Past Events

The image shows a part of the exhibition at Gallery 400 with life-sized replicas of significant objects from the Little Village neighborhood

Reception: The Last Judgment / El Juicio Final

September 6th 2019, 6pm

Join us for the opening reception of The Last Judgement by Adela Goldbard.

Centered on the community interests of residents in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, Adela Goldbard’s The Last Judgment features large-scale sculptures built as pyrotechnic scenography for a public pyrotechnic event to be presented in Little Village on October 12, 2019.

<em>Mexican Art Workshop | Taller de Arte Mexicana</em>, courtesy the artist.

Open House | Casa Abierta

Date: Saturday, July 27 | Sábado 27 de Julio
Time: 3-6pm
Location: 2215 S St. Louis Ave, Chicago, IL 60623

Come view the progress of Adela Goldbard’s community-based art project! The Last Judgment highlights the stories and concerns of Little Village residents and will incorporate them into a pyrotechnic play for which master artisans—who have traveled from Tultepec, Mexico—are building large-scale scenography and decor. Join us at the Little Village work site to meet the artisans, learn about their work, collaborate with them on papier maché fabrication, and learn about the public pyrotechnic performance in Little Village on October 12, 2019.

Alex Bradley Cohen, <em>Alberto and I</em>, 2015, acrylic on canvas, courtesy the artist.

Feeling Shapey
Two-Person Artist Talk

Date: Thursday, July 18, 2019
Time: 6pm – 8pm
Location: Gallery 400

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. It is free and open to all.

A piece of paper with black writing fills up the entire frame. A hand grasps the paper, as implied by fingertips visible in the bottom left corner. The passage is titled, At Bounded Space.

At Bounded Space
Guided Walk with Hui-min Tsen

Date: Saturday, June 8, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

Led by artist Hui-min Tsen, At Bounded Space is a guided walk through the transitional areas surrounding Gallery 400. The walk offers participants a universal method for encountering the many visible and invisible boundary lines surrounding us in our everyday lived experiences. The duration of the walk is approximately 45 minutes. It is free and open to all.

Two images are edited together, creating one image. On the left, a brown box is open, revealing its contents. The lid of the box stands upright in the top left corner. On the lid, bright letters read,

Homemade Stories
and Handmade Books
Workshop

Date: Saturday, May 25, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

Madeleine Aguilar introduces the practice of autobiographical comics in this interactive bookmaking workshop. Participants are lead through exercises to document and translate their own personal narratives into pictures and words.

Alberto Aguilar, <em>09.28.12</em>, 2012, Pen on mini legal, 5x7 in, courtesy the artist.

Carpet Diem
Variety Show on an Area Rug

Date: Thursday, May 16
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

Jesse Malmed hosts this one-night-only artistic showcase. Making creative use of the limitations intrinsic to an area rug, performances respond to the concept of allotted space and the idea of a carpet. Each artist has a short burst to present, perform, or transform their interpretation of the evening’s themes.

Photograph of three people dancing, two of which are using wheelchairs. They wear nude colors and gaze off to the left hand side.

Creating Legacy

Date: Wednesday, May 15
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Join us for Creating Legacy: Furthering the Art of Dance Through the Art of Disability, an artist talk featuring 2019 UIC 3Arts fellow Ginger Lane. Real-Time Captioning (CART), ASL, and Audio Description are provided for this event. It is free and open to all.

<em>A PD Invitation</em><br> Art(s) Education Workshop

A PD Invitation
Art(s) Education Workshop

Date: Saturday, May 11, 2019
Time: 2pm
Location: Gallery 400

This is a personal invitation to have a professional development share-out at the exhibition of Alberto Aguilar. An artist-teacher gathering about your expertise prepared by Jorge Lucero and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education.

Two photographs are spliced together. On the left, Alberto Aguilar holds a camera to his face with his right hand while his left hand grasps his wrist. His mouth rests slightly ajar as he looks forward intently. He wears a brown long-sleeved shirt and sits next to a houseplant. Behind him in the distance, his daughter Madeleine stands behind, also looking towards the front. She wears a red shirt and blue jeans. Her body is very small as compared to Aguilar in the foreground. On the left-hand side of the screen, another photo depicts Madeleine outside in a yard. Behind her there is a brown and yellow swing set a multi-colored bouncy balls. She sits on her knees in the foreground while holding a camera up to her face. Madeleine and Alberto's poses mirror each other, creating continuity between the two as father and daughter and co-presenters of this artist talk.

Line Age Gap
Father/Daughter Artist Talk In Turn

Date: Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

Throughout this father-daughter artist talk, Alberto Aguilar tells origin stories about certain works in his survey exhibition while Madeleine Aguilar tells stories through original music written as records of certain life experiences. Their storytelling happens in turn over an hour timespan and sometimes correlates. This event is free and open to all.

