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Past Exhibitions

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click “View” for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists

Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists

May 3, 1994 to June 27, 1994

The Minimalist movement, appearing in the mid-1960s and continuing well into the 1970s, is characterized by a reduction of forms to simple, basic geometric shapes, devoid of any ornamentation. Figuration was removed, and in some expressions of Minimalism, the artifacts look as though they were produced by machine, for all evidence of the human hand had been removed. Ultimately, Minimalism eliminated meaning beyond the actual object. What you saw is what you got.

The term "Post-Minimalism" was first used in 1971 by the art critic Robert Pincus-Winton, who distinguished between the prefabricated looking Minimalist works and those works that, while honoring the purity and simplicity of form in Minimalism, nonetheless revealed the presence of the human hand in the subtle manipulation of materials. Furthermore, the Post-Minimalist artworks contained a sense of metaphor, and pointed to meaning beyond themselves. For a number of artists, the meaning involved an experience of transcendence. Here, the Post-Minimalists have much in common with Northern European and Russian geometric abstraction in the early part of the century that evoked a sense of the spiritual.

This exhibition brings together four mid-career contemporary artists, all in their 40s, who have spent much of their artistic careers in Chicago and who have received high regional and national critical praise for their work. Two—Rodney Carswell and Daniel Smajo-Ramirez—are painters, the other two—Thomas Skomski and Stephen Luecking—are sculptors. All four artists, while producing distinctly different work, nevertheless demonstrate a similar sensibility in the shaping of their materials and in the metaphorical content of their work. At times the art evokes the sublime; at other times the tragic -- in all cases, the work is contemplative in tone.

The paintings and sculptures of these four Chicago artists are not only inquiries into what we can know, but more importantly, into what we cannot.

above:
Installation view of Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists at MOCRA, 1994. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.