Artists Alberto Aguilar and Alex Bradley Cohen look back on their ten years of collaboration, discussing past work that spans video, sound, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. They speak about overcoming doubt and utilizing play to produce a vast and prolific body of work.

This artist talk includes an improvised performance, during which Aguilar and Cohen will fully utilize their ability to intuitively communicate through alternative forms. Afterwards, they will open the conversation to the audience for a Q&A, which may lead the two to feel doubtful but end hopefully.

Feeling Shapey is presented in conjunction with Alberto Aguilar moves on human scale. Extended until July 20, this large-scale survey exhibition explores how the Chicago-born and based artist’s various life roles and surroundings have shaped a searching, inquisitive practice that is grounded in, and produces, a radical everyday.

Alex Bradley Cohen has a forthcoming group show at the Hyde Park Art Center in and a solo exhibition at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York, NY) in October. He has had solo exhibitions at Mana Contemporary (Chicago, Il) and Slow Gallery (Chicago, Il). Selected group exhibitions include forthcoming shows at University Art Museum at University of Albany and Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL) as well as exhibitions at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York, NY), Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL), YOGA (Chicago, IL) and Socrates Sculpture Park (Long Island City, NY). Cohen received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He currently lives and works in Chicago.

I will write this biography using 181 words but will not discover this number until I’m done writing it. From this point forward he will speak in third person. Alberto Aguilar is a Chicago-born and based artist. Aguilar’s creative practice often incorporates whatever materials are at hand as well as exchanges with those around him and people that encounter his aart. His work bridges media from painting and sculpture to video, installation, performance, and sound and has been exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary AArt, the Queens Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American AArt, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary AArt, the Minneapolis Institute of AArt and the AArt Institute of Chicago. From 2006-2018 he taught at Harold Washington College where he also coordinated Pedestrian Project, an initiative dedicated to making contemporary aart practices more available to his students. He currently teaches at the School of the AArt Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In order to create slight confusion, he has added an extra letter A where ever the word aart appears in this bio.

Alberto Aguilar’s first large scale survey explores how the Chicago-born and based artist’s various life roles and surroundings have shaped a searching, inquisitive practice that is grounded in, and produces, a radical everyday. Aguilar’s creative work often incorporates whatever materials he has at hand and has extended into collaborations and exchanges with others, including his own family. Navigating measurement and limits, of his own body or in his ready materials—whether it’s the structure of a sheet of mini legal paper or the territory of an area rug, to name a few examples—his work bridges media, from painting and sculpture to video, installation, performance, and sound as well as the use of social media and teaching as art forms.