Chicago-based artist Lilli Carré presents her first solo museum exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago. BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Lilli Carré features all new work including an experimental animation, several works on paper, and an installation of ceramic sculptures. Organized by the MCA’s Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow Michelle Puetz, the exhibition is on view December 17, 2013 to April 15, 2014.

Carré is best known for her award-winning comics, animated films, and commercial illustration, yet her interdisciplinary creative practice employs a wide range of media including printmaking, artists’ books, painting, and most recently, sculpture. Carré’s work encompasses delicate and moving explorations of humor and failure; narrative and time; the human form and abstraction; and presence and mortality.

The present exhibition is organized in a series of pairs, demonstrating Carré’s interest in the connections and experiences that people have with a set of artworks. Sculptures — showing two separate states of being — are arranged on pedestals in pairs, engaging in a type of conversation with each other and accompanying drawings, also exhibited in pairs. Carré describes the drawings as responses to the ceramic sculptures and animations on display.

A new work, made specifically for this installation, consists of two videos projected on opposite walls, positioning the viewer in the empty space between the animations. This dual projection reveals slowly shifting temporal relationships between images, which alternate between figures and abstractions. The artist encourages viewers to interpret this space and play an active role in filling the gap between objects and images, demonstrating her interest in narrative and storytelling.

Carré’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally at galleries and museums, film festivals, and alternative comics festivals. Her books include The Lagoon, Nine Ways to Disappear, Tales of Woodsman Pete, and the critically acclaimed collection Heads or Tails. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Believer Magazine, McSweeney’s, This American Life, The New York Times, Best American Comics, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Co-founder of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, Carré’s animated films have been screened at many festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Carré’s work was first shown at the MCA in the 2011 exhibition New Chicago Comics.

The BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works exhibition series showcases the best new work being made in Chicago, regardless of the status of the artist’s career, whether emerging or established, mid-career or undergoing reinvention.

RELATED PROGRAMS

MCA Talk: Curator Tour
Tuesday, January 14, noon
Michelle Puetz, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow leads a tour of the exhibition.

MCA Screen: Lilli Carré
Tuesday, April 1, 6 pm
As part of Tuesday Evenings at the MCA, Lilli Carré curates a film screening followed by a conversation.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Lilli Carré, Museum of Contemporary Art