Summer 2018 MMoCA newsletter

EXHIBITIONS
WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN: RELIQUARY
State Street Gallery • Aug 18–Nov 11, 2018
MMoCA Opening Friday, Aug 17 • 6–9 PM
Chicago-based artist William J. O’Brien’s idiosyncratic
and exuberant forms are born out of an improvised
and intuitive studio practice. Inspired by Modernism,
as well as the history of material experimentation characteristic
of Outsider Art, O’Brien’s multidisciplinary
practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and
ceramics. His beautifully gnarled ceramic objects—part
vessel, part body, and part abstract form—are arranged
in tabletop installations, and his elaborately patterned
felt works and colored pencil drawings combine intuitive
gestural marks with repetition and gridded compositions.
Vibrant triangles, circles, aggressive loops
and marks create a palpable tension between order
and chaos.
Reliquary is an immersive installation that showcases
O’Brien’s wide range of material experimentation and
reflects his continued interest in interrogating the traditional
boundaries separating fine art from functional
craft. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a tent made
from muslin and covered with O’Brien’s expressive,
ink-wash drawings. As suggested by the exhibition’s
title, this structure is the artist’s contemporary version
of a reliquary, complete with two life-size ceramic
totems that guard the tent’s main entrance. Inside, a
pedestal displays heavily textured bronze vessels
and glazed ceramic sculptures, or relics. As a whole,
Reliquary translates notions of the spiritual and the
secular into a contemporary art context by questioning
the preciousness—or sacredness—of the art object.
Generous funding, to date, for William J. O’Brien:
Reliquary has been provided by Gina and Michael
Carter; a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with
funds from the State of Wisconsin and National
Endowment for the Arts; and MMoCA Volunteers.
ART/WORD/IMAGE
Henry Street Gallery • On view through July 29
the Dadaists to the speech balloons of mid-century Pop
art, artists have frequently used language, often ironic
or enigmatic, to enhance the resonance of their work.
In 1912, when Picasso and Braque glued newspaper
clippings onto their cubist still-lifes they unwittingly
ushered a new era of wordplay into the history of
modern art. The written word was abstracted from
the structure of language and introduced as a graphic,
artistic element. From the fragmented “word salads” of
In his screenprint Sin (1970), Ed Ruscha transforms
the word into a mountainous object that looms over
a trompe l’oeil rendering of an olive. According to
Ruscha, “words are pattern-like, and in their horizontality
they answer my investigation into landscape.
They’re almost not words—they are objects that
become words.” Art/Word/Image examines the use
of language in art through selections from the permanent
collection including works by Robert Cottingham,
Bruce Nauman, Fred Stonehouse, and John Wilde.
Exhibitions in the Henry Street Gallery are generously
funded through an endowment established by
the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
4