Karthik Pandian and Andros Zin-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V - VI)
February 1 - March 17, 2019
Installation view, Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman
Since 2011, visual artist Karthik Pandian and choreographer Andros Zins-Browne have been exploring the image of revolution in the wake of the Arab Spring. Narratives of movement—figurative and literal, political and aesthetic, confessional and speculative—have woven their way through a series of interrelated works across moving image, theatre, and dance. Atlas Unlimited, the latest iteration of this ongoing project, combines sculpture and storytelling, tracing the flows of people, art, and artifacts across geographies and cultures in the past, present, and future. Taking place across a number of international venues, Atlas Unlimited changes and adapts to its specific context as it moves, unfolding in a succession of “acts” at each location.
At the Logan Center Gallery, temporary architectures and sculptural fragments depict artifacts, monuments, tents, and border walls from Tahrir Square and Palmyra to Myanmar and the US-Mexico border. Other objects on view draw directly from the artists’ research on Chicago, referencing the “Street in Cairo” attraction and other temporary exhibitions erected during the Columbian Exposition of 1893. These fragmentary sets are presented in a constant state of flux as a cast of Builders including a conservator, an actor, and a painter intermittently erect, maintain, and dismantle them. Working in the gallery during opening hours, each builder recounts tales of displacement, settlement, and reconstruction that interweave personal testimonies with fictionalized accounts. These narratives emerge from a series of workshops conducted by the artists and their ongoing conversations with a host of collaborators in Chicago and elsewhere.
Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) is realized in close collaboration with builders Anthony Adcock, Carris Adams, Jared Brown, Sherry Diaz, Jane Foley, Sami Ismat, Mohammad Miah, Gabe Moreno, Tasha Vorderstrasse, and students in the Design Apprenticeship and Community Actors Programs at Arts + Public Life, University of Chicago.
Karthik Pandian & Andros Zins-Browne: Atlas Unlimited (Acts V–VI) is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Yesomi Umolu, Director and Curator with Katja Rivera, Assistant Curator and Alyssa Brubaker, Exhibitions Manager. This exhibition is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Reva and David Logan Foundation and friends of the Logan Center. Atlas Unlimited (Acts I–VI) is co-commissioned by Netwerk Aalst and Logan Center Exhibitions, University of Chicago and co-produced by Precarious Pavilions Antwerp and The Great Indoors. It is made possible with the support from The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
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About the Artists
Karthik Pandian has held solo exhibitions at, amongst others, the Whitney Museum of American Art; Bétonsalon, Paris; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis. His work was featured in the inaugural Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum and in La Triennale: Intense Proximity at the Palais de Tokyo as well as in group exhibitions such as Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015 at Whitechapel Gallery; Film as Sculpture at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and the 4th Marrakech Biennial, Higher Atlas. In 2016, he premiered his first stage performance, Atlas Revisited, a collaboration with choreographer Andros Zins-Browne, at EMPAC in Troy, NY. Pandian holds an MFA from Art Center College of Design and a BA from Brown University. He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he teaches video, sculpture, and performance at Harvard University.
Andros Zins-Browne is an American choreographer who lives in Brussels. After receiving a degree in Art Semiotics from Brown University, he went on to study dance at PARTS in Brussels and in the fine arts department of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. His work consists of live and hybrid environments at the intersection of installation, performance, and conceptual dance, exploring how images, movement, and matter interact until they begin to take on each other’s properties. Zins-Browne’s performances cross between stage and exhibition spaces including Centre Pompidou, Paris; ICA, London; HAU, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; DeSingel, Antwerp; EMPAC, Troy, NY; Kaaitheater, Brussels; and the Impulse Festival, Düsseldorf where he received the Goethe Institute Award for The Host. His solo Already Unmade, a commission by The Boghossian Foundation, has recently been performed at the BOZAR Museum, Brussels; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai.