DePaul University Art Museum – förlag

Idol Structures accompanies an exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum of recent photographs and sculptures by Chicago-based artist Matt Siber, whose work explores the systems of corporate and mass-media communication that permeate the urban landscape. Instead of focusing on the information itself, Siber emphasizes the physical infrastructure of these systems. Photographs of the narrow edges of signs, sculptures of billboard ads hanging so loosely that their text is obscured in the folds, and other unique treatments of promotional materials distort and subvert the intended messages. The artist's deconstruction of such commercial efforts reveals an element of communication meant to remain invisible and subservient to image, text, and graphics. By highlighting the everyday objects used to persuade and influence, Siber's art undermines these communication systems' ability to do precisely what they were intended to do.

Dianna Frid's sculptures, installations, artist's books, and mixed media work explore the intersection of text and textile, matter and subject matter. Richard Rezac has created thought-provoking abstract object-sculptures since the 1980s. This book, the catalog for a recent exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum, brings together works by both of these Chicago-based artists. In doing so, Dianna Frid + Richard Rezac: Split Complementary shines a light on their shared sensibilities a rigorous yet poetic approach that revels in the nuances of color, surface, and material. Frid's and Rezac's works appear here accompanied by rare books from DePaul University's John T. Richardson Library and a variety of objects from the DePaul Art Museum's permanent collection. The juxtaposition of objects made by artists, craftspeople, and bookbinders generates affinities that broaden how we see and understand all of the work assembled in these pages. Complementing each other formally, these pieces offer opportunities to find familiar patterns in unfamiliar forms and surprising connections between dissimilar objects.

Countering conventional accounts of art history, which have often overlooked the artistic contributions of women of color, the exhibition “Out of Easy Reach” presents the work of twenty-four US-based, female-identifying artists from the black and Latina diasporas. The exhibition proposes myriad ways that artists are employing abstraction as a tool to explore histories both personal and universal, with focuses on mapping, migration, archives, landscape, vernacular culture, language, and the body. This catalog—which accompanies an exhibition opening in April 2018 at the DePaul Art Museum, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Stony Island Arts Bank—includes full-color plates of the works on view; commissioned essays by exhibition curator Allison Glenn, and Cameron Shaw, executive director and founding editor of Pelican Bomb; and short-form contributions about each artist featured in the exhibition written by invited scholars, curators, writers, and artists.

This book examines the work of US-born photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012) through its connections to Chicago, where he lived for over a decade and returned to repeatedly throughout his life.Long celebrated in Japan as one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, Ishimoto also maintained deep ties to his adopted home city of Chicago, where he arrived in 1945 after having been imprisoned in a US internment camp during World War II. It was in Chicago that he developed his uniquely modernist vision in two key ways. First, he created works that engaged in important conversation with that of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and others at the historic Institute of Design. Second, he immersed himself directly in the city’s neighborhoods, where he captured important social changes reflective of broader shifts elsewhere in the United States. This catalog—which accompanies an exhibition opening in September 2018 at the DePaul Art Museum—features both black-and-white and full-color reproductions of key works by Ishimoto, as well as in-depth essays by exhibition cocurators Jasmine Alinder and John Tain.

Some Kind of Duty features all new handmade weavings by Chicago-based artist Karolina Gnatowski, known as kg. In monumental and small-scale tapestries, kg, anAmerican artist who was born in Poland incorporates references ranging from Polish immigration, badminton, Jim Morrison, and feminist fiber artists to addiction, mourning, and their pet. The artist’s keen attention to the details of life’s coincidences and moments of intersection finds a fitting form in their reverence for the history of tapestry weaving, and the evidence of everyday life incorporated into the artist’s work makes their weavings an offering to those both living and dead.  This catalog accompanies an exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum, and it features full-color plates of the works on view, an interview between the artist and DPAM Director and Chief Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm, an essay by K. L. H. Wells, assistant professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and poems written by the artist to accompany each work.

Accompanying the exhibition curated by artists Ginsburg and Hughes, this book brings together artwork and writing by torture survivors, artists, and scholars.Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, & Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo, published on the occasion of the exhibition at DePaul Art Museum, brings together activists, artists, poets, and torture survivors to investigate and resist the ecosystems of violence that connect Chicago to the US military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Edited by artists and co-curators Amber Ginsburg and Aaron Hughes with Aliya Hussain (Center for Constitutional Rights) and Audrey Petty (Illinois Humanities), Remaking the Exceptional features new pieces of investigative journalism on the connections between military and police torture by Kari Lydersen (Medill School of Journalism) and Maira Khwaja (Invisible Institute), Spencer Ackerman’s 2015 Guardian exposé “Bad Lieutenant,” reflections on struggles for justice and reparations by Aliya Hussain, Alice Kim, and Aislinn Pulley, essays on art and resistance by Mansoor Adayfi, Marc Falkoff, and Tempestt Hazel, as well as interviews with Chicago and Guantánamo torture survivors. The richly illustrated catalogue is interspersed with poetry and artwork pairings by former and current imprisoned artists creating a virtual dialogue across carceral systems. The aim of the publication is to uncover moments of beauty, poetry, and shared humanity within and despite the traumas of state violence.

