vanessa german

At the end of this reality there is a bridge—the bridge is inside of you but not inside of your body. Take this bridge to get to the next _______, all of your friends are there; death is not real and we are all dj’s.

The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is thrilled to present the first solo museum exhibition in Chicago of self-taught citizen artist vanessa german (b. 1976), opening Friday, July 19, and featuring a new body of monumental rose quartz and precious gemstone sculptures as part of a multi-disciplinary installation developed during her Gray Center Fellowship supported by the Joyce Foundation. Guided by the principal of paraäcademia, a new term coined to address bodies of knowledge and practices that have historically been excluded from recognized institutions of higher education, the exhibition enacts various spells both intended for and composed by the living breathing people encountered during her residency. Created over the course of several months, the works on view embody the site of Chicago as an energetic locus for production—foregrounding the interpersonal linkages formed through art as a form of social healing, meditations on the political histories and methodologies of magic, and spiritual activations that embrace love as an original and infinite human technology. 

The exhibition is anchored by four freestanding sculptures intricately encrusted in rose quartz crystal. These sculptures will be shown alongside works of photography and film that straddle the space between meditation and documentary, made during the artist’s Gray Center fellowship. With a focus on what she terms “The Artist as The Complete Technology of Whole Being-ness,” german led an experimental seminar course in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Art in the Winter of 2024, implementing a method of teaching that broke down distinctions between art, magic, knowledge, and spirituality. Working with a range of students—from high school to undergraduate, MFA to PhD candidates—the exercises and meditations developed through this course have both informed, and become components of, the exhibition.

As the artist describes: “There is a monumental rose quartz head. There is also a creature— a four-legged creature with a kind of sigil rising from what would be located as crown-chakra region. (We are thinking here about how the magic takes shapes being that we were intentional with our attentions in this course, so the ideas/visions that were formed came *through* our time together. This is how this creature came through, on a flight to chicago. 

There is a large scale master blaster boom box in lapis, sodalite, sapphire, pyrite and glass— thinking about Sun Ra preaching on the corner. The preach-songs of music. The sidewalks soundtracks of freedom and how music is math and math is the universe and Sun Ra was here/there the whole entire time making a womb of his mouth and giving birth to the elements of hip hop along with all of the other humans bursting out of their own ordinary and into entirely new sound forms. 

And, then there is a 4 sided pyramid— thinking about the panel discussion  that I went to around Sun Ra and all of the other outer-space focused humans who created a universe of their own liberty. 

Lastly, in the matter of monumental works we have a double figure which will call into its ingredients the small power beads made throughout our studio time in the course.”

Accompanying vanessa german: At the end of this reality there is a bridge—the bridge is inside of you but not inside of your body. Take this bridge to get to the next _______, all of your friends are there; death is not real and we are all dj’s., a dedicated section of the Spring 2024 edition of Portable Gray, published by the University of Chicago Press, contains a portfolio of recent sculpture, two artist statements that outline the desire to enter “a new cathedral of the academy,” in-depth interviews on her artwork and spirituality, and a selection of hypothetical syllabi prepared by students to imagine their own visions of the course. Across this multifaceted project, the exhibition culminates in allowing new zones of pedagogy to practice a form of spiritual exchange and reciprocity—one that hinges on a very singular type of belief: that trust is its own kind of magic. 

The exhibition, presented by the Gray Center and Logan Center Exhibitions, is curated by Zachary Cahill, Stephanie Cristello, and Mike Schuh, with primary support from the Joyce Foundation. Additional support is provided by Richard and Mary L Gray and the Gray Family; Kasmin, New York; the Mellon Foundation; Ng Family Visiting Artist Fund; Revada Foundation; and Friends of the Logan Center.

Image above: Lapis, pyrite, the sound of love as found in the frequencies of the mineral world, time before time was even time, sapphire, sodalite, sea jasper, the blues, 800 million tears and counting, a miracle, Sun Ra’s golden hand rising up the back to carry the night of sounds on his infinite and eternal shoulders, love and grief with no space between them, something awestruck and hopeful then, wood, blue pigment, gold glass beads, the earth, the stars, the sun and the moon, water, the outrageous mouth of the human heart, the beginning and the end switching places all the time, the glory of music, being awake and alive. © 2024 vanessa german. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York.