Rube Goldberg's Ghost: Confounding Design and Laborious Objects
February 28– May 4, 2013
Reception: Thursday, February 28, 5-7pm
The comical machines of American cartoonist and inventor Reuben Garrett Lucius “Rube” Goldberg were never intended to be built and used. His cartoon schematics of impossibly complicated low-tech machines and designs poked fun at both bureaucratic systems and the laborious machinations required to traverse them. While Rube Goldberg took a light-hearted and humorous approach to public concerns with a wink and a nod, Rube Goldberg’s Ghost: Confounding Design and Laborious Objects presents artworks that offer plausible deniability toward some of society's current obsessions, ills and issues. Rube Goldberg’s complicated contraptions and their absurdist answers to real problems are at the heart of this exhibitionCurated by Elizabeth Burke-Dain
Participating Artists: Matthew Aron, Karen Bovinich,Juan Chavez, Brian Dettmer, Fischli & Weiss, Conrad Friedberg, Joan Giroux, Joanne Greenbaum, Joseph Hersher, Taylor Hokanson, Industry of the Ordinary, Heidi Kumao, Betsy Odom, Erik Peterson, Mark Porter, Michael Thompson and Graem Whyte.
Exhibition Contact: Mark Porter, mporter@colum.edu, 312-369-6643
Press Contact:
Press and Reviews:
Go See These 3 Art Shows, Chicagomag.com
Carrying on a Political Absurdist Legacy, Hyperallergic