A survey of the work of one of Chicago’s most prolific artists.Edgar Miller (1899–1993) arrived in Chicago in 1917 and, over the next fifty years, established a successful career as a multi-hyphenate creative practitioner. He worked as an architect, artist, craftsperson, curator, designer, and illustrator during a particularly rich period that saw the ascendancy of modernism across the visual culture of the city. Though aware of contemporary developments and debates, Miller’s tremendous body of work, which spanned multiple media, materials, and disciplines, speaks to an individual unconcerned with trends, labels, or what became the established tenets of modern art. While developing a signature style, he never embraced the aesthetics of geometric abstraction, “art for art’s sake,” subjective expressionism, or the machine age. He instead remained committed to figurative storytelling and representing the natural world, creating work that was intended to be experienced across the built environment.Published in conjunction with DePaul Art Museum’s 2024 retrospective of Miller’s work, Edgar Miller: Anti-Modern, 1917–1967 features new research by scholars Marin R. Sullivan, Craig Lee, and Jenn Marshall that serves to highlight one of Chicago’s most prolific and under-appreciated artists.

A catalog of new and selected works by Chicago-based artist Alice Tippit.Alice Tippit: Rose Obsolete is the first monographic catalog dedicated to the enigmatic and poetic work of Chicago-based artist Alice Tippit (b. 1975). Published on the occasion of a 2026 exhibition at DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, this volume brings together a selection of works spanning the last ten years, offering a compelling glimpse into Tippit’s evolving paintings and works on paper. This book also includes new essays by curator Ionit Behar and writers Johanna Fateman and Mary Simpson, who each offer distinct insights into Tippit’s practice. Together, they consider questions central to Tippit’s practice: What is the difference between looking and seeing? How do forms signify, and where does meaning reside? Through refined forms and spare compositions, her work resists straightforward interpretation, instead relying on the power of metaphor, ambiguity, and allusion to generate meaning. In Tippit’s world, forms float untethered from narrative certainty, simultaneously seductive and elusive.

For over a century the Chicago art community has struggled to define itself in relation to other urban art centers. While prominent American artists past and present have had strong connections to Chicago, many left to make their reputations elsewhere. This book and the exhibition on which it is based reframe Chicago as an artistic center in its own right, with a perspective and community as distinctive as its geography, economy, and politics. Exploring issues of reputation and canon formation past and present, four essays by Robert Cozzolino, Wendy Greenhouse, Kirsten Jensen, and Lynne Warren probe moments of important historical shifts in the city's artistic identity. The exhibition itself was shaped by asking forty-one members of the Chicago arts community - critics, collectors, journalists, and museum specialists - to name a Chicago artist who is famous, ought to be famous, or is no longer famous, and to contribute a brief commentary on the artist and his or her work.Their selections - from the celebrated to the obscure - and multiplicity of viewpoints provide a nuanced view of the city's artistic heritage and underscore the range of ways in which art is produced, perceived, and understood. A lushly illustrated book, "Re: Chicago" features a diverse group of artists, including George Healy, a nineteenth-century painter; Margaret Iannelli, a graphic artist; the famously reclusive artist and writer Henry Darger; and fashion designer Nick Cave.

The German-born, Chicago-based artist Peter Karklins creates small pencil-and-paper drawings that capture the processes and energies just below the surface of all human life. The complexity of his organic forms is matched by the artist's meticulous recording of the times and circumstances of the creation of each image on its reverse, providing viewers with added insight into these rich images. In this visually compelling collection, brief essays by an eclectic and distinguished group of scholars deploy a wide range of theoretical approaches - phenomenological, psychoanalytic, deconstructive, iconographical, historical, and musicological - to interpret Karklins' unusual images and artistic practices. Distinctive in its subject matter and execution, this volume shows Karklins's work to be a fertile topic for discussion and a vibrant example of intuitive art. The essays in this book also tackle larger questions of philosophy, aesthetic theory, and art history, while offering a fully realized portrait of Karklins as an artist.

