Chicago Grid – Groupshow

On the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, Chicago-based artist and educator Jan Tichyhas organized a group exhibition for the project space 68projects. This exhibition resonates with his solo exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld across the street.

The pedagogy of László Moholy-Nagy, developed at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, has had a lasting influence on Jan Tichy’s artistic practice. Education as a creative dialogue between students and instructors was a crucial element of this method. Over the last decade, Jan Tichy has been developing this Bauhaus master’s practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Chicago Grid brings together artists and educators who have previously collaborated with Tichy—both as teachers and as students—representing both sides of the educational exchange. The exhibition questions the concept of the grid in its many forms and implications, making reference to the Berlin Bauhaus artists who were fascinated by the Chicago street grid system.

The participating artists include:
Faheem Majeed, Alfonso and Gillion Carrara, Kate Conlon and Boyang Hou, Shawn Decker, Frances Lightbound, David Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict, and Helen Maria Nugent.

In his solo exhibition Thin Lines at Galerie Kornfeld, Tichy continues to build on the grid, bringing together rare spiritual materials from the Bauhaus in Dessau and allowing these materials to collide with our current social and political reality through their display and engagement in the exhibition.

Jan Tichy’s collaboration in the László Moholy-Nagy exhibition at the Loyola Museum of Art in Chicago laid the foundation for a close friendship with Hattula Moholy-Nagy, daughter of the Bauhaus master and chairwoman of the Moholy-Nagy Foundation. Tichy’s sustained engagement with the Hungarian artist, Bauhaus educator, and visionary Moholy-Nagy finds expression in works that operate using methods developed at the Bauhaus, which Tichy transforms for the present day.

After Moholy-Nagy brought his theories, practices, and artistic language to Chicago, a translation back to Europe became necessary. With Thin Lines, Galerie Kornfeld presents, together with Jan Tichy, a fundamental part of this artistic legacy back to Europe during the Bauhaus centenary.

The 2012 video work “Things To Come (1936–2012)” can be regarded as a joint effort between Jan Tichy and the deceased Bauhaus master, as Tichy had the unique opportunity to work with original film footage shot by Moholy-Nagy in the 1930s for the English science-fiction film Things To Come.

In addition, the work “Installation No. 30 (TTC)” from 2016 is inspired by the life and work of Moholy-Nagy and, in particular, by his first wife, the photographer Lucia Moholy. The work is based on extensive research conducted in Berlin and Dessau, where both Moholys were active at the Bauhaus before their forced emigration in the 1930s.

As a contemporary artist, Jan Tichy works at the intersection of video, sculpture, architecture, and photography. His conceptual practice is socially and politically engaged. Born in 1974 in Prague, Tichy first studied art in Israel and later earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he currently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography and the Department of Art and Technology Studies.

Jan Tichy’s works are included in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at MCA Chicago, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and CCA Tel Aviv.

In 2011, Tichy founded Project Cabrini Green, a community-based art project that illuminated the final high-rise building of the Cabrini Green housing projects with spoken word during its month-long demolition. In 2014, he initiated the long-term community project Heat Light Water in Gary, Indiana, supported by the NEA. This project culminated in an exhibition at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in 2017.

Since September 2018, Tichy’s video work “Artes in Horto – Seven Gardens for Chicago” has been on view as part of Art on the MART, alongside a projection by Diana Thater. Together, these works inaugurated the world’s largest permanent video projection, which is intended to illuminate the façade of Chicago’s theMART building for the next one hundred years. This work also reflects on László Moholy-Nagy, the New Bauhaus, and the significance of Chicago for the emigrated Bauhaus artists.

In addition to the two exhibitions on view at Galerie Kornfeld and 68projects, Jan Tichy will be represented in further exhibitions during the Bauhaus Year 2019:

• Installation No. 30 (Lucia), Academy of Arts, Berlin – January 16–24

• Currency, curated by Lucie Fontaine, Nome Gallery, Berlin – March 1–April 19

• Solo exhibition, Kunsthalle Osnabrück – Summer 2019

• Weight of Light, Museum Bensheim – November 15, 2019–January 12, 2020