Books published by Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago

Los Angeles-based artist Silke Otto-Knapp has developed a painting practice characterized by its rigorous process and attentiveness to the medium‿s possibilities. Using layers of black watercolor pigment, she builds up delicate surfaces, producing subtle variations in density and a powerful sense of atmosphere. Otto-Knapp‿s exhibition at the Renaissance Society, In the waiting room, presented a new group of large-scale free-standing paintings in that evokes a multidimensional stage set. Some depict silhouetted bodies while others introduce scenic elements reminiscent of painted backdrops. Offering a close look at the exhibition, this volume includes an array of illustrations, a conversation between curator Solveig ÿvstebÿ and the artist, and four newly commissioned essays by Carol Armstrong, Darby English, Rachel Hann, and Catriona MacLeod, grounded in art history and performance studies. Â

Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition, Let me consider it from here features color reproductions of artworks by Saul Fletcher, Brook Hsu, and Tetsumi Kudo and transcriptions of the audio works of Constance DeJong, alongside newly commissioned poems by Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Simone White, and Lynn Xu, and an epilogue by Solveig Øvstebø. These artists frequently draw from their own histories, humors, and instincts as they grapple with or reimagine what's happening in the world around them. Across a range of mediums, their works open up spaces that oscillate between strange and familiar, registering deeply personal experiences as well as more ambient cultural and political pressures. Their practices are all similarly anchored in solitude and stretch outward to meet the world, guiding us to the liminal realms between the public and the intimate, the concrete and the fantastical.

Unthought Environments brings together art influenced by the forces that are integral to our daily lives, yet are easily forgotten or overlooked, such as the ancient elements of air, fire, water, and earth weather systems geopolitics and the hidden physical components of our virtual world. Informed by media studies, ecology, and philosophy, these multi-media artworks explore the elemental sphere as it intersects with the human-made. This exhibition catalog brings together images from the exhibition alongside texts that engage directly with the works as well as the larger issues that drive them. Essays by Karsten Lund, John Durham

Alejandro Cesarco: Song, published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Renaissance Society, brings together both new commissions and existing works. In the exhibition, Cesarco creates rhythm by incorporating silences and withholdings. The works form an installation drawing on the poetics of duration, refusal, repetition, and affective forms. This presentation, as in the artist's broader practice, represents a sustained investigation into time, memory, and how meaning is perceived. Centering on two related video works, the exhibition engaged deeply with histories of conceptual art. This catalog features an introduction by Solveig Øvstebø, a conversation between Alejandro Cesarco and Lynne Tillman, an essay by Julie Ault, and new short fiction by Wayne Koestenbaum in response to the exhibition.

The title of Richard Rezac's Renaissance Society exhibition, Address, plays on the multivalent quality of the word. As a noun, it refers to a unique identifier of a precise location. As a verb, it refers to a form of communication crafted for a specific people, time, and place. This exhibition drew upon both elements of the word's two meanings: the artist deliberately created and selected works in response to the architecture of the Renaissance Society's gallery space, and the title also nods to the sculptures' relationship to their presumptive audience. This book showcases twenty pieces featured in the exhibition that are made of a wide range of materials including cherry wood, cast bronze, and aluminum and that span Rezac's career--including newly commissioned pieces.s Through the concept of address, the exhibit and book explore the artist's ongoing engagement with both tangible, mathematical ordering systems and the elusive mechanisms of memory and interpretation. This publication continues Rezac's address, extending it to a greater audience of readers through a generous selection of images, a conversation between the artist and curator Solveig Øvstebø, and new texts by Matthew Goulish, Jennifer R. Gross, and James Rondeau.

Monograph of the Grosvenor's work since 2005

In 2015 the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Los Angeles-based artist Mathias Poledna. Coinciding with the museum's centennial, it marked the final show in the institution's first hundred years. For this project Poledna used the notion of iconoclasm and its various historical contexts as a conceptual backdrop for two new works: a 35-mm film installation, co-produced with and premiering at the Renaissance Society, and a substantial alteration to the gallery space: the demolition, dismantling and removal of the gallery's ceiling structure, a steel truss grid that had horizontally bisected the double-height gallery since 1967. This catalog--featuring a cover designed by artist Peter Downsbrough--documents the exhibition and its installation, and in doing so celebrates a century of the Renaissance Society.