In Barrio, photographer Paul D'Amato turned his lens to the largely Mexican-American Chicago neighborhoods of Pilsen and the Little Village, capturing their residents' homes and lives in multifaceted, dynamic images of weddings and graffiti artists, street corners and empty lots, and the euphoria of fire hydrants turned would-be baptismal fonts in the blistering summer sun. With We Shall - a companion volume to the DePaul Art Museum's exhibition of D'Amato's photographs - D'Amato broadens his scope to include communities on Chicago's west side. Through emotionally charged portraits and richly layered interior views, the fifty-four color photographs of We Shall share with us D'Amato's genuine and complex perspective on life in some of the most challenging and troubled neighborhoods in the nation. D'Amato's technique is unique. He works with his subjects to forge a collaborative approach, and the resulting portraits and urban landscapes offer a contemporary take on the complexities of documentary photography and representation, all the more real and evocative for the intimacy between the photographer and the photographed.Sometimes inspiring, sometimes troubling, but always beautiful, the photographs of We Shall shine light on some of Chicago's most overlooked communities and are sure to captivate followers of Chicago-based art and urban photography alike.

The Works Progress Administration gave federal financial support to a wide range of artistic projects during the Depression, from fiction to fine art. Of all these forms, however, the printmaking supported by the WPA is perhaps the one of most enduring interest: the design of the program itself, the political climate of the time, and the very nature of printmaking came together to produce a distinctive approach to style and subject matter, impressive technical innovations, and a surprising degree of social fluidity among artists around issues of race and gender. Ink, Paper, Politics is a beautifully produced catalog that accompanies an exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum in celebration of the generous gift to the museum of one hundred WPA-era prints from the collection of Belverd and Marian Needles. In addition to reproductions of the prints in the exhibition, the book also features essays by leading scholars addressing various aspects of American printmaking in the 1930s, as well as a brief essay by the collector. The result is a wonderful reminder of the stunning artwork that was produced in our name at one of our nation's darkest times.

Eco and environmental art can highlight the primal importance of natural resources for human life and the need to be responsible environmental stewards. This catalog for a recent exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum explores one particularly undervalued resource: soil. Bringing together the work of fifteen artists, including that of photographers Sally Mann and Jane Fulton Alt, interdisciplinary artist Claire Pentecost, and Baroque painter Adriaen van Utrecht, Rooted in Soil addresses critical issues of soil degradation and combines scientific approaches with fresh philosophical perspectives. Though we rarely recognize it, soil is an integral part of the natural cycles of life and death. The essays here include scholarly meditations on the importance of decay for soil, which allows for rebirth and regeneration. The works in the Rooted in Soil exhibition collectively highlight the fundamental interconnectedness that we have with the natural world and inspire viewers to become better stewards of the soil and the land.

Led by artists Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen, and Tristan Duke, the Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio is a team devoted to exploring and expanding the photographic medium. Working with the Liminal Camera, a massive, portable camera obscura fashioned from a shipping container, the Optics Division uses experimental technology in an ongoing effort to map and depict the American landscape. From the arid West to New York's waterways, the camera has captured dramatic scenes of regions in transition. As part of this project, The Liminal Camera presents newly commissioned photographs made in and around Chicago. Though enormous in size, the camera, transported on a semi-trailer truck, was unobtrusive from an outsider's perspective, allowing the artists to work without drawing attention. Photographs could be developed from within the shipping container, blending the image's subject with the process of photography itself. The resulting large-scale prints not only highlight the evolving history of photographic imaging, but also locate the city within a complex global network of transportation systems, industry, and commerce.

Chicago-based artist Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938–2017) was a central figure of the Black Arts Movement and a founding member of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). Throughout her career she worked in painting, printmaking, film, education, and contributed to major projects including Chicago’s Wall of Respect mural. The Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite catalog is the first monograph of Barbara Jones-Hogu’s work. The book includes a foreword by DPAM Director and Chief Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm, essays by Tate Modern curator Zoé Whitley and Chicago artist Faheem Majeed, an interview with the artist by art historian Rebecca Zorach, and 22 illustrated plates, a selected bibliography, exhibition history, and checklist. The limited edition catalog was designed by Matt Austin of Candor Arts and features a hand silk screened cover.

An experimental “expanded catalog” chronicling the recent work and 2018 solo exhibition of artist Beverly Fresh, Really Somethin Else not only documents and contextualizes the work in the exhibition, but also includes research, sketches, production stills, inspirations, and other works not on view in the exhibition. In these works, artist, musician, and back-road drifter Beverly Fresh takes on the incongruities, social rituals, and archetypes of the rural Midwest. Drawing from age-old performance traditions, juvenile graffiti, backyard debauchery, adult social clubs, amateur living room theater, and pig wrestling, the exhibition is a keyed-up regurgitation of rural Midwestern symbols, behaviors, and vernacular. Plentiful color images are accompanied by essays from Julie Rodrigues Widholm, H. Peter Steeves, and Greg Scott. The catalog, designed by Beverly Fresh himself, carries the distinct personality and aesthetic sensibility of the exhibition.