David Moss is a self-described “extreme vocalist.” In his bizarre, entrancing performances, he babbles and sings in invented languages, his commanding but playful use of his voice leaving audiences speechless. This Saturday, at the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel, Moss will premiere his latest composition, “Hyperglyphyx.” Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past three weeks, the fourth floor of the University of Chicago’s Cobb Hall has been a bustle of construction. Slowly taking shape inside the Renaissance Society is “The Seductiveness of the Interval,” a two-story structure integrating a series of art pieces by three Romanian artists. Walking through the yet-to-be-completed structure, with its unpainted walls and unfinished floors and with loose wires hanging out of its walls, it is hard to imagine the installation in its fully furnished final form. But in less than a week, this ambitious project will be open to the public. Read the rest of this entry »

In the silent and shadowy light of the Renaissance Society’s gallery space, the subjects of Matt Saunders’ portraits seem to want to say something. The headshots that are part of Saunders’ show “Parallel Plots” stare out at the viewer inquiringly, even demandingly. Breaking the stillness, three animated videos running on loop constantly flicker on the gallery walls. Read the rest of this entry »

Charles Bernstein has been a major figure in American poetry since 1978, when he coedited the influential magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. “One of the things that interested me was poetry that was eccentric, that diverged from the norms, that was weird and queer and extreme and very self-conscious about how its forms were provisional and imaginary and invented,” Bernstein said in an interview. Since the 1970s, Bernstein has published more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and libretti. Read the rest of this entry »

“Art is a kind of religion, in a sense,” said photographer Anna Shteynshleyger in a public conversation with Renaissance Society associate curator Hamza Walker last Sunday. “For me, there’s not just an overlap—there’s similarities.” Not something often heard coming from a successful contemporary artist, but Shteynshleyger, it seems, is an exception. A practicing Orthodox Jew and the author of an eponymous exhibit that opened at the Renaissance Society on January 3, Shteynshleyger has spent the past seven years making photographs that deal directly with her religion. Along the way, she has deftly avoided the pitfalls that often prevent vocally religious artists from making universally meaningful art and from being accepted by curators, gallery owners, and the contemporary art scene. Read the rest of this entry »

Juxtaposing images of fighter jets, CIA black sites, and industrial factory farms with family portraits and shots of Polish-Americans at ethnic festivals, the forty photographs and wall-mount quotations that comprise “Polonia and Other Tales,” Allan Sekula’s current exhibition at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, vacillate between depicting “a romantic role of Poland and Poland’s actual geo-politics,” according to curator Hamza Walker. Taken as a whole, the show works to tell not only the story of Poland and Polonia, a term for the Polish expatriate community, but also the way that each narrative is embedded in geo-political issues. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s a cult,” Renaissance Society curator Hamza Walker said, addressing a room filled to the brim with art students from across Chicago. The statement was in response to a question posed by a student that he rephrased as, “Why does contemporary art work? How can artists get away with it?” Read the rest of this entry »

Joe McPhee is a Renaissance man of sound. The 70-year-old horn and reed player’s versatility has made him one of the free music community’s most cherished members since he released his first recordings on his own label in the late 1960s. The idea of revolution has been crucial to McPhee’s prolific career, and appropriately, his music has been a radical force in avant-garde jazz. But he has also shown himself capable of overturning his own standards and learning from new collaborators. As a precursor to its appearance at the Umbrella Music Festival in the Loop, his group Survival Unit III (featuring Chicagoans Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang) performs at Bond Chapel as part of the Renaissance Society’s music series. Read the rest of this entry »