Let me consider it from here

The Renaissance Society presents Let me consider it from here, a group exhibition featuring work by Constance DeJong, Saul Fletcher, Brook Hsu, and Tetsumi Kudo. These artists operate in the liminal realms between the public and the intimate, the concrete and the fantastical: frequently drawing on their own histories, humors, and instincts as they respond to the world around them.

In assemblage sculptures by Tetsumi Kudo, grity faces look out from painted cages, surrounded by wax flowers, string, and various mutated forms; Saul Fletcher’s constructed photographs capture a studio wall marked by cryptic arrangements, or models in theatrical poses; plush domestic rugs become the substrate for Brook Hsu’s paintings of warped boots and menacing dogs; a woman’s voice, floating in the space, relates her restless nighttime walks in sound works by Constance DeJong. Across a range of mediums, these artists process the circumstances of their time in relation to their own milieu and psyche. Their practices open up spaces that oscillate between the strange and familiar, registering deeply personal experiences as well as more ambient cultural and political pressures.

The works in Let me consider it from here are borne of different moments and places, whether 1970s Japan, in the case of Kudo; Europe around the early 2000s for Fletcher; and, for Hsu and DeJong, the present-day United States. Brought together here, in a period in which public life feels defined both by digital interconnection and vocal conflict on many fronts, their practices suggest other ways of meeting the world face to face: anchored in solitary places but stretching beyond, and drawing on a generative tension between inside and out.

In tandem with the gallery presentation, poets Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Simone White, and Lynn Xu have been invited to write new texts, which will be presented in a public reading on Thursday, January 10, and in the forthcoming catalogue. These writers evince a shared positioning with the artists in Let me consider it from here, parsing in their own ways the complexities of contemporary experience from within a more private sphere.

At the opening reception on Saturday, November 17, Constance DeJong presents Candle Night Radios Insomnia, a performance of four nocturnal narratives. This and all related programs are free and open to the public; please visit our website for more information and to RSVP.

Curated by Solveig Øvstebø

The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago is committed to supporting ambitious artistic experimentation, primarily through the commissioning of new works, and to fostering rigorous, interdisciplinary discourse. In addition to the exhibition program, this independent, non-collecting museum hosts lectures, concerts, performances, screenings, and readings, and regularly publishes catalogues and artist books. All of the Renaissance Society’s exhibitions and events are free and open to the public. 

Let me consider it from here is supported by the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, the Curator’s Circle of the Renaissance Society, and the Japan Foundation, New York. The Renaissance Society gratefully receives General Operating support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, The Provost’s Discretionary Fund at the University of Chicago, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency.