But I’m on The Guest List!, presented at The Peninsula Chicago on the occasion of EXPO Chicago, is titled after artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s oversized VIP door to nowhere. The exhibition includes a selection of artworks that playfully intervene in the hotel’s gilded public spaces, mingling form and function, high and low culture, and humorously nods to the trappings of VIP status. Artists include Jennifer Dalton, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ewan Gibbs, Awol Erizku, Josephine Meckseper, Carlos Rolón, Tom Sachs, Cindy Sherman, and Yuken Teruya.

A special highlight of the exhibition is Chicago’s own Carlos Rolón, who contributes two site-specific installations that extend his 24-karat gold leaf and oil painting, Gild the Lily (Decadence upon Decadence IV), 2017, into The Peninsula Chicago’s opulent public spaces. At the entrance, Rolón brings nature inside through an exuberant garden, created in collaboration with the hotel’s florist. Gilding the typically hidden building material of cinder blocks, serving as the structure for the vertical garden, the work reflects the artist’s self-described aesthetic of “blue collar baroque.” In the hotel’s main upper lobby, Rolón, a first-generation immigrant of Puerto Rican descent, presents an intimate Caribbean seating area titled Bochinche—after a Spanish slang term for “gossip”—responding to the aesthetic beauty and functionality of the both public and private space.

Social behavior is further explored in sculptures by Jennifer Dalton and Elmgreen & Dragset. Dalton’s dual gumball machines, printed with the messages “Tell Me Everything” and “Tell Me Nothing,” when positioned within the hotel context allude to the opportunities travel affords for anonymous escape or to spill secrets with strangers. Elmgreen & Dragset’s free-standing, slightly ajar VIP door entices interaction but denies reward, blurring the line between being welcomed and excluded.

A range of portraiture is on view from photographers Cindy Sherman and Awol Erizku, and master draftsman Ewan Gibbs, who meticulously portrays Chicago’s home-town heroes, including legendary Chicago Bull Michael Jordan. Sherman’s work from her Headshots series, depicts what appears to be an affluent socialite with the tell-tale tanning lines of a woman of leisure. Erizku re-crafts copies of canonical paintings, here Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, 1486, and Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665, by placing the black female figure at the center of the exclusionary Western conversation on beauty and desire.

The paradoxes of consumer culture and commercial display are explored in positioning luxury goods offered in the hotel alongside sculptural works by Josephine Meckseper, Tom Sachs, and Yuken Teruya. Meckseper’s coolly-lit vitrine combines photography, painting and mass-produced objects in a setting that uses the language of luxury advertisements and department store windows to create a cinematic, self-contained world. Teruya combines the detritus of urban life with traditional Japanese craft techniques in his poetic works, transforming high-end shopping bags into sculptural stages for his miniature windows onto the natural world. Displayed in one if the hotel’s lobby vitrines, Tom Sachs describes his handmade, plywood version of Hermès’s iconic Kelly bag as “sampling capitalist culture, remixing, dubbing and spitting it back out again, so that the results are transformed and transforming.”

About:

Jennifer Dalton (b.1967) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Dalton received BA in Fine Art from The University of California, Los Angeles, CA, in 1990, and her MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1997. She was awarded the Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant in 2002 and has participated in the Smack Mellon Studio Fellowship for 2005–2006, while also having spent time in residence at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, Ny; The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; and the Millay Colony, Austerlitz, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Participation Trophy, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); New Trick, Installation at Moving Image New York with Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY (2016); Reckoning, Izolyatsia Foundation, Donetsk, Ukraine (2013); among others. Dalton’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Museum of Capitalism, SMFA Gallery, Tufts University, Medford, MA (2018); The Times, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); Post-Election, September Gallery, Hudson, NY (2017); among others. Dalton’s work has also been featured in various publications, including 33 Artists in 3 Acts, by Sarah Thornton; Various Small Books, edited by Jeff Brouws, Wendy Burton-Brouws, and Hermann Zscheigner; and Art on the Block: Tracking the New York Art World from SoHo to the Bowery, Bushwick, and Beyond by Anne Fensterstock.

Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Copenhagen, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway) are an artist duo living and working in Berlin, Germany. Elmgreen & Dragset have been collaborating since the mid-1990’s, and their diverse artistic practice includes sculpture, large-scale installation, and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include We Are Not Ourselves, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); Die Zugezogenen (The Newcomers), Museum Haus Lange, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany (2017); Changing Subjects, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2016); among others. The artists’ work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body, The Met Breuer, New York, NY (2018); Beyond Bliss, Bangkok Art Biennial, Bangkok, Thailand (2018); Space, Light and Object: Minimal Art and Its Legacies, National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore (2018); No Place Like Home, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); among others. Major public works include Van Gogh’s Ear, commissioned by Public Art Fund, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY (2016); A Greater Perspective, commissioned by the High Line, New York, NY (2015); Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, selected for the Fourth Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom (2012); among others. In 2009, Elmgreen & Dragset represented the Danish and Nordic pavilions at the 53rd edition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. In 2017, the artists’ curated the fifteenth edition of the Istanbul Biennial titled a good neighbour.

Awol Erizku (b. 1988, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Erizku received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY, in 2010, and an MFA in Photography from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT, in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include 慢慢燃燒 Slow Burn, Ben Brown Gallery, Hong Kong, China (2018); Menace II Society, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Purple Reign, Stems, Brussels, Belgium (2017); among others. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA (2017); AMERICAN AFRICAN AMERICAN, Phillips, Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom (2017); Photography Now: An International Survey, Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, United Kingdom (2015); among others. Alongside his artistic practice, Erizku has curated several exhibitions, including 13 Artists, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2014); Deep End: Yale MFA Photography Thesis Exhibition, Diane Rosenstein Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA (2014); and Images of Venus from Wayne Lawrence’s Orchard Beach: The Bronx Riviera, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2013). He has been the subject of reviews and articles in Artforum, Artsy, Garage, i-D Magazine Vanity Fair, Vulture, Vogue, among others.

