Inspired by La Tomatina, a tomato festival held in Buñol, Valencia, Spain, Jeanne Dunning will stage Tomato Fight, a public event in which a cast of volunteer participants fights with massive amounts of canned tomatoes on a grassy field on the UIC campus. The fight lasts until every last tomato finds its target. The resultant spectacle is “part sports event, part Dionysian bacchanal, part food fight, and part color field painting.” Beginning with the familiarity of tomatoes and ending in a messy trail of associations, ranging from college prank to grisly bloodbath, the audience in the bleachers will be treated to an eerily beautiful choreography for the duration of Tomato Fight. The exhibition is comprised of the large-scale photograph Field, which depicts the aftermath of a “Tomato Fight” staged in 2005, and a related new video work.

Tomato Fight is presented concurrently with Drawings and Polaroids.

Tomato Fight is supported by the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Special thanks to the jury that selected the 2007 At the Edge
projects: Romi Crawford (Director, SAIC Visiting Artist Program), Lisa Dorin (Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago), Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (artist), Sumakshi Singh (artist), and Lorelei Stewart (Director, Gallery 400).