Installation view of Valerie Hegarty's Hotel Lobby, West Loop

Coated with painted and torn layers of paper, the gallery shifts and blends into the site of a gutted hotel lobby. Gesturing toward recent waves of renovation, demolition and erasure, Hegarty's installation examines the conjunction of the utopian white cube gallery and the realities of present-day urban transformation.

The exhibition essay is available here.

Valerie Hegarty has exhibited at Berkeley Art Center, CA; Middlebury College Museum of Art, VT; Gallery 2, Chicago, and Modest Contemporary Art Gallery, Chicago. She graduated with an MFA earlier this year from the School of the Art Institute where she received a Trustee Scholarship and a John Quincy Adams Fellowship.

Hotel Lobby, West Loop is part of the fall project At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago, August 27 - December 21, 2002

Six one-person or artist curated exhibitions taking a risk. At the Edge unveils newly created works that are difficult to show in commercial spaces, that extend a working arts practice, and/or push the boundaries of art experimentation. This year’s program is the first of annual At the Edge exhibitions intended to encourage the most innovative aspects of Chicago art community’s current dynamism. Special thanks to the jury that selected this year’s At the Edge projects: Derek Fansler (artist and co-director of Suitable Gallery), Steve Reinke (artist and UIC faculty member), Julie Rodriques (Curatorial Assistant, MCA), James Rondeau (Acting Director, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Institute) and Lorelei Stewart (Director, Gallery 400).