Ewan Gibbs (b. 1973, London, United Kingdom) is an artist living and working in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. Gibbs earned Diploma in Foundational Studies, Hertfordshire College of Art and Design, United Kingdom, in 1992, and a BFA at Goldsmiths College of Art, London, United Kingdom, in 1996. Recent solo exhibitions include Crossing America, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO (2016); Ewan Gibbs: Arlington National Cemetery, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2012); Ewan Gibbs: America, Davidson College of Arts, NC (2010); Ewan Gibbs, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2008); among others. In 2009, Gibbs was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to create a suite of drawings for the institution’s 75th anniversary and has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2014); Drawn from Photography, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2011); Making a Mark: Drawings from the Contemporary Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2011); Attention to Detail, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2008); among others. His drawings are included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Denver Art Museum, CO; among others.

Josephine Meckseper (b.1964, Lilienthal, Germany) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Meckseper did her graduate studies at Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, Germany, in 1990, and earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, in 1992. Recent solo exhibitions include Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Mexico (2017); Timothy Taylor 16×34, New York, NY (2017); Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart, Germany (2016); Gagosian Gallery, Paris, France (2016); among others. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project, Art Capsul, New York, NY (2018); Dime-Store Alchemy, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2018); An Incomplete History of Protest, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2017); NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2017); among others. Meckseper’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; among others. She has been the subject of reviews and articles in Art in America,  Artforum, Flash Art, Interview, The New York Times, among others.

Carlos Rolón (b. 1970, Chicago, IL) is an artist living and working in Chicago, IL. Rolón graduated from Colombia College Chicago, IL, in 1989, with a concentration in painting and drawing. Recent solo exhibitions include The Beautiful World of Carlos Rolón/Dzine, Meyerovich Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018); 50 Grand, The Tube Factory, Indianapolis (2017); Tropicaliza, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico (2016); ONLY YOU: New Mirror Paintings, Casterline|Goodman Gallery, Aspen, CO (2015); Dzine: Born, Carlos Rolón, 1970, Paul Kasmin Gallery and Salon 94, New York, NY (2014); among others. Rolón’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Ephemera Obscura, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA (2017); Acts of Transgression, Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China (2017); No Burden as Heavy, David Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL (2017); The Times, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); among others. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Bass Museum of Art, Miami; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Collection Vanmoerkerte, Oostende, Belgium; Yuz Art Foundation, Shanghai, China; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands; among others. He has been the subject of reviews and articles in ARTnews, Artsy, Forbes, The Huffington Post, V Magazine, Vice, Whitehot Magazine, among others.

Tom Sachs (b. 1966, New York, NY) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Sachs studied at the Architectural Association, London, United Kingdom, in 1987, before earning his BA at Bennington College, VT, in 1989. Recent solo exhibitions include Chawan, Jane Hartsook Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Objects of Devotion, Sperone Westwater, New York, NY (2017); Tea Ceremony, Noguchi Museum, New York, NY (2016); Nuggets, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX (2015); among others. Sachs’s work has also been featured in various exhibitions group exhibitions, including The Ashtray Show, Fisher Parrish Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Grinding, Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA (2017); Summer School, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2016); among others. His work is included in permanent collections of the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, The Berezdivin, Collection, Puerto Rico, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France. His works are included in Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Citigroup Art Collection, New York, NY; Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; the Getty, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Sammlung Olbricht Collection, Essen, Germany and Berlin, Germany; among others. He has been the subject of reviews and articles in Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Surface, Vice, The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Cindy Sherman (b.1954, Glen Ridge, NJ) is an artist living and working in New York, NY. Sherman graduated from the State University College, Buffalo, NY, in 1976, where she majored in photography. Recent solo exhibitions include Cindy Sherman, Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2018); Once Upon a Time, Mnuchin Gallery, New York, NY (2017); Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Cindy Sherman: Works from the Albright Collection, Gagosian Gallery, Paris, France (2015); among others. Sherman’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including as Outliers and the American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA (2018); Art in the Age of the Internet, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2018); Brand New, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2018); Selves and Others, the San Francisco Museum of Art, CA (2018); among others. Her work is included in permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; among others. Sherman has been the recipient of awards and prizes, including the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (1993), the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (1997), Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts (2005), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award (2003), the National Arts Award (2001), and the Roswitha Haftmann Prize (2012).

Yuken Teruya (b. 1973, Okinawa, Japan) is an artist working in Brooklyn, NY. Teruya received a BA in Fine Art from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1996, a Post Baccalaureate, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, in 1999, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions include Lost Found, Live Forever Foundation, Taichung, Taiwan (2018); Dessert Project, Gallery Okinawa, Okinawa, Japan (2017); Monopoly, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2016); The Simple Truth, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, NY (2015); among others. Teruya’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the A COLOSSAL WORLD: Japanese Artists and New York, 1950s-Present, curated by Kyoto Sato, White Box, New York, NY (2018); 7th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2017); Be there, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo (2017); The Times, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2017); Salon 2016, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2016); among others. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Charles Saatchi Collection, London, United Kingdom; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; among others. He has been the subject of reviews and articles in Art Review, Artforum, The New York Times, Le Temps, TimeOut NY, among others.