Out of Easy Reach is a cross-institutional exhibition hosted by DePaul Art Museum, Gallery 400 at UIC, and the Rebuild Foundation, guest curated by Allison Glenn, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Countering conventional accounts of art history that have often overlooked the artistic contributions of women of color, Out of Easy Reach presents the work of 24 artists.
From traditional approaches to the more challenging usage, this exhibition will investigate the contemporary and conceptual expansion of abstraction by American, female-identifying artists from the Black and Latina Diasporas; through work made from 1980-2018. Out of Easy Reach proposes that there are myriad ways artists are employing abstraction as a tool to explore histories both personal and universal, with a focus in mapping, migration, archives, landscape, vernacular culture, language, and the body.
Each exhibition venue will feature artists and artworks that are grouped based on thematic affinities, and conceptual pairings will happen throughout. At DePaul Art Museum, artists and artworks will be presented that consider landscape, the body and the archive. Gallery 400 will include artists and artworks that are concerned with spatial politics, mapping and migration. Stony Island Arts Bank will feature works that consider process, time and material culture.
Out of Easy Reach will consecutively open across three venues in Chicago:
- DePaul Art Museum: Thursday, April 26, 2018
- Gallery 400 at University of Illinois Chicago: Friday, April 27, 2018
- Stony Island Arts Bank: Saturday, April 28, 2018
It will then travel to Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (Aug. 24 – Oct. 4, 2018).
