Exhibition: the beauty of something ripped

Exhibition opened through June 18 during business hours

Chicago-based artist Sandra Binion presents the beauty of something ripped, a series of fourteen photographs celebrating the unintentional beauty arising from the scars of time-worn fabrics the artist has encountered by chance in museums, churches, palazzos and châteaux over several years.

Sites include the Louvre Museum, Archives Nationales in Paris, Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, and the Cathedral Saint-Lazare in Autun, France. Bearing the traces of those who’ve touched, sat on, or kneeled on them—perhaps without a second thought or perhaps with profound fervor—these textiles map lifetimes and mysteries. Many of them also point to the ambiguities of display and patrimony, being tattered and ignored furnishings in otherwise opulent environs.

The fourteen photographs in the series are archival pigment prints mounted to aluminum composite board, 18 x 24 in., printed by Document, Chicago.

Sandra Binion is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago who makes visual art works, video installations, and live performances. During a forty‐year career of uninterrupted artistic activity, she has presented performances, exhibitions and screenings in numerous venues in the US and Europe. Most recently her practice has manifested in multi‐media exhibitions that draw together video, photography, painting and sound in dialogue with architecture, resulting in poetic interpretations of particular places and narratives. Her multimedia project Distillé, a re-figuration of Gustave Flaubert’s 19th century novel Madame Bovary, has been shown in various iterations: The University Club in Chicago (2014); Abbaye de Noirlac—Centre culturel de rencontre, Bruère‐Allichamps (2016); Porte 10, Rouen (2017); Maison de George Sand, Nohant-Vic (2017); Palais Jacques Coeur, Bourges (2017); Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan (2019); and the Centre d’art contemporain de la Matmut, Saint-Pierre-de Varengeville (2021). In September 2021, she presented the double exhibition, Fleeting/Aftermath, at the Durand Art Institute of Lake Forest College, Illinois.

This project is made possible through the generous support of D. Elizabeth Price and Lou Yecies, in association with Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.

View more of Sandra Binion’s work at her website: www.sandrabinion.com