Ground Floor
Lower Level Galleries
Curated by Hyde Par Art Center Exhibitions Committee

Ground Floor, an ongoing biennial exhibition since 2010 that is now in its sixth iteration, brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent. The exhibition offers a single destination to discover artists who have recently graduated (in 2019 and 2020) from one of Chicago’s five top-tier MFA programs (Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The University of Chicago, and The University of Illinois at Chicago). Ground Floor presents art made in the past couple of years in hopes to investigate and articulate conceptual and stylistic trends coming out of Chicago art schools right now. Many of the artists in this year’s exhibition came to Chicago from other cities and countries, attracted by the city’s reputation as a hotbed of experimentation in art and activism. Ground Floor—so named because it provides a crucial platform for emerging artists and traverses the entire lower level of the Art Center—gives exhibiting artists a major public venue in which to display their works at a critical juncture in their careers, helping to build, support and ensure a strong and vibrant community of artists in Chicago. The exhibition will present for the first time in person the thesis work of ten 2020 graduates, whose thesis exhibitions were largely presented online because of the ongoing pandemic. This exhibition is generously supported by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The University of Chicago.

Artists represented in Ground Floor include: Seomy Ahn (SAIC), Dabin Ahn (SAIC), Kayla Anderson (Northwestern), Cecilia Beaven (SAIC), Leticia Bernaus (UIC), Stella Brown (UIC), Jonathan Castillo (Columbia College), Atefeh Farajolahzadeh (Columbia College), Efrat Hakimi (SAIC), J. Kent (Northwestern), Percy Lam (SAIC), Jessica Martin (Northwestern), Jordan Putt (Columbia College), Daisy Schultz (U Chicago), Forrest Simmons (Columbia College), Bun Stout (SAIC), Paige Taul (UIC), Tamara Valdez (UIC), Terence Wong (U Chicago), Qianwen Yu (SAIC).

The artists in the exhibition were selected by the Art Center’s Exhibitions Committee from a competitive pool of applicants who were nominated by respected Chicago-based artists, curators, and administrators. The Exhibitions Committee is chaired by internationally recognized artist and Art Center Board Member Dawoud Bey and includes artists and curators, Bethany Collins, Kelli Connell, Brendan Fernandes, Kate Sierzputowski, and Sheridan Tucker Anderson, and Art Center Director of Exhibitions and Residency Programs Allison Peters Quinn.

The exhibition is accompanied by a virtual public program and a catalog to be released in the Spring. For more information, visit the exhibition webpage.

COVID-19-related safety protocols
Hyde Park Art Center views its community’s safety as the number one priority and is utilizing the guidance from the City and State to inform its reopening procedures including the requiring of masks to be worn in the building at all times; instituting extra cleaning and disinfecting procedures; wide availability of hand sanitizer throughout the building; and the careful configuring of exhibition hours so as to help regulate the number of people and maintain proper social distance in the Art Center at one time.

Admission and hours
Exhibition admission is free, and advance registration is required. For latest exhibition hours and advance registration, visit www.hydeparkart.org.

About the Hyde Park Art Center
Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of quirky artists to establishing a strong legacy of innovative development and emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections.

For more information, please visit www.hydeparkart.org

Official Website

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Tags: Allison Peters Quinn, Atefeh Farajolahzadeh, Bethany Collins, Brendan Fernandes, Bun Stout, Cecilia Beaven, Chicago, Dabin Ahn, Daisy Schultz, Dawoud Bey, Efrat Hakimi, Forrest Simmons), Ground Floor, Hyde Park, Hyde Park Art Center, J. Kent, JESSICA MARTIN, Jonathan Castillo, Jordan Putt, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, Kayla Anderson, Kelli Connell, Leticia Bernaus, Paige Taul, Percy Lam, Qianwen Yu, Seomy Ahn, Sheridan Tucker Anderson, Stella Brown, Tamara Valdez, Terence Wong