![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
By KEVIN NANCE
\r\n\r\nIn 1986, two young brothers, ShanZuo and DaHuang Zhou, visited Chicago to attend an exhibition of paintings they had created together in their home country of China. The brothers’ unique partnership—they collaborated on large canvases on which their sensibilities melded into a cohesive, though not always seamless, whole—had already made them rising art stars in Beijing. In Chicago, it was an even greater curiosity, in part because Americans think of visual artists as the ultimate individualists working in isolation, chasing intensely personal visions that no one else, not even a sibling, could possibly share.
\r\n\r\nTwo painters, one painting: How could that work?
\r\n","body":"By KEVIN NANCE
\r\n\r\nIn 1986, two young brothers, ShanZuo and DaHuang Zhou, visited Chicago to attend an exhibition of paintings they had created together in their home country of China. The brothers’ unique partnership—they collaborated on large canvases on which their sensibilities melded into a cohesive, though not always seamless, whole—had already made them rising art stars in Beijing. In Chicago, it was an even greater curiosity, in part because Americans think of visual artists as the ultimate individualists working in isolation, chasing intensely personal visions that no one else, not even a sibling, could possibly share.
\r\n\r\nTwo painters, one painting: How could that work?
\r\n\r\nTwenty-eight years later, the Zhou Brothers are still in Chicago, still raising eyebrows with their seemingly counterintuitive process of making art as a team. The difference now is that piece after piece, exhibit after exhibit, they’ve proved the wisdom and fertility of their collaboration. They are fixtures of the international contemporary art scene, their paintings fetching prices starting in the six figures in the United States and Asia. (They also create sculpture, the largest examples of which currently sell for up to $8 million.)
\r\n\r\nThe brothers also loom large in realms beyond the art world, making paintings as a form of performance art in front of business and political leaders at gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in 2000. In 2011, President Obama commissioned the Zhou Brothers to create a painting that he presented to China’s president, Hu Jintao, in a private ceremony attended by the brothers at the White House.
\r\n\r\nBut even as the Zhou Brothers’ career has expanded into most corners of the globe, they have anchored themselves in Chicago, specifically in the South Side’s Bridgeport neighborhood. They live and work in a former Polish social club, which now contains a vast, airy, light-filled studio where they create their paintings, often working on up to 15 large pieces at once. (Sometimes the brothers paint with the stretched canvases lying flat on the floor, sometimes standing up, sometimes both at different stages.) And two blocks away, the Zhou B Art Center, a sprawling complex of galleries, artist studios and event spaces established by the brothers at 1029 W. 35th Street, is preparing to celebrate its tenth anniversary this fall.
\r\n\r\n“Chicago feels like home,” ShanZuo says in a recent interview in the garden of their Bridgeport complex. (DaHuang is the younger of the pair, although both brothers, who keep themselves fit and favor stylish, form-fitting outfits and hipster hats, appear significantly younger than their actual ages, which they declined to reveal.) “At first we didn’t intend to remain in Chicago, but once we got here, we felt like we need to stay,” DaHuang says. “Chinese artists are a little shy, a little humble, singing very deep. In America, it’s more powerful, more direct.” He smiles. “Here you show your muscle.”
\r\n\r\n*
\r\n\r\nIn their earliest artistic efforts in China, the Zhou brothers trained and painted separately, but they came together as a team in 1973. “At first it was just for fun,” ShanZuo says. “Collaboration among scholars and calligraphers is a tradition in China, so we thought we would try.”
\r\n\r\nBut the brothers quickly realized two things. One was that their collaboration wasn’t always fun. As part of the process, each brother has the freedom to cancel out—to “destroy,” in their blunt terminology—what the other has done by altering, augmenting or erasing it entirely. “He’s totally free to do anything,” ShanZuo says, “I am free to do anything, including to cover over what he did.”
\r\n\r\nFrom the start, then, their collaboration was rooted at least as much in conflict as in harmony. When they paint, the brothers’ separate identities neither merge nor disappear; rather, they engage in a dialogue, one responding to the other, and sometimes the conversation can become a bit heated.
\r\n\r\n“Sometimes he gives you a surprise,” DaHuang says of his brother. “You’re working very smoothly, developing something, feeling very comfortable with it, and then he comes in and goes pah-pah-pah-pah-pah! And everything is destroyed. It’s hard to take sometimes. You respect his talent, but it doesn’t mean you don’t get angry.”
\r\n\r\nBut out of that destruction and those sometimes raw emotions also came something unexpected: a new form of art-making that produced results that neither brother could have accomplished on his own. “At the beginning, we knew it was interesting, but we didn’t know how special it was, how important it was,” DaHuang says. “But more and more as we worked together, we realized the value of the collaboration. People think we have the same idea and bring harmony to it before coming to the canvas. That’s wrong. The value of the collaboration is that it opens up things that couldn’t happen any other way. When you paint by yourself, no matter how great a painter you are—Picasso, whatever—you won’t have the courage to destroy your own painting. You think you are always right. But two people together, they don’t care. You paint something amazing, but he destroys it, because he sees it differently. And with this kind of fighting, something comes out in the painting that’s never happened before. It’s a mystery, and it creates a new magic.”
\r\n\r\nThe greatest mystery, perhaps, is that for all the struggle implicit in their creation, the paintings often arrive at a place of harmony, or at least a balance of elements, however precarious. Sometimes the balance has the feeling of competitors battling each other to a draw; other times, a natural order is achieved, like planets threatening to collide but slipping, at the last moment, into alignment.
\r\n\r\n“It’s quite unique, what they do,” says Kuiyi Shen, Director of the Chinese Studies Program and Professor of Asian Art History, Theory and Criticism at the University of California, San Diego. Shen is also author of the introductory essay in Zhou Brothers: 30 Years of Collaboration, published in 2004 in connection with an exhibition mounted by the Chicago Cultural Center and the Elmhurst Art Museum. “They start from differences, from their own places, and then there’s a competition—a confrontation, actually. But gradually, the two sides get together, and that results eventually in harmony.”
\r\n\r\nSergio Gomez, curator and director of exhibitions at the Zhou B Art Center, often finds himself awed by how the brothers repeatedly manage to find equilibrium. “What makes it work for them is their culture of trust,” he says. “Sometimes when you see them together, you have a sense that they’re connecting in a language besides the verbal. Many times they fight, but at the end, the whole comes together and it turns out to be incredibly beautiful.”
\r\n\r\nAs ShanZuo puts it, “Sometimes after a while, you both see something, and it’s good. You stop right there. The painting is done.”
\r\n\r\n*
\r\n\r\nThe Zhou Brothers’ work has evolved considerably over the decades. “As artists, when you start to feel like you satisfy yourself, you always pursue a different thing,” DaHuang says. “You always look for the best way to make your art go further, go beyond.”
\r\n\r\n“When you’re young, you think you can do everything,” his brother adds. “But it takes a long time to find your own style.” DaHuang nods. “The most important thing is what kind of artistic language you create for yourself.”
\r\n\r\nTheir first collaborations in the 1970s were often representational and narrative-based, inspired by Chinese folklore—one early painting, currently on display in their dining room, shows a mythical beast being slain—and primitive cave drawings. In the ’80s, the brothers pushed their engagement with 5,000 years of Chinese art history into the realms of modern art, producing work that, while grounded in tradition, increasingly responded to the international art world in a way that combined the ancient and the cutting-edge.
\r\n\r\nAfter settling in Chicago, the brothers spent the ’90s soaking up influences from their new environment, producing a body of work that was both heavier in texture and more abstract. In those paintings—several of which remain on view through Oct. 4 at the Zhou B Art Center as part of an exhibit called Zhou Brothers: American Period—minimalist figures (often secret self-portraits) are prominent, strolling through somber color fields illuminated by lightning flashes of vibrant red.
