David Hartt's INTERVAL Opens Tomorrow at the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute announces a dynamic solo exhibition of the work of contemporary artist, and alumnus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, David Hartt (Canadian, born 1967).

David Hartt: Interval, on view tomorrow, June 6 to October 11, 2015, focuses on two locations in Canada and Russia with essayistic films and photographs that explore the hybrid identities of sites and individuals in a globalized world. The installation of Interval, in Galleries 1-2 , comprises videos and photographs shot at the Canadian and Russian sites accompanied by a score from composer Mitchell Akiyama and an architectural curtain wall simulating the reflective exterior of the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles -- a postmodern icon and the initial venue for this project.

For Interval, Hartt selected two sites of relative economic and geographic isolation: Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon and Sakhalin Island, a Russian territory at the tip of the Japanese archipelago. Hartt chose each site according to a specific cultural source. In 1967, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould made a radio program, The Idea of North, featuring anthropologist and geographer James Lotz's experiences in Whitehorse reporting on the living conditions of itinerant workers and aboriginal peoples there. Writer Anton Chekhov penned The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin after traveling in 1890 to the historically contested territory, then a Russian penal colony.

The exhibition title, Interval, refers to a musical term for the harmonic result of two notes struck simultaneously, and more generally to temporal and spatial displacement. Both Gould and Chekhov focused on the periphery of their respective societies in order to comment on the center. Working, as they did, at the margins and the center alike, Hartt observes how the needs and values of communities form, manifest, and change over time.

Related Events:

Gallery Talk-Exhibition Overview of David Hartt: Interval
June 19, 2015
12:00pm-1:00pm
Meet in Gallery 100
Free with museum admission

Artist Lecture-David Hartt
October 8, 2015
6:00pm-7:00pm
Price Auditorium
Free with museum admission; Free admission for Illinois residents on Thursdays from 5:00pm-8:00pm.

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Daily: 10:30-5:00
Thursdays until 8:00
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Children under 14 always free
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Pictured: David Hartt. Interval I, 2014. © David Hartt. Courtesy of Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, and David Nolan Gallery, New York.