Steve McQueen
Sun. 10/21 | 7:00PM - Sun. 01/06 @ The Art Institute of Chicago (map)
- Event Details
- October 21, 2012–January 6, 2013 Regenstein Hall Overview: Steve McQueen has developed an international reputation for his intensely concentrated, exquisitely choreographed films and moving-image installations. His reductive, often abstracted pieces pare down the projected image to its basic elements: light and darkness, motion and stillness, silence and sound. Although his work is willfully heterogeneous, much of his production distills the coded, formal language of film to examine overlooked aspects of social history and current events. Avant-garde film traditions, in particular cinema vérité, inform McQueen’s seemingly improvisational approach, expressed by his frequent preference for the handheld camera and restrained post-production editing. Often, the body featured in the early work is the artist’s own. With his choice of subject matter—including historical genocide in the Caribbean, contemporary gun violence in Britain, mining conditions in Africa, the war in Iraq, or international hip-hop culture—McQueen’s succinct yet lushly beautiful, short films excavate the repressed tensions of the contemporary African diaspora. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; Steve McQueen has developed an international reputation for his intensely concentrated, exquisitely choreographed films and moving-image installations. His reductive, often abstracted pieces pare down the projected image to its basic elements: light and dark, motion and stillness, silence and sound. Although his work is willfully heterogeneous, much of his production distills the coded, formal language of film to examine overlooked aspects of social history and current events. Avant-garde film traditions, in particular cinema-vérité, inform McQueen’s seemingly improvisational approach, expressed by his frequent preference for the handheld camera and restrained post-production editing. Often, the body featured in the early work is the artist’s own. With his choice of subject matter—including historical genocide in the Caribbean, contemporary gun violence in Britain, mining conditions in Africa, the war in Iraq, or international hip-hop culture—McQueen’s succinct yet lushly beautiful, short films excavate the repressed tensions of the contemporary African diaspora.Steve McQueen has developed an international reputation for his intensely concentrated, exquisitely choreographed films and moving-image installations. His reductive, often abstracted pieces pare down the projected image to its basic elements: light and dark, motion and stillness, silence and sound. Although his work is willfully heterogeneous, much of his production distills the coded, formal language of film to examine overlooked aspects of social history and current events. Avant-garde film traditions, in particular cinema-vérité, inform McQueen’s seemingly improvisational approach, expressed by his frequent preference for the handheld camera and restrained post-production editing. Often, the body featured in the early work is the artist’s own. With his choice of subject matter—including historical genocide in the Caribbean, contemporary gun violence in Britain, mining conditions in Africa, the war in Iraq, or international hip-hop culture—McQueen’s succinct yet lushly beautiful, short films excavate the repressed tensions of the contemporary African diaspora.Steve McQueen has developed an international reputation for his intensely concentrated, exquisitely choreographed films and moving-image installations. His reductive, often abstracted pieces pare down the projected image to its basic elements: light and dark, motion and stillness, silence and sound. Although his work is willfully heterogeneous, much of his production distills the coded, formal language of film to examine overlooked aspects of social history and current events. Avant-garde film traditions, in particular cinema-vérité, inform McQueen’s seemingly improvisational approach, expressed by his frequent preference for the handheld camera and restrained post-production editing. Often, the body featured in the early work is the artist’s own. With his choice of subject matter—including historical genocide in the Caribbean, contemporary gun violence in Britain, mining conditions in Africa, the war in Iraq, or international hip-hop culture—McQueen’s succinct yet lushly beautiful, short films excavate the repressed tensions of the contemporary African diaspora.Steve McQueen has developed an international reputation for his intensely concentrated, exquisitely choreographed films and moving-image installations. His reductive, often abstracted pieces pare down the projected image to its basic elements: light and dark, motion and stillness, silence and sound. Although his work is willfully heterogeneous, much of his production distills the coded, formal language of film to examine overlooked aspects of social history and current events. Avant-garde film traditions, in particular cinema-vérité, inform McQueen’s seemingly improvisational approach, expressed by his frequent preference for the handheld camera and restrained post-production editing. Often, the body featured in the early work is the artist’s own. With his choice of subject matter—including historical genocide in the Caribbean, contemporary gun violence in Britain, mining conditions in Africa, the war in Iraq, or international hip-hop culture—McQueen’s succinct yet lushly beautiful, short films excavate the repressed tensions of the contemporary African diaspora. Steve McQueen. Still from Charlotte , 2004. Courtesy of the artist; Thomas Dane Gallery, London; and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York /Paris. Photo courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York /Paris. The artist’s work has been featured in numerous prestigious solo and group exhibitions in Europe, including several editions of Documenta and the Venice Biennale. McQueen won the Tate’s coveted Turner Prize in 1999 and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2002. More recently, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011 for services to the visual arts. His 2008 film Hunger , about the last six weeks of the life of Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where the artist received the prestigious Caméra d’Or, the festival’s award for the best first-time director. McQueen’s most recent feature film, Shame (2011) has already received extraordinary acclaim. The new film casts an unflinching eye on the subject of sexual addiction. Like the previous feature, McQueen explores, in collaboration with actor Michael Fassbender, issues of confinement and the prospect of liberation through the locus of one man’s body. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the most substantial collection of Steve McQueen’s work in any museum in the United States, and this will be the first American museum survey exhibition of the artist’s work, presenting 10–15 installations, including the world premiere of at least one new work. Organizer: This exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland, where it will be presented February–July 2013.
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