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\r\n\r\n\r\n","body":"BY ALISON REILLY
\r\n\r\nAt first glance, Richard Rezac’s sculptures might be described as cool, crisp, or sleek. But his careful craftsmanship and delicate choice of color imbue the objects with a warm familiarity, and their contrasting surfaces often activate tactile memories.
\r\n\r\nEarlier this month Rezac’s exhibition, titled Address, opened at the Renaissance Society. Though the work in the show spans the last 20 years, for executive director and chief curator Solveig Øvstebø, the exhibition is not a retrospective. “We wanted it to be a new commission,” she said, “a comprehensive new installation related specifically to the space of the Renaissance Society.”
\r\n\r\nØvstebø’s colleague, Janine Mileaf, director of the Arts Club of Chicago, had a similar idea. She commissioned Rezac to create a new sculpture for the Arts Club’s outdoor space. Inspired by the urban location of the Arts Club, the organization’s connection to sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and his own interest in Shaker fence building, Rezac built Glen Elder.
\r\n\r\n“We decided that it would be a nice collaboration to do these exhibitions at the same time,” Øvstebø said, “to emphasize both institutions’ respect for his work and his role in the Chicago art landscape.” Her deep admiration for Rezac and his rigorous studio practice is evident. “He is one of the strongest sculptors working in the U.S. today,” she said. “Over the span of 40 years he has been true to his project and worked quietly in his very own vein. There are very few artists who show this kind of uninterrupted concentration.”
\r\n\r\nØvstebø, like many others, is drawn to Rezac’s work not only because of its formal beauty and distinct quality, but also because of the way he builds his sculptures. “He makes them all by hand through a very determined process in which meticulous geometry and math are combined with a deep feeling for color and shape,” she noted.
\r\n\r\nRezac was kind enough to answer a number of questions about his childhood, his education, and his current art practice. Following is an edited transcript of our recent conversation.
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Chicago Gallery News: Where did you grow up?
\r\n\r\nRichard Rezac: I was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska in a family of six siblings with extended family nearby. My parents enjoyed travel when they had the time and finances, so an outward look around the Midwest was an important aspect of my early years.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Is there a memory from your childhood that influenced your decision to become an artist?
\r\n\r\nRR: I had two excellent art teachers in middle school and high school. They were bright, respectful, and encouraging. As examples in their conduct and personal commitment, they were mainly responsible for me, during high school, to decide later to seriously pursue the study of art.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Why did you decide to become an artist?
\r\n\r\nRR: Largely due to these teachers, but I have also had a persistent interest in drawing since I was about six years old. That attention and outlook led to an appreciation of what it would mean to go further with other forms of art.
\r\n\r\nCGN: I grew up in Portland, Oregon and am interested in the time you spent there. What brought you to the city?
\r\n\r\nRR: I went to Portland to attend the BFA program at the Museum Art School (as it was known then, 1970-74), now the Pacific Northwest College of Art. One of the major benefits was its immediate connection to the Portland Art Museum with its galleries serving as an extension of the studio classrooms. The faculty were accomplished as artists and invested in education, and because the School was small, it was necessarily interdisciplinary, so I took courses in every studio area. I graduated as an artist, not as one specialized in one discipline.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What was Portland like at the time?
\r\n\r\nRR: The 1970s in Portland was ideal: open, liberal and responsible, inexpensive.
\r\n\r\nCGN: From 1980-82, you studied at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore and received your MFA. How did that time compare to your experience in Portland?
\r\n\r\nRR: It was also a rewarding education, and a positive time to be in Baltimore, though almost completely different from Portland—as an older, entrenched, industrial, working-class eastern city. Nature, as I had known it in Oregon and Nebraska, was a long distance from Baltimore. The most rewarding part of that place and time was the ready access to museum collections in Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, which I visited frequently.
\r\n\r\nCGN: I studied the work of Katarzyna Kobro, a Polish artist associated with Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. I see similarities between your work and hers, because you often work on a human scale, you incorporate materials like wood and metal, and, in addition to freestanding sculpture, you sometimes hang your sculpture on the wall or from the ceiling. How do you see your work relating to early abstract art?
\r\n\r\nRR: I do admire her work (and saw a survey exhibition in Madrid last summer) and think that it certainly needs to be better known in this country, as it is prescient to some artists working in our time. If early twentieth-century abstraction can be seen today as an examination of some fundamental forms and their realization—in relationship—to an appropriate material, resulting in a simple, yet suggestive statement, then I agree that my sculpture, and approach, is indebted to those artists’ work. Their human-scaled size was inevitable because of the hand-forming construction and the private, rather than public, motivation.
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CGN: Can you tell me more about Untitled (Ren Screen)? What inspired this work?
\r\n\r\nRR: This work is a combination of space divider, but free-floating and rather small; a wall to hang sculpture but with an area only for one. Otherwise, my reason to make it came almost first, two years ago, when invited by Solveig Øvstebø for this exhibition. I felt the need to keep the Ren gallery space as open as possible, yet with a need to mark and divide it discreetly. Light from east to west in that space is paramount, so the underside of this screen is transparent and its primary, two-sided plane is on perpendicular axis with the only other built wall in the space. There are some details and surface treatments that match the scale and sensation of my sculpture generally, so it will hopefully be understood as an extension of the sculptures, while also being a slight architectural element, speaking to the gallery structure.
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CGN: What is the significance of your sculptures’ names? I’m particularly interested in Chigi and Quimby.
\r\n\r\nRR: The sculpture titled Chigi references the Italian papal family (originally from Siena). Alexander VII was one of three Popes in the Baroque period that commissioned Francesco Borromini in the architecture he designed for the Vatican. This sculpture incorporates an element that succinctly quotes the family emblem or crest, which is based on a series of overlapping mounds, as in the hillside landscape around Siena. All of Borromini’s buildings initiated or completed during his reign contain these emblems, as a mark of sponsorship. My intention for Chigi was to join two seemingly unlike forms: the merged crib-like structure, and the volumetric “foot” in recognition of Borromini, not so much the Chigi family.
\r\n\r\nThe other sculpture, Quimby, is only the second work that I have made incorporating stained glass. The first house that I lived in with stained glass as a feature was on NW Quimby Street in Portland, and the designs in the several rooms were comprised of a simple grid surround, resembling the fragmented version in this sculpture.
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CGN: I’d also like to know more about the series of sculptures with Zeilschip in the title. Can you tell me more about the material you selected for each one?
\r\n\r\nRR: Zeilschip is a Dutch word meaning sailing ship or sailor. The four works are based on a ceramic tile, oval in shape, that I saw at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It depicted sailing vessels in port, with the water line level, but the oval set askew. I was intrigued by that subtle disjunction, and so I ultimately made four related works. All are cast bronze volumetric forms, but each has a different surface treatment (one is nickel-plated), and all have a separate “instrument” or notation on its left side. These small additions complete the sculpture, re-balance it visually, and add a geometric, faceted form. These configurations were all determined by the two sets of axis of the oval: true verticals and horizontals—one set within the oval, and one set on the wall itself. The coordinates from all points at the periphery of the oval (which resembles an iron cross) in some way converge to spell out the element attached to its left side.
\r\n\r\nCGN: You have said, “Like an architect has a drawing to begin building, I have a drawing to initiate the sculpture with some reliability.” Can you talk about your relationship to drawing and sculpting?
\r\n\r\nRR: For me it makes perfect sense to draw first, to explore possible ideas—whether that starts with a conscious source or improvisational. I can then adjust the particulars in the drawing over time, and eventually decide if I want to see it as a sculpture. I have never made a sculpture without going through this drawing phase first. For years these drawings have resembled traditional architectural drawings in their showing plan, elevation, and sometimes section in alignment, so it is easy to interpret these images as three-dimensional.
\r\n\r\nCGN: How involved are you in the installation of your work for exhibitions?
\r\n\r\nRR: Extensively. Since 1977 I have installed all of the solo exhibitions that I have had, and I have usually been involved in the actual installation of a work in any group show, if it occurred in a city in which I was living.
\r\n\r\nCGN: How would you describe your studio?
\r\n\r\nRR: It is on the first floor of the building I live in, a former dairy store, so my studio space is not so large, but the layout is efficient, somewhat compartmentalized, and perfectly suited to my needs. It has good natural light from three directions and is segmented into three areas: for building sculpture, for drawing, and for something in-between, such as painting.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Does Chicago architecture influence your work?
\r\n\r\nRR: When I moved here in 1985, the architecture of Chicago came as a revelation the first time that I looked closely at the invention and importance represented by this history. There is an affinity, naturally, to sculpture. Primarily, I gravitate to the street level detail or isolated fragment, but I have not actively used or incorporated, any aspect of local architectural forms or buildings proper.
\r\n\r\nCGN: If you didn’t live in Chicago, where would you be?
\r\n\r\nRR: Hard to imagine at this time in my life. This is a great city, in my experience, and offers everything I need.
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Richard Rezac’s Address is on view at the Renaissance Society until June 17, 2018 • richardrezac.com
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Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
“I’m thrilled to further expand my artistic and design practice by introducing other mediums into the mix. I’m looking forward to watching the seasons change and devoting a lot of time in the studio as well. Fall/winter is my favorite time to create new works.
I have an upcoming solo show with VSG Contemporary that I am excited about. The work will delve further into the topics of cultural mythology and how these tales and narratives have helped shape my worldview.
Also, it wouldn’t be right if I left out my excitement for this upcoming season of Chicago sports.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961823/s3lp0uull2s8mvd8funj.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
This interview is part of CGN's Fall 2026 issue. Purchase a copy or subscribe.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961824/mghrpnghxd9j9ko2dsjt.jpg\")
Andi Crist
BY ALISON REILLY
Andi Crist’s warm, engaging demeanor is evident in the first few minutes of our conversation. Generous with her time and forthcoming in her observations, she cares deeply about building relationships through her art making. Crist grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, devoured art classes, wrote songs and played music in high school, and moved to Chicago to study visual art at Columbia College. In 2024, she received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a woodworker, sculptor, ceramicist, and conceptual artist, and she teaches at Illinois Institute of Technology. We discussed her multidisciplinary practice, her experience working as an art handler, preparator, and fabricator, and how she thinks about labor, creativity, and value in the art world.
CGN: You grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. How did that environment shape your point of view as an artist?
Andi Crist: That’s such a funny question. Nobody’s ever really asked.
CGN: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah, maybe because I never was super connected with the arts community down in Birmingham. I moved to Chicago in 2007, so it’s been 20 years since I lived in the South. I was definitely one of those art kids—one art credit was required in high school, and I graduated with like seven. I was surrounded by artists who had a big impact on me, because they were working artists. All my art teachers were trained in Alabama and then continued to teach and work in Alabama, which gave me this desire to try to expand my community outside of what I was familiar with.
CGN: Do you identify as a Chicagoan?
AC: My family still lives in Alabama, and I go back every year. I love being in Alabama. Maybe now being in Chicago for almost 20 years, I identify as a southerner living in the city. I carry on the social qualities of a friendly southern person [laughs].
CGN: You have a varied art practice—woodwork, ceramics, mold making. What drew you to those types of fabrication methods and that type of art making?
AC: My dad is a carpenter and a hobbyist woodworker, but his career was psychology, and my mom was a professor and an incredible craftswoman. I absorbed my mom’s model of creativity, which is to try a bunch of different things and not necessarily finish them but to try to learn as much as I can by just going for it. My practice over the years has become an exploration of conceptual elements of what makes art art and not just craft. Do you have to be a master craftsperson or a professional artist in order to make something that resonates with people?
I make a lot of work that references the mode of making and requires a variety of different media. I just finished teaching a ceramics production class where students learned how to produce molds, think about positives and negatives, and get into a level of production rather than just handicraft as a way to multiply their output.
I got into fabrication because I’ve always liked working with other artists. I have a background in theater and gallery work. I’m a voracious learner, and I like being able to share those skills with my community. Then I end up making work about that. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961825/zzejqwibga5f5wk6einh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Artist’s Ladder, 2023. Photo: Jeff Perlman
CGN: Thinking about your background as an art handler and preparator—how did you get to the point where you were making work about that experience?
AC: In 2010, right before I graduated from Columbia, I was living in a storefront in West Logan Square with my partner at the time. We started a gallery called Autotelic in the space and had to build it out using the worst tools with very minimal resources. Then we started curating shows there and that meant helping other artists figure out how to install their work in our unusual space. Eventually, I gained the reputation for knowing how to do that type of work. I started getting invited to work in museums and galleries.
