Sculptors, poets, dancers, and a video installation artist will create an unpredictable evening based on the Surrealist collaborative process known as Exquisite Corpse, as the third annual Gross Park Sculpture Invitational opens May 18 on the 1700 block of Henderson Street (3300 North) in West Lake View.
Sponsored by the Gross Park Neighbors Foundation, the Sculpture Invitational is free and open to the public. The opening event runs from 4 - 8 p.m. Over 20 regional artists will exhibit the collaborative work, along with other sculptures, in the outdoor, neighborhood setting of Gross Park between May 18 and July 14.
Opening night performers will base their presentations on the Exquisite Corpse idea. They are the Café Aloha Poets, including David and Victoria Rubin along with Jennifer Dotson; Lin Shook and Perceptual Motion, Inc., presenting a site-specific improvisation; and Mark Sisca, a video artist exhibiting a video installation trilogy.
Participating regional artists include Tim Anderson, Carter Cleland, Jenine Lee Clevenger, Jenny Cooper, Patty Cooper, Len Cullum, Marty Dennis, Gary Jackson, Marsha Leonard, Regina Maniaci, Kristen Neveu, Julie Pitzen, John Read, Catherine Schwalbe-Bouzide, Judie Simpson, Lee Tracy, David Trost, and Mary Zehnder.
Some of their sculptures follow the Exquisite Corpse idea, based on an old parlor game involving folded paper, made popular by the Surrealist artists of the 1920s. The earliest among many games invented by the Surrealists, an Exquisite Corpse was a collective collage of words or images. It was born as a creative process in 1925 in Paris—either in the apartment of Andre Breton or in the home of Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy, and Marcel Duchamp. During the first years of the Surrealist movement, it was unusual for an evening spent among poets and artists not to end with creation of an Exquisite Corpse. “The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism,” written by various Surrealists and published in 1939, defined the Exquisite Corpse as “Game of folded paper that consists in having a sentence or a drawing composed by several persons, each ignorant of the preceding collaboration. The example that has become a classic and gave its name to the game is the first sentence obtained by those means: ‘The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.’”
As New York based independent curator and writer Ingrid Schaffner put it, “Precisely because of its value as play, Exquisite Corpse continues to offer a means of sidestepping reason and foresight to move towards chance and unpredictability.”
A form of the Exquisite Corpse process lets each participant independently create part of a figure on a section of folded paper. When unfolded, the paper reveals a complete work of art. Artists exhibiting in the Gross Park Sculpture Invitation will carry this form into three dimensions. Each participating artist is independently creating either a head, torso, or set of legs. Exquisite Corpse curators Keith Downie, artist and co-owner of Lakeview Art Supply, Ted Frankel, artist and owner of the Uncle Fun shop in Lake View, and Nicole Hollander, artist and creator of the comic strip character Sylvia, then direct the combining of the parts into complete figures.
Coordinators of the Gross Park Sculpture Invitational are Regina Maniaci, a participating artist who lives in the Edgewater neighborhood, and Catherine Schwalbe-Bouzide, a participating artist who lives on the block where Gross Park is located and is active in the Gross Park Neighbors Foundation, a tax-exempt organization which supports the maintenance and development of Gross Park as a neighborhood green space.
Gross Park Neighbors arose out of a desire to revive the block-long park on the 1700 block of Henderson Street in the Gross Park subdivision created by the innovative late-nineteenth-century housing developer Samuel Eberle Gross. The group began by organizing neighborhood volunteers to care for the park. When the Asian Longhorn Beetle felled the bulk of the park’s trees, the group worked with the City of Chicago’s Bureau of Forestry (part of the Department of Streets and Sanitation) to plan the restoration of the park in 1999. As a result of this community input, Gross Park is now upgraded with varied trees, shrubs, and perennials in addition to a lawn and winding paths. It is now a beautiful public green space in a dense city neighborhood—enjoyed by families, dog walkers, and casual strollers. Neighborhood residents continue to maintain the space through monthly work days and an Adopt-a-Bed program. Gross Park Neighbors Foundation raises and administers funds to support park maintenance. The group sees its sponsorship of the Gross Park Sculpture Invitational as a way to help re-invigorate a residential neighborhood with art.
On opening night, the Foundation will make available artist-made, limited-edition books of poetry and art based on the sculpture exhibited and the Exquisite Corpse theme. Also available are artist-made ceramic tiles and t-shirts. Proceeds support the maintenance and enhancement of Gross Park.
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