Entering its eighth year as a leading international art fair, EXPO CHICAGO, has included Hyde Park Art Center in the Special Exhibitions program to exhibit ground-breaking Contemporary Art produced in Chicago alongside more than 135 leading international exhibitors in Navy Pier Hall.
At EXPO BOOTH #469, Hyde Park Art Center introduces a new collaboration between artists Assaf Evron and SaraNoa Mark, who have both been active in exhibitions and making work in the Jackman Goldwasser Residency studios at the Art Center. The title of the exhibition references Pres. John F. Kennedy’s cold war era speech on labor and progress where he proclaims, “use time as a tool, not a couch.” This sentiment of building on history and applying that knowledge forward, is one of many conceptual threads that run through the work of both artists. This unique installation combines the shared interest of Evron and Mark in the language of presentation of artifacts to reconsider human perception of history, national borders, and culture. Together, the Chicago-based artists enact a controlled logic of placement with photography, drawing, and clay sculpture to transform common didactic museum display techniques into speculative gestures that attempt to make time physically present.
Israli artist, Evron contributes his large-scale digital print incorporating the concrete modernist mural in Herzliya by Shlomo Eliraz (1912–1994), which presents parallels between architectural history and cultural legacy. Sand collected from around the world, reconfigured museum display structures, and hand-etched clay columns made by American artist, Mark methodically intersect with Evrons image and build a unique immersive space. The exhibition, Time as a tool, offers a transliterate experience of the visual graphics that permeate throughout geographies and dynasties in attempt to transfer knowledge before it disappears.
Banner image: Assaf Evron, Untitled(Shlomo Eliraz), detail, 1975-2019, digital photograph, dimensions variable, photo courtesy of Robert Chase Heishman.