The Holocaust Museum was the first museum I worked at, and as difficult as that subject matter is, that experience was really important to me because I was learning more about the larger world of gallery work. As an artist working as a preparator, you’re straddling both sides of that space. You’re really seeing how the sausage is made. You’re hearing all the conversations about artists, curators, the process of exhibition making. There is a lot of information you can gather about the economics of the art world by just being the person that has the know-how to touch and handle artwork. Eventually that started feeding into my art practice because I wanted to make work that was contributing to a conversation around art as a type of job. It fueled a methodology of seeing everything in the world as the result of a long line of processes that required effort and thoughtfulness by many hands.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961826/uv5bysb5fbne30gr5czh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Fair Warning, 2025.
CGN: The title of your recent exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum—Live, Laugh, Lo—sorry, not Live, Laugh, Love—Live, Laugh, Labor.
AC: [Laughs] That’s what everybody does.
CGN: I love the title—it’s perfect. You incorporate humor along with thoughtful critiques about labor and value in your work. What role does humor play? How does it help you connect with your audience?
AC: One of my biggest criticisms of art with a capital A is how easily it can be overly intellectualized. I think that’s why I end up making a lot of work that references things that already exist or have some kind of real purpose. It’s important to give people a foothold so there’s an obvious place to board that train of thought. As an artist—maybe this is me getting into a sweeping argument about what artists should be—but I personally believe in intellectual accessibility. Humor is a swift way to drop defenses and allow people to come in without feeling like they are not getting the joke or not understanding. I like to make work that can hold both of those things at the same time—it’s funny on the surface level, it’s kind of cheeky, but there’s also another way to look at it that is intellectually clever. There is a joy in the attempt to “get it”. Like the satisfaction of grasping how a crossword puzzle actually works.
It’s also so much a part of my personality. I take myself seriously as an artist, but my ego isn’t at the heart of it. It’s really something that I do because I love to make things, and I love to connect with other people. My parents raised me on puns, creating those language relationships between things and people and space. Understanding a joke is the same way that we understand art, and while neither of my parents would consider themselves artists, they taught me how to think about art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961828/gnotyfijabr7e15kb6hm.jpg\")
Andi Crist, 69 Bananas
CGN: Your work, Artist’s Ladder, explores hierarchies, workplace cultures, and institutional values. What experiences shaped your reflections on these themes?
AC: The ladder piece distinctly represents the complicated relationship between front of house, back of house, and the hierarchy of labor. Who is the artist in those relationships? How much does another person’s knowledge and expertise contribute to the success of another artist?
There are enormous, industrialized art practices out there, warehouses full of people making things, and those people are also artists. When you make work that involves other people, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions. I’ve had complicated interactions with other artists who are like, ‘Hey, do you want to collaborate with me on this thing?’ but really they just want me to make their idea. I made Artist’s Ladder while I was in grad school at UIC, and it really represented my relationship with a lot of other artists, because I could be an actual support structure for them. Then it turned into this absurd physical thing. It’s extremely overbuilt with inlaid racing stripes made of exotic hardwood, and a butcher’s block-style plaid top. It’s not really like an FU as much as it is asking for acknowledgement of my skills and the essential support structures that exist.
CGN: I want to ask you about another piece, Five O’Clock Somewhere, a wool rug that resembles a children’s play mat. I work at a library, and it reminded me of rugs I see all the time. It’s a peaceful image of an office park with a large fountain surrounded by a parking lot. I’m curious why you chose a rug as the medium to depict that image.
AC: To me the heart of that joke was that it was a landscape. I wanted it to be physically traversable. And that was, I don’t want to say controversial, but it was something that I had to talk about a lot. The critique of that work was the fact that I didn’t want to hang it on the wall and turn it into a tapestry. I really wanted it to be a rug that people could walk on. When I showed that work at Chicago Artists Coalition for the New City Breakout Artists show. There was a lot of pushback about having it on the floor and allowing people to walk on it.
That, to me, was such an important conversation, because, in my mind, the fact that you could walk across it and traverse it was part of how I was thinking about the object. Rugs are utilitarian–they are floor coverings. When you make art that doesn’t do anything, you don’t get to participate in that part of the conversation.
I enjoy sparring around art like that. I am totally tickled by the pushback. The critique of display is exciting, and sorting through the politics of utilitarianism in art spaces is fun to me. And then—it was so crazy—we ended up showing it halfway on the wall and halfway on the ground.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961829/r1zylkwfw9rkw191skdl.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Five O’Clock Somewhere, on display at Live, Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths at The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, 2025.
