CHICAGO: RETREAT

Organized by Theaster Gates

August 22 – October 4, 2014

Opening reception: Friday, August 22, 2014, 5-7pm

VALERIE CARBERRY GALLERY

RICHARD GRAY GALLERY

875 North Michigan Avenue, 38th Floor

Chicago, IL

From press release:

Valerie Carberry Gallery and Richard Gray Gallery in collaboration with Black Artists Retreat, are pleased to announce RETREAT, an exhibition conceived and organized by Theaster Gates.

Artists were invited by Gates to consider how the concept of retreat, either in theory or practice, contributes to a position of strength and perspective in themaking of visual art. Works selected for exhibition communicate both active interpretations of retreat characterized by pressure or force and pssive expressions of retreat that invoke contemplation or meditation. Participating artists – Derrick Adams, Erika Allen, Elizabeth Axtman, Bethany Collins, Tony Lewis , Kelly Lloyd, Valerie Piraino, Mitchell Squire, Wilmer Wilson IV and Nate Young – represent the full range of contemporary art practice in all media, including painting, drawing, photography, installation, body art and video.

A fully illustrated publication with essay contributions by Hamza Walker (Associate Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago) and Romi Crawford (Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) will debut at EXPO Chicago, being held September 18 -21, 2014.

Exhibit Link (Valerie Carberry Gallery)

Exhibit Link (Richard Gray Gallery)

SYMPOSIUM + BOOK LAUNCH: Black Is, Black Ain’t

Featuring Huey Copeland, Thelma Golden, Kellie Jones, Bennett Simpson, and Hamza Walker

Sunday, December 8, 2013, 2PM

THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Kent Hall, Room 107

1020 East 58^th Street

Chicago, IL

Symposium:

On the occasion of publishing the Black Is, Black Ain’t exhibition catalog, the Renaissance Society has organized a symposium revisiting issues raised in the exhibition of the same name, curated by Hamza Walker and shown at the Society in 2008. Given the extent to which race is bound to visual representation, exhibitions have played no small role in instigating discussion. They are where identity has been asserted, critiqued, and dismantled, all in a healthy circular fashion. This symposium’s cast of curators, critics, and scholars will reflect on a series of seminal exhibitions from Black Male (1994) through Blues for Smoke (2012) and the context in which they were mounted, from the riots ensuing in the wake of the Rodney King beating to Obama’s presidential election.

Panelists:

Huey Copeland, moderator, Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern University

Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem

Kellie Jones, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University

Bennett Simpson, Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles

Hamza Walker, Associate Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society

Publication:

Black Is, Black Ain’t is a generously illustrated, 196 page exhibition catalog documenting work by 26 artists and featuring essays by Huey Copeland, Darby English, Greg Foster-Rice, Amy Mooney, Kym Pinder, Krista Thompson, Hamza Walker, and Kenneth Warren. This group exhibition, curated by Hamza Walker, explored an evolution in the discourse of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a recent shift to racial identity being simultaneously rejected and retained.

Black Is, Black Ain’t was first exhibited at the Renaissance Society, then traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2009) and the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute (2009).

Symposium Link

POST: Hamza Walker - Renaissance man, Renaissance Society

Hamza Walker, curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.
Photo by Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune via chicagotribune.com.

Old-school U. of C. curator wants to talk with you about ideas

Text | Claudine Ise, Special to the Chicago Tribune

Published | March 08, 2013

Excerpt:

You can’t have a short conversation with Hamza Walker. The guy likes to talk. A lot. 

He’s been chatting with a visitor for a couple of hours now, seated behind the desk of his light-filled office at The Renaissance Society, the small yet highly regarded contemporary art museum on the University of Chicago campus where he holds dual posts as director of education and associate curator.

Walker hasn’t once scanned a cellphone for messages. He hasn’t even checked his watch.

When Hamza Walker is with you, he is with you.

He’s also really funny. He has a goofy laugh and a tendency to go off on tangents. Ask him a question, and he’ll answer it, but before he does, he may stray so far from the original point you’ll forget what you were talking about in the first place.

Read complete story here.