In the exhibition Some Recent Pictures (Chicago), Los Angeles-based artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya presents work connected to his time as a Jackman Goldwasser Resident Artist at Hyde Park Art Center in 2014. The exhibition will be the first presentation of Sepuya’s Chicago body of work. A public reception with the artist will take place in the gallery Sunday, June 19, beginning at 3 p.m and will include a reading by artist Ivan Lozano at 3:30 p.m., whose portrait is featured in the exhibition.
Sepuya’s photographs capture his teeming studio during his eight-week residency, which served as an active hub for the artist’s first experience in Chicago. One of the primary goals of the residency is to connect visiting artists to Chicago’s artistic and cultural community, and much of this connection took place for Sepuya at the Art Center. His studio space functioned as an important site where artists and others gathered to have their pictures taken among an assortment of Sepuya’s materials: camera equipment, art supplies, older work and reference books. The digital prints are both still-life and portraits combined with repurposed photographs, layered amongst his studio supplies, scanned and printed, which will transport viewers to the residency’s unique moment in the artists’ growth.