\r\n\r\nSince the turn of the millennium, the Zhou Brothers’ paintings have become almost entirely abstract, decorative and free-flowing, most traces of narrative and the figure having been eliminated. Texture is more important than ever, the canvases rougher, the paint thicker and more three-dimensional. The paintings are more gestural, more intuitive and more concerned with a fluid kind of movement, than before—a fluidity not of things but of emotions, reflecting their philosophy that “feeling is liberty.”
\r\n\r\n“Our work is not about thinking, it’s about feeling,” ShanZuo says. “When we paint, something is flowing there, you just have to feel it. It’s like tai chi [a Chinese self-defense discipline now used primarily as exercise and stress reduction]. It doesn’t look powerful, but the power is there.”
\r\n\r\nAccordingly, the brothers engage in a minimum of chatter when they paint. “Originally we talked and planned,” DaHuang says. “Later we realized we don’t have to talk too much.”
\r\n\r\nShanZuo nods. “The painting itself,” he says, “is the conversation.”
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Image shown at top of page: The Zhou Brothers, DaHuang Zhou and ShanZuo Zhou, in their Bridgeport studio. Photo: Kevin Nance, 2014
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Kevin Nance is a Chicago-based freelance writer and photographer. Twitter @KevinNance1
\r\n\r\n\r\n","published_at":"2014-08-25 00:00:00","state":"published","slug":"the-zhou-brothers-four-decades-of-collaboration","type":"NewsPost","meta_description":"CGN interviews the Zhou Brothers","text":null,"created_at":"2014-08-18 17:52:31","updated_at":"2018-10-22 22:13:20.429752","category_id":3,"highlighted":null,"searchable":"'000':1309B '1029':382B '15':332B '1970s':1267B '1973':521B '1986':12B '2000':239B '2004':1028B '2011':241B '2014':1621B '30':1022B '35th':384B '4':1388B '5':1308B '8':200B '80s':1301B '90s':1355B 'abstract':1376B,1440B 'accomplish':753B 'accord':1560B 'achiev':965B 'actual':441B,1061B 'add':1234B 'age':442B 'airi':317B 'align':978B 'almost':1438B 'alreadi':61B 'also':187B,204B,734B,1013B 'alter':588B 'although':419B 'alway':57B,561B,863B,1200B,1208B 'amaz':876B 'america':485B 'american':80B,1403B 'among':532B 'anchor':290B 'ancient':1341B 'angri':723B 'anniversari':392B 'anyth':600B,608B 'appear':436B 'arriv':930B 'art':65B,137B,169B,211B,220B,365B,743B,999B,1043B,1086B,1217B,1313B,1320B,1333B,1393B 'art-mak':742B 'artist':84B,372B,473B,502B,1189B,1256B 'asia':185B 'asian':998B 'attend':23B,265B 'augment':589B 'author':1014B 'away':361B 'awe':1091B 'b':364B,1085B,1392B 'balanc':940B,947B 'base':1274B,1628B 'battl':953B 'beast':1292B 'beauti':1153B 'becom':660B,1437B 'begin':759B 'beij':68B 'besid':1131B 'best':1212B 'beyond':209B,1221B 'bit':662B 'block':360B 'blunt':580B 'bodi':1365B 'bridgeport':300B,410B,1616B 'bring':803B 