Ground Floor, an ongoing Biennial exhibition since 2010, brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent. The exhibition offers a single destination to discover artists, who have recently graduated (in 2021 and 2022) from one of Chicago’s five outstanding MFA programs and whose work demands to be seen and supported. 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.
Ground Floor—so named because it provides a crucial platform for young artists and expands 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 2022 Ground Floor exhibition marks the seventh iteration of this biennial exhibition at the Art Center.
Sungho Bae (SAIC), Juan Baños (UIC), Scott Campbell (U of C), Ále Campos (SAIC), Sofia Fernandez Diaz (SAIC),Ali Georgescu (CCC), Sara Grose (U of C), Payton Harris Woodard (SAIC), Patrick Hubbell (SAIC), Nicholas Jackson (UIC),Ajmal “MAS MAN” Millar (SAIC), Travis Morehead (NU), Natasha Moustache (CCC), Elissa Osterland (U of C), Jess Atieno (SAIC),Shabtai Pinchevsky (NU), Emilie Plunkett (CCC), Corey Smith (SAIC), Frank Vega (SAIC), and Jessica Walker (NU)
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, Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Board Member Anne Wilson, curator Ross Stanton Jordan, associate professor of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University Steve Reinke, and 2020 Ground Floor Biennial alum Daisy Schultz.
The exhibition is accompanied by public programs and a catalog to be released in the Spring. The catalog will include a commissioned text by curator and writer Denny Mwaura, Assistant Director at Gallery 400, UIC.
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