MICKEY is pleased to present A Minor Survey, an exhibition of new work by Michelle Grabner. Consisting of painting, sculpture, and photography, this exhibition differs from the traditional model of a survey by bringing together bodies of work developed from the artist’s 30 year career that were all produced contemporaneously. This will mark the artist’s first solo presentation in Chicago since 2013 as well as her first with the gallery. The exhibition will open with a reception November 4th 5-8pm and will continue until December 18th.

Grabner is not an artist who seeks to originate new forms but instead an artist who translates, copies, and appropriates under-esteemed patterns, domestic rhythms, and predictable repetition as a means to rearrange hierarchies and aesthetics in art and in everyday life.

Often rearticulating overfamiliar patterns and commonplace formal arrangements including clichéd and mundane motifs such as plain-woven gingham fabric and domestic textiles, her work explores the political resonance of the concept of ‘order’ that traverses the boundaries of governance and visual culture.

Michelle Grabner (b. 1962, Oshkosh, USA) holds an MA in Art History and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University. Grabner is the 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and a National Academician in the National Academy of Design. She joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996, and currently is the Crown Family Professor of Art and Chair of Painting and Drawing department. She is also a senior critic at Yale University in the Department of Painting and Printmaking. Her writing has been published in Artforum, Modern Painters, Frieze, Art Press, and Art-Agenda. Grabner also runs The Suburban and The Poor Farm with her husband, artist Brad Killam. She co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and served as the inaugural artistic director of FRONT International, a triennial exhibition in and around Cleveland, OH in 2018. She co-curated the 5th edition of Sculpture Milwaukee titled there is We in 2021. Grabner currently lives and works in Milwaukee, USA.

I Work From Home, a comprehensive solo museum exhibition opened in 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, followed by a solo exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2015. Solo exhibitions of her work have also been held at INOVA, The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Ulrich Museum, Wichita; and University Galleries, Illinois State University. She has been included in group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate St. Ives, UK; and Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Her work is included in the permanent collection of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: the Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Art Institute of Chicago; MUDAM – Musée d’Art Moderne Luxembourg; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH; Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison WI; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, OH; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, New York; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine

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