Mysterious, novel, and internally optical, the zoetrope is a pre-cinema, spinning drum that when put in motion creates a quick analog animation. For this exhibition, guest curator and interdisciplinary artist Scott Wolniak invites 13 artists that don’t normally make moving image work to make new work to be activated by a custom-made zoetrope. The exhibition offers a visual metaphor of the notion that limitations can promote innovation and foster a unique viewing experience.
Featured Artists
About Scott Wolniak
Scott Wolniak (b. 1971) is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher and occasional curator based in Chicago. His work in drawing, painting, sculpture and video utilizes labor-intensive techniques and humble materials, along with humor and optical effects, to explore the ever-evolving relationship between landscape and abstraction, outer space and inner space. Wolniak has exhibited extensively throughout the US. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art in America and the Chicago Tribune, and is part of numerous permanent collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee. He is represented by Goldfinch Gallery, Chicago.
Curation has played a lo-key but significant role in Wolniak’s practice over the past two decades. He ran Suitable Gallery, an influential alternative space in his Humboldt Park garage between 1999 and 2005, as well as the tangential video platform, Suitable Video, which curated screening programs and DVD editions between 2005 and 2011. Wolniak received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2002. He is an Instructional Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.
