Empire

November 14 - December 23, 2006
Opening reception: Wednesday, November 15, 5-8 pm

Artist's talk and CD release for Field Recordings from the Great Salt Lake Desert.: Thursday, December 7, 4:30 pm

In June and July, 2006 John Arndt (UIC alumnus MFA '93.) spent several weeks at Wendover Airfield, Utah under the auspices of the Center for Land Use Interpretation. The residency served as a base camp for excursions, some overnight, into a region extending from the Nevada border to Salt Lake City, and north almost to Idaho and south to the Dugway Proving Grounds.
Empire presented sculpture, video, photography and found items from Arndt's time in the Great Salt Lake Basin. A central element of the project is Gallery 400's publication and distribution of Arndt's audio compilation, Field Recordings from the Great Salt Lake Desert . The project, which shares a methodology with landscape painting, documentary film, and non-fictional travel writing, presented the desert as a place that provides a radically unique situation that most rarely encounter: an environment where silence can be approached, if not experienced.

The Desert Show
Film and video curated by Ben Russell
December 6, 7pm

Step out of the Chicago cold and into the blinding light of the projector for an evening of desert-themed works by Ant Farm, Bill Brown, Chuck Jones, John Marshall, Cordelia Swann, Effi Weiss and Amir Borensein, and Timoleon Wilkins. Projected from 16 mm and video in the gallery.

Reviews

Chicago Tribune -- December 2006
Chicago Reader -- December 2006