CGN: Oh, wow.
AC: I was like, this is the epitome of compromise! I had to build a structure so that it could hang that way safely.
CGN: I would say just put it on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s interesting that there are still very fixed ideas about the way that art should be displayed.
AC: That preparator part of it, that’s what I’m all about. I was having that conversation about what physically supports the work or what conceptually supports it in the way that it’s shown.
CGN: Have you always been a writer? How do your art and writing practices work together?
AC: I can’t say that I’m a writer, it’s probably the same way that it can feel weird to call yourself an artist. But I feel like I’ve always been relatively good at writing. The first time I ever did any kind of professional writing was contributing, a long time ago, to a website called eHow. The editors would send me a title, and then I would have to research how to do that thing. Then I would write out step-by-step instructions for how to do that.
I think that’s how I had to make myself think through my conceptual practice—I had to do the research, coagulate that into some kind of document, and then I would have stream-of-consciousness conversations with myself. “Why are we interested in this? Why would we make it this way? What would I want to talk about if someone were to ask me about this?” It’s almost like I was pre-interviewing myself.
I think the writing is just another way for me to process that idea before I put in all of the time and energy to actually accomplish it.
CGN: What are you working on right now? What projects do you have coming up?
AC: The biggest project that I have right now is my house. My family and I suffered a major house fire on New Year’s Day. We’ve been displaced since then and are navigating rebuilding our house. It was a total loss.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961830/kekfqzf9f87fq48juogh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Single-Use Fireplace, 2025. Photo: Mikey Mosher.
CGN: I’m so sorry to hear that.
AC: Thank you. We’re all okay, but it’s been a really tumultuous year. I moved my studio into a storefront last summer, and so most of my, at least relatively recent, work is safe, and I still have all of my materials, but my home life is starting over. I just had my first full year at this space, and it’s got a little gallery built out in the front called Coming Soon. It’s beautiful with floor-to-ceiling windows on Division and Central Park. I’ve been inviting people into the space to try things out.
After teaching the ceramics class, I came into a bunch of nice slip casting molds, and I’m making some really playful, weird, ceramic stuff. I want to be open and not put too much pressure on myself. Having a big studio by myself is very expensive, so it’s easy to want to make it feel like it’s worth it. But if for now all I can do is make it a resource for other people, then that will be the thing I do. Be less selfish, but more selfish with my time. Saying I can’t do that, or I don’t want to do that. It’s not my nature to say no—I’m such a yes man. I’m learning how to be a yes man for myself.
CGN: That makes sense after going through something so traumatic.
AC: I have an amazing support system. Our friends started a GoFundMe. It was incredible. I’m so humbled and floored by how held I felt by Chicago. I can’t help but throw a little shout out to my Chicago people. I can see how people’s lives get totally ruined by this kind of tragedy. I feel so lucky. Chicago definitely showed its love back.
CGN: For your project Coming Soon, are you bringing in other artists?
AC: My philosophy is that I want to be involved as little as possible. I am thinking about it more as a hosted than curated space. I’m actively soliciting proposals or ideas for workshops, meetings, book clubs—I’m down for making it a resource, whatever that means. I don’t want to over-think it, I want it to be an intuitive and organic thing, which is why I call it Coming Soon—it can be a placeholder for anything. It’s exciting. Taking my hands off the reins is a good exercise for me.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961831/gno5dhliwfnzpuaim78s.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789516769/izokunnmrufdyjbjnypk.jpg\")
“Intuit Art Museum’s renovated, expanded spaces give audiences the chance to connect with art through daily art-making, third Thursday Art After Work, group Slow Looks designed to provide a mindful experience with a single work and upcoming conversations with sculptor Bill Brady (Oct. 3) and Dr. Mary Trent (Oct. 15), who curated our current exhibition on the role of scrapbook-making in Henry Darger’s art.
On view is the thought-provoking Monumental: The Sculpture of Dr. Charles Smith, which encourages guests to consider the lack of historical representation of African Americans and Black people in America. Dr. Smith’s memorials champion Black history and stories of everyday life he sees missing in mainstream narratives.
This fall we’re opening an exhibition of paintings by Karla Wong, an artist who immigrated from Oaxaca and who explores themes of life and death, gender identity and self-discovery.”