BEER
@ BEN RUSSELL
1716 S Morgan St, 2F, Chicago, IL 60608
Opening Sunday, September 20th, from 6PM - 10PM
On view through Sunday, October 18th
Oh Fall! Oh College Football! Oh Civil War Reenactments! Oh Leafpiles on Fire! Oh BEER! Your pals at BEN RUSSELL cordially invite you to join them as they pour a cold one out in honor of summer already-past – a fond farewell to those bygone days of thigh-chafed lakefront volleyball, getting drunk in Millenium Park, hiding from Millenium Park Segway cops and buying far too many heirloom tomatoes at the farmer’s market. Just pour out a dribble though – there’s no sense in wasting good BEER on the past (especially homebrew*), so send the rest down your own gullet in honor of Art and the Present!
With all of the liquid courage that we can shotgun without a stomach pump, BEN RUSSELL is proud to raise a glass/can in the form of our Fall (Bottle) Opener, the aptly titled BEN RUSSELL: BEER. With a blurry eye to the besotted history of BEER’s role in culture, critical thinking and image/object-making, we’ve tied our three sheets to the wind and brewed up a concoction that is certain to plaster and pickle even the most devout art-world teetotaler. From the BEER-based work of Tom Marioni, the conceptual pioneer who made The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art in 1970, to the terrifying quick-glimpse-BEER-hubris of ex-President Bush (in Pavel Medvedev’s G8 video screed, The Unseen); from Jacob C Hammes‘ meaty sculptures of an alcoholic’s most necessary organs to the post-feminist performance blotto-TV-spectacle of Chelsea Culp; and from the homebrewed concoctions* of beer-art practitioners Joe Grimm and Dennis Hodges to the sloshed, soused, and sozzled 13′ wall painting produced in situ during a 5-day bender by Chicago resident Justin B Williams – BEN RUSSELL: BEER is artist-run cultural inebriation at its most intoxicating (9.7% abv)!
Sure, you know your limit, but this is the sort of drinking competition for which you won’t need a designated driver – and unless you get crocked from knocking back too much homebrew*, you won’t need to chew on that dried-root tuber of bitter vetch to get rid of your hangover in the morning. Cheers!
« previous event
next event »