'brother':3A,15B,39B,122B,203B,247B,268B,278B,339B,380B,421B,508B,549B,569B,637B,674B,750B,1021B,1095B,1180B,1233B,1303B,1352B,1402B,1434B,1562B,1608B 'busi':224B 'california':1008B 'call':1400B 'calligraph':535B 'came':515B,735B 'cancel':574B 'canva':811B 'canvas':46B,344B,1463B 'care':872B 'career':279B 'cave':1297B 'celebr':389B 'center':366B,1039B,1087B,1394B 'ceremoni':264B 'chase':92B 'chatter':1568B 'chi':1535B 'chicago':21B,70B,126B,293B,395B,457B,1037B,1350B,1627B 'chicago-bas':1626B 'china':37B,256B,505B,540B 'chines':472B,992B,1277B,1312B,1537B 'club':311B 'cohes':54B 'collabor':7A,43B,161B,531B,558B,621B,794B,819B,1025B,1264B 'collid':970B 'color':1417B 'combin':1339B 'come':690B,808B,893B,1144B 'comfort':684B 'commiss':244B 'competit':1058B 'competitor':952B 'complex':369B,411B 'concern':1482B 'conflict':629B 'confront':1060B 'connect':1030B,1127B 'consider':1184B 'contain':314B 'contemporari':168B 'convers':658B,1599B 'corner':284B 'could':104B,112B,751B 'couldn':827B 'counterintuit':133B 'countri':35B 'courag':853B 'cover':611B 'creat':30B,188B,249B,324B,909B,1259B 'creation':926B 'critic':1003B 'cultur':1038B,1109B 'curat':1077B 'curios':76B 'current':195B,1282B 'cut':1345B 'cutting-edg':1344B 'dahuang':18B,412B,470B,670B,778B,1205B,1246B,1577B,1609B 'decad':5A,1187B 'declin':445B 'decor':1441B 'deep':483B 'defens':1540B 'destroy':577B,703B,855B,879B 'destruct':728B 'develop':680B 'dialogu':649B 'didn':451B,767B 'diego':1010B 'differ':142B,356B,885B,1048B,1203B 'dimension':1472B 'dine':1287B 'direct':491B 'director':989B,1079B 'disappear':643B 'disciplin':1541B 'display':1284B 'doesn':716B,1551B 'done':586B,1177B 'draw':958B,1298B 'earli':1280B 'earliest':501B 'econom':234B 'edg':1346B 'effort':503B 'eight':117B 'element':942B 'elimin':1455B 'elmhurst':1042B 'els':99B 'emot':733B,1498B 'end':1141B 'engag':646B,1306B,1563B 'entir':593B,1439B 'environ':1362B 'equilibrium':1100B 'eras':591B 'essay':1018B 'establish':377B 'even':74B,101B,274B 'event':375B 'eventu':1072B 'ever':1461B 'everyth':701B,1231B 'evolv':1183B 'exampl':192B 'exercis':1546B 'exhibit':25B,149B,151B,1033B,1081B,1399B 'expand':281B 'eyebrow':129B 'fall':394B 'favor':427B 'feel':396B,682B,950B,1194B,1503B,1515B,1529B 'felt':464B 'fertil':158B 'fetch':173B 'field':1418B 'fight':891B,1137B 'figur':179B,1406B,1452B 'fill':320B 'find':1089B,1099B,1242B 'first':449B,523B,1263B 'fit':425B,431B 'fixtur':164B 'flash':1422B 'flat':346B 'floor':349B 'flow':1445B,1523B 'fluid':1485B 'fluiditi':1492B 'folklor':1278B 'form':217B,430B,740B 'form-fit':429B 'former':308B 'forum':235B 'four':4A 'free':597B,605B,1444B 'free-flow':1443B 'freedom':572B 'freelanc':1629B 'front':222B 'fun':528B,562B 'galleri':371B 'garden':407B 'gather':229B 'gestur':1477B 'get':722B,1067B 'give':666B 'globe':287B 'go':1218B,1220B 'goe':693B 'gomez':1076B 'good':1169B 'got':461B 'gradual':1063B 'great':841B 'greater':75B 'greatest':914B 'ground':1325B 'happen':829B,901B 'hard':706B 