Liliana Porter: The Strange Task
@ SECRIST | BEACH
1801 W Hubbard St, Chicago, IL 60622
Opening Friday, April 10th, from 5PM - 8PM
On view through Saturday, June 13th
Born in Argentina in 1941 and based in New York since 1964, Liliana Porter has developed a enigmatic multidisciplinary practice spanning more than six decades. Working across video, photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, collage, small-scale installations, and theatre, her work incorporates everyday found objects to investigate themes of identity, labor, and time, with an idiosyncratic blend of poetic metaphor and humor. Porter constructs situations in which ordinary objects are transformed into agents of reflection on the human condition.
Porter is widely recognized as an important figure in conceptual, Latin American and feminist art. Her uniquely personal visual language is rooted the theory of surrealism highlighting not only our relation to objects, but the very nature of objecthood itself. By placing these toys and figurines in a specific context where they are either connected to each other or, conversely, directly connected to the viewer, the fidelity of emotional connection is enhanced. Works included in the exhibition – such as To Get There, To Hold the String, To See a Bird, and To Do It Again – stage moments of quiet action and contemplation. Objects and protagonists develop a narrative that is as approachable as it is meaningful, creating a reconsideration of our own everyday actions.
As co-founder of the influential New York Graphic Workshop (1964), Porter also produced prints for the Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Although their artistic practices differ in both method and context. significantly, both artists share a commitment to distorting reality as a method of inquiry. This conceptual affinity situates Porter within a broader lineage of Surrealist experimentation, where altered perception functions as a means of probing psychological, cultural, and symbolic structures
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Tags: Chicago, Liliana Porter, Secrist | Beach, The Strange Task, West Town
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