Two children sit in a house on a red carpet. They are playing a game that requires you to keep a balloon floating in the air by hitting it with bells. The artist stands on the far right side holding two bells. You can only see his legs. he wears long brown pants and sandals.

Opening Reception: Alberto Aguilar moves on human scale

Date: Friday, April 26, 2019
Time: 6-9pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of Alberto Aguilar moves on human scale at Gallery 400. 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.

Voices: Maria Gaspar <br><em> Speech Acts</em>

Voices: Maria Gaspar
Speech Acts

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Maria Gaspar discusses her recent project, Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall, which culminated in a public site intervention at the Cook County Jail this past fall. At the intervention, Gaspar illuminated the north end wall of the jail with projected animations developed through workshops she held inside the jail with men who were incarcerated, collectively named the Radioactive Ensemble.

Sarabeth Dunton, <em>Pygmalion & Galatea</em>, pentel paint marker, colored pencil, matte flashe paint on paper, 38

Artist Talks and Reception
A Nameless Familiar

Date: Friday, April 12, 2019
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the closing of the second of two MFA Thesis Exhibitions, A Nameless Familiar. The artists present their work from 5-8pm with a reception to follow.

A painted rendition of Parker Bright standing in front of Dana Schutz's painting of Emmett Till. Bright's back is towards the audience and the back of gray his t-shirt reads

Voices: Aruna D'Souza
Is Empathy Enough?

Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

By looking at the example of the 2017 Whitney Biennial protests and their aftermath, Aruna D’Souza discusses both the value and the limits of fellow feeling when it comes to working towards social justice. Artists, curators, museum educators, and others speak lately of art’s special role in helping to develop the kind of understanding that’s necessary to cross divides of class, race, affiliation, and so on. But what if empathy isn’t enough? What if—even worse—it’s counterproductive?

Artist Talks and Opening Reception: Now & There

Date: March 22, 2019
Time: Artist Talks: 5-6pm
Opening: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of the first of two MFA Thesis Exhibitions, Now & There. The artists present their work from 5-8pm with a reception to follow.

Huong Ngo artwork. A long-sleeve t-shirt is hung in front of a canvas. Both the t-shirt and canvas display a pattern of green desert plants. Since they are decorated with the same pattern, the shirt camouflages into the canvas behind. The composition is enveloped by a red wooden frame.

Voices: Hương Ngô

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In this artist talk, Hương Ngô presents recent work that reflects her research-based practice that connects personal and political histories using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approach. Ngô interrogates the ways that power is bound up with language and creates work reframing the hybrid, the imperfect, and the non-fluent as sites of survival and knowledge.

A close-up view of a field of purple flowers.

Forms and Features: Poetry and the Collective Experience

Date: Thursday, March 7
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

This poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney begins as a conversation with our current exhibition, All have the same breath. After engaging with the exhibition, participants read and discuss poems that explore the artworks’ prevalent themes.

Bochay Drum standing next to a younger girl. Bochay is wearing a baseball cap and red bandana. His shirt is yellow and he wears a dark gray vest. He stares into the distance. To his left, the girl wears a purple wide-rimmed hat and a teal jacket. Behind them is a vast, desert landscape.

How are we looking today?, Bochay Drum

Date: Saturday, March 2
Time: 3:30-5:30 pm
Location: Gallery 400

*The performer will individually greet each audience member upon arrival. Please plan to arrive within the 20-minute window from 3:30 – 3:50pm.

How are we looking today? Is an experimental performative workshop in conversation with All have the same breath and presented in conjunction with All have the same breath: Symposium for Political Ecology as Practice.

Bird's eye view of a beach scene. There are people gathered around a row of boats on the shore. The water is seafoam green.

All have the same breath: Political Ecology Symposium

This symposium presents the final results of the fieldwork carried out by the project participants of the project Political Ecology as Practice: A Regional Approach to the Anthropocene, presented in conjunction with All have the same breath. This project investigated the reciprocal relationship between the emergent theories of the Anthropocene, climate change, and the global environmental crisis, and how local ecological problems are experienced in various regions of the world. Presented in conjunction with Bochay Drum’s performative workshop.

Four people performing. They are standing on a stage surrounded by smoke. Three stand in the back with their hands raised and wearing gas masks and vests. One in on the ground in front.

This is Not a Drill, Jefferson Pinder

Date: Tuesday, February 26
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

As a participating venue in the 2019 IN>TIME Festival, Gallery 400 hosts an in-progress presentation by the artist Jefferson Pinder on his project This is Not a Drill. Pinder trains a team of performers to venture into the deep south during Summer of 2019. Taking inspiration from Goat Island’s How dear to me the hour when daylight dies, he aggressively prepares black bodies for stylized militancy in the face of history and white nationalism.

