Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago presents Goshka Macuga: Exhibit A, an exhibition on view from December 15, 2012 to April 7, 2013.
Goshka Macuga The Nature of the Beast, 2009 Installation view, The Bloomberg Commission, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2009 Courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Kate MacGarry Gallery, London; and Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich Photo: Patrick Lears, courtesy Kate MacGarry, London
This exhibition is the first survey of work by Polish-born, London-based artist Goshka Macuga. Macuga’s work interweaves two strands that have helped define contemporary art in the last decade: artists’ increasing tendency toward historical and archival research and their growing interest in strategies of display and the dialogue between artistic and curatorial practice.
Many of Macuga’s large-scale, research-intensive projects have been collaborative, with the resulting installations often incorporating the work of other artists, both living and dead. Initially, many of her projects tapped into overlooked traditions in art history, but in more recent years her work has taken a political turn, frequently featuring post-Soviet Poland or the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a backdrop. Goshka Macuga: Exhibit, A is the first exhibition to map the artist’s trajectory since she began working, in the early 2000s. While the exhibition features a selection of works that vary in size, content, and context, altogether it emphasizes the medium of collage, both two- and three-dimensional, as the governing principle of her art.
This exhibition is organized by Dieter Roelstraete, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. – www.mcachicago.org/