“To Name It Is To See It”

DePaul Art Museum.

All images courtesy of the Artist.

Navillus assisted in the fabrication of artist Hương Ngo’s solo exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum.

huongngo.com

In 1992, Joseph Grigely was exploring the recently abandoned facilities of a storage company in the same building as his studio when he found Battcock’s archive of manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence strewn throughout the space. After making copies of some of the material, he donated a bulk of the collection to the Archives of American Art. Grigely has researched and worked with the archive in various ways over the years. He first exhibited The Gregory Battcock Archive in 2010, and he has revised and expanded it for the present iteration on view in the 2014 Biennial, including new discoveries such as Battcock’s only known surviving painting. Selecting and arranging the archive through a methodology that is both subjective and historically considered, writing explanatory texts, and designing the vitrines, Grigely has organized the archive into a modular sculpture that is also a form of storytelling. In the end, this work becomes as much about how one constructs a narrative as it is about the narrative itself.

This site-specific installation was developed as a pair of extended and compressed mirrored portals. INTO and OUT of fragmented and reflected the interior of THE FRANKLIN gallery space and the surrounding exterior environment. This experimental installation used the reflective surfaces, depth of field, and site conditions to manipulate the perspective and experience of the space. Luftwerk developed this using all the material from each panel with no waste—some forms were designed to create an open space to go into, while others were created out of the negative space from the design. The mirrored, front-facing side of the installation was contrasted with the back black and created an unexpected void to highlight the negative and positive space within the work.

Solarise Garfield Park Conservatory- As part of an effort to raise awareness and draw public attention to the conservatory and rehabilitation efforts, Luftwerk was commissioned to create a series of year-long installations throughout the conservatory. Solarise: A Sea of All Colors contained five distinct installations; each in a different garden, developed with a distinct point of view to frame, highlight, and interpret important elements of the garden.

Developed from relationships with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a glaciologist at the University of Chicago, this project launched in October 2017 with two iterations: Two North Riverside Plaza and at Art EXPO Chicago. The immersive installation at Two North Riverside Plaza was comprised of a visual representation at 1:5000 scale of the 120-mile long crack on the side of the building paired with a custom sound recording of the iceberg. Sound recordings of Larsen-C covered the plaza with a prominent frequency; at times the city and iceberg sounds correlate to one another and at other times they are in conflict. The haunting, eerie iceberg sound is animalistic with a depth that connects on a visceral level, stirring curiosity to create awareness and action. The White Wanderer exhibition at EXPO Chicago presented artistic interpretations of the Larsen-C ice shelf, including: a light sculpture mimicking ice flow, prints tracing satellite images of Arctic ice flows, and interpretations of radar readings from ice distress.

Marissa Lee Benedict, David Rueter, and Daniel de Paula: Artists

Navillus Woodworks: Design Engineering, Fabrication, Installation

Navillus worked closely with the artists to realize their sculpture “Repose” displayed in the Garden at The Arts Club of Chicago.

Photos courtesy of the artist.