 2014 Black and white gesso on canvas, 18.5” x 15.5” Page 35. Michelle Grabner, Untitled, flashe and black gesso on canvas. Diameter: 30” Page 36. Michelle Grabner, Untitled, flashe and black gesso on canvas, Diameter: 30” Page 37-38. Michelle Grabner, Untitled, flashe and black gesso on canvas, Diameter: 50” Page 39. Installation View, Michelle Grabner, Untitled, 2014 inkjet print, 25” x 19”. , Oyster multiple, 2014, Edition of 10. Page 40. Michelle Grabner, Untitled, 2014 inkjet print, 25” x 19”. Edition of 5. Page 41-44. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Oyster multiple, 2014 Edition of 10, Suburban Book, DVD, steel, gingham cotton, silverpoint and gesso on wood panel. Page 45. Brad Killam, Schematic Drawing for Multiple. 2014 Page 46. Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam, Oyster multiple (Detail), 2014 Page 47. Brad Killam Installing Oyster No.7. Photo: Griff Williams. Courtesy Gallery 16.

Gallery 16 was founded by artist Griff Williams in 1994. Since then, Gallery 16 and its fine art imprint Gallery 16 Editions has produced exhibitions with over 250 artstis and published over 800 prints, artist books, and multiples with artists including Ari Marcopoulos, Jim Goldberg, Colter Jacobsen, Bill Berkson, Harrell Fletcher, Lynn Hershman, Amy Franceschini, Adam Lowe, William Kentridge, Tucker Nichols, Rebeca Bollinger, Libby Black, Deborah Oropallo, Jim Isermann, bell hooks, Ann Chamberlain, Elliot Anderson, Carol Selter, Rebeca Bollinger, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen.

MIchelle Grabner and Brad Killamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artwork is available through Gallery 16. Gallery 16 is located at 501 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107. Inquiries may contact Griff Williams at 415-626-7495. All images ÂŠ Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam gallery16.com