What makes America what it is

Curator Matt Morris’s “In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is,” up at Loyola University’s Ralph Arnold Gallery, is a full-hearted and generous analysis of Kim Krause, Morgan, and Sabina Ott’s bodies of work. The exhibition is strikingly expansive, explicitly positioned within the histories of modernism and postmodernism. Morris centers each artist’s work as an educator to present abstract art, specifically abstract painting, as a pathway to freedom for the individual and collective.

“In the United States . . .”Through 1/25/23: Sat noon-4 PM, Ralph Arnold Gallery, 1131 W. Sheridan, luc.edu/ralpharnoldgallery

With an exhibition title taken from Gertrude Stein’s thoughts on the possibilities of an American character, Morris explicitly situates each artist within the midwest in order to constructively interrogate art making, art labor, and artistic expression throughout the 20th and 21st century. The work itself is lusciously rendered and touches on everything from America’s post-WWII expansionism to the dot-com boom, a cornucopia of references and touch points that serve as guideposts. A radical sense of play and joyful mess creates a through line from which viewers consider how visual abstraction defies reductive definition. Such freedom in turn presents compelling possibilities for art making and community in a region that has suffered uniquely from economic despair, racism, queerphobia, and sexism due to its derisive status as “flyover country” and all attendant material disadvantages such a moniker implies. 

Installation view, “In the United States…” Ralph Arnold Gallery 2022. Credit: Courtesy Ralph Arnold Gallery

An exhibition formed by and through a compelling hybridity of thought defies rote analysis but does depend on a generosity of spirit, a willingness to teach possibility and openness. Morris accomplishes just this in a show that opens eyes and horizons. 

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