Description:

Open Studio and Conversation with John Preus, Kaplan Institute Artist in Residence, Fall 2016; Michael Rakowitz, Art Theory and Practice; and Hannah Feldman, Art History.

During his Kaplan residency at Northwestern, John Preus, a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, is exploring the division between public and private life and our material expressions of such in preparation for an on-campus art installation, a new incarnation of The Beast. In a previous form of The Beast at the Hyde Park Art Center—listed among the best Chicago art projects of 2014 by critic Lori Waxman—he speculated on the concept of "safe space," and the relationship between risk and collectivity, topics that will be taken up at this Open Studio event.

Refreshments will be served. Co-presented by the Department of Art Theory and Practice and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Made possible in part by the Jean Gimbel Lane Fund.

About the artist
John Preus creates platforms for engagement, creative action and transformation. The Chicago-based artist has garnered considerable attention for his recent solo work: his installation, The Beast, at the Hyde Park Art Center was critically acclaimed internationally; his work in The Freedom Principle at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is considered by many to be an important and poetic meditation on education, public space, and ruin; and his writings on process, ethics, and transformative art have been widely distributed and discussed in the realm of Socially Engaged/Social Practice Art.