2nd Floor Rear is a 24-hour festival of art in experimental contexts, apartment galleries, and ephemeral and migrant projects, celebrating Chicago’s vibrant community of alternative and DIY art spaces. Each February, 2nd Floor Rear connects artists with new audiences, helps underfunded and underappreciated alternative spaces get some exposure, and enlivens a dreary winter weekend at the peak of Chicago’s bleakest season. Past artworks, events, and happenings have ranged from late-night studio square dancing to a guerilla sculpture garden, a site-specific installation in an underpass, and a nomadic art gallery in a handbag.
This year’s festival kicks off with a sidewalk parade led by Environmental Encroachment Marching Band, and continues throughout the day with exhibitions, GIFs, poetry, traveling theater, zines, historical re-enactments, and more. The revelry continues through the night with a performance art slumber party, and culminates on Sunday afternoon with a live cooking demonstration and performance by Chicago artist Kiam Marcelo Junio.
Join us February 1st and 2nd for our third edition of this epic, 24+hour, nonstop gallery-hop, featuring Society of Smallness, High Concept Laboratories (presented at the Logan Square Comfort Station), Out of Site, Chicago, Adult Contemporary, Chicago Travelling Theater Co, Autotelic Studios, Inside the Artist’s Kitchen, Trunk Show, Pocket Guide to Hell, and many more of Chicago’s most exciting artists and cultural producers.
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