Voices from the Farm: Digging Deep in the Vermilion Watershed

Date: Saturday, February 23, 2019
Time: 2-4pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In an industrialized agricultural landscape dominated by big business, the ideals of organic, sustainable farming are harder to achieve than most urban environmentalists realize. Charlie Corwin humanizes this struggle with a reading of stories from the perspective of farmers in the Vermilion River watershed of Illinois. Artist Stella Brown leads a gallery discussion of her work Vermilion River Watershed Geologic Column followed by an all-ages workshop.

COPIES AND TRANSFERS: Printmaking with Tamara Becerra Valdez

Date: Saturday, February 16
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

In this workshop, Valdez discusses the tools, techniques, and translation of ideas in relief and found object printmaking. Each participant creates an edition of “like” prints that will be equally redistributed among each other to create a Trade Portfolio. Valdez is an artist participating in the exhibition All things share the same breath

Fluid Entanglements
Curated by Robyn Mericle

Date: Tuesday, February 5
Time: 6-8pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

In conjunction with the current Gallery 400 exhibition, All have the same breath, Fluid Entanglements is a film screening curated by Robyn Mericle. The films in this lineup explore water and the natural landscape as lived, material realities inextricably intertwined with—not separate from, or merely subject to—human history, politics, and culture.

Opening Reception: All have the same breath

Date: Friday, January 18
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us in celebrating the opening of All have the same breath at Gallery 400. This interdisciplinary exhibition will be on view at Gallery 400 from January 18-March 9, 2018.

Blue image with a web of boxes and lines, representing an interactive story made with Twine software.

Interactive Story/Text-Based Game Making Workshop

Date: Saturday, December 8
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

In this workshop led by VGA teaching artist Eden Ünlüata-Foley, participants will learn how to use Twine, a simple tool for making text-based games. No programming experience is required.

Insert Coin in bold, white letters is imposed over a dark blue arcade console against a black background

Screening: Selections from Josh Tsui’s Insert Coin

Date: Wednesday, December 5
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

Get a sneak peek of the forthcoming feature Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s ‘90s Revolution, a documentary diving deep into the history of Midway Games. Josh Tsui will be in attendance to present and discuss the work.

Glitch artwork created by Jamie Faye Fenton. Words at the top say Select Game.

Chicago New Media Remix Night

Date: Wednesday, November 28
Time: 6pm
Location: Gallery 400

For one night only, Chicago-based game makers and new media artists Cat Bluemke, Ali Krouse, and Whitney Pow present video games that creatively rework, remix, and respond to specific pieces exhibited in Chicago New Media 1973-1992.

Screenshot of the Piskel App interface. On the left there is a toolbar. In the middle there is an image of an artwork made on the website. The artwork depicts a green tree with grass below. On the right, there are more tools and color swatches.

Pixel Art Sprite Making Workshop

Date: Saturday, November 17
Time: 1-3pm
Location: Gallery 400

Led by VGA teaching artist Eden Ünlüata-Foley, this workshop gives participants the opportunity to create their own pixel art game sprites. No programming experience is required.

Dan Sandin stands in front of a computer-generated lighting display with his arm outstretched. Lights of green, pink, purple, and orange dance around a black background in front of him.

CAVE2 Demonstration with Dan Sandin

Date: Wednesday, November 7
Time: 6-7:30pm
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago’s Engineering Research Facility (ERF), 842 W. Taylor Street, Room 2036

Join UIC’s Electronic Visualization Lab (UIC’s EVL) co-director Dan Sandin for a special demonstration of Particle Dreams in Spherical Harmonics in the CAVE2: the next-generation virtual reality and visualization hybrid environment for immersive simulation and information analysis.

A group of participants in the Electronic Visualization Lab pose for a photo. They sit together closely, some holding various electronics such as computer monitors.

Chicago New Media Symposium

Date: Thursday, November 1
Time: 2-4pm
Location: Gallery 400 Lecture Room

Join us for conversations on the history and influence of Chicago new media. Hosted by VGA Gallery and Gallery 400 to mark the opening of Chicago New Media 1973-1992, the symposium presents dialogues between participants in Chicago’s new media history and prominent media art history scholars.

A neon, multicolored shape on a black background.

Opening Reception: Chicago New Media 1973-1992

Date: Thursday, November 1
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Gallery 400

Join us to celebrate the opening of Chicago New Media 1973-1992 at Gallery 400. Chicago New Media 1973–1992 chronicles Chicago’s contributions to new media art by artists who worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (UIC’s EVL), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Midway Games and Bally.

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