Gallery 1, 2, the Cleve Carney Gallery and the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery

Ground Floor is a survey exhibition of multi-media work by 10-15 promising artists who recently completed one of Chicago’s top level MFA programs in 2011 or 2012. Filling the three galleries that make up the entire ground floor of the Art Center, the artwork included illustrate the exciting state of these artist’s career ready to take off, yet still at the starting level.  This biannual show of new art and artists brings together under one roof the stylistic trends and innovative talent of the moment produced throughout the city.

With a history of shows like Hairy Who?, a definitive exhibition featuring the Chicago Imagists movement of the late 60s, Hyde Park Art Center has been at the forefront of encouraging Chicago-based artistic practice. In keeping with the mission to ‘stimulate and sustain visual arts in the city of Chicago’, this exhibition questions if there is a decisive Chicago style happening in art being produced right now.

Artists participating in the 2012 Ground Floor exhibition have been recommended by local faculty, artists, curators, and art administrators for their outstanding talent.  The artists hail from a broad range of schools that offer graduate level fine art degrees, including University of Chicago, University of Illinois -Chicago, Northwestern University, Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Hyde Park Art Center's Exhibition Committee is responsible for making the final selection. Led by the Chair Dawoud Bey, the Committee includes Huey Copeland, Kelly Kaczynski, Sze Lin Pang, Jason Salavon, and Art Center Staff Chris Hammes,  Kate Lorenz, and Allison Peters Quinn.

The final list of artists will be released May 2012.