'harmoni':632B,804B,935B,1074B 'hat':435B 'heat':663B 'heavier':1371B 'hipster':434B 'histori':1000B,1314B 'home':34B,398B 'hous':272B 'howev':943B 'hu':259B 'humbl':480B 'idea':801B 'ident':639B 'illumin':1419B 'imag':1600B 'implicit':923B 'import':775B,1250B,1459B 'includ':609B 'increas':1328B 'incred':1152B 'individualist':88B 'influenc':1358B 'inspir':1275B 'intend':453B 'intens':93B 'interest':764B 'intern':167B,1332B 'interview':404B 'introductori':1017B 'intuit':1479B 'isol':91B 'jintao':260B 'keep':423B 'kevin':9B,1619B,1622B 'kevinnance1':1634B 'kind':889B,1254B,1486B 'knew':761B 'know':769B 'kuiyi':987B 'languag':1130B,1257B 'larg':45B,206B,333B 'largest':191B 'last':975B 'later':119B,1579B 'leader':227B 'least':625B,938B 'liberti':1505B 'lie':345B 'light':319B 'light-fil':318B 'lightn':1421B 'like':397B,465B,966B,1195B,1533B 'littl':476B,479B 'live':303B 'long':1239B 'look':1209B,1553B 'loom':205B 'made':62B 'magic':912B 'make':136B,213B,744B,1102B,1215B 'manag':1097B 'mani':1134B 'matter':839B 'mean':718B 'meld':51B 'merg':641B 'millennium':1431B 'million':201B 'minimalist':1405B 'minimum':1566B 'modern':1319B 'moment':976B 'mount':1034B 'movement':1488B 'much':627B,1589B 'muscl':498B 'museum':1044B 'mysteri':906B,915B 'mythic':1291B 'nanc':10B,1620B,1623B 'narrat':1273B,1449B 'narrative-bas':1272B 'natur':962B 'need':467B 'neighborhood':301B 'neither':640B,749B 'never':900B 'new':739B,911B,1361B 'nod':1247B,1591B 'obama':243B 'oct':1387B 'often':327B,929B,1088B,1269B,1407B 'one':98B,109B,554B,650B,1279B 'open':823B 'order':963B 'origin':1572B 'outfit':432B 'page':1605B 'pah':695B,696B,697B,698B,699B 'pah-pah-pah-pah-pah':694B 'paint':27B,110B,172B,214B,251B,326B,340B,511B,635B,835B,858B,874B,897B,928B,1175B,1281B,1379B,1435B,1466B,1474B,1520B,1571B,1593B 'painter':108B,843B 'pair':418B 'part':78B,564B,1396B 'partnership':41B 'peopl':795B,867B 'perform':219B 'perhap':916B 'period':1404B 'person':94B 'philosophi':1501B 'photo':1618B 'photograph':1632B 'picasso':846B 'piec':146B,148B,334B 'place':933B,1052B 'plan':1576B 'planet':967B 'polish':309B 'polit':226B 'portrait':1411B 'possibl':105B 'power':489B,1554B,1557B 'precari':944B 'prepar':387B 'present':254B 'presid':242B,258B 'price':174B 'primarili':1544B 'primit':1296B 'privat':263B 'process':134B,567B 'produc':746B,1321B,1363B 'professor':996B 'program':994B 'promin':1413B 'prove':154B 'publish':1026B 'pursu':1201B 'push':1304B 'put':1156B 'quick':550B 'quit':981B 'rais':128B 'rather':644B 'raw':732B 're':676B,1126B,1224B 'realiz':551B,789B,1581B 'realm':208B,1317B 'recent':403B 'red':1425B 'reduct':1549B 'reflect':1499B 'remain':455B,1383B 'repeat':1096B 'represent':1270B 'respect':711B 'respond':651B,1329B 'result':747B,1071B 'reveal':447B 'right':864B,1172B 'rise':64B 'room':1288B 'root':623B 'rougher':1464B 'san':1009B 'satisfi':1197B 'say':400B,471B,530B,602B,671B,779B,986B,1113B,1206B,1517B,1578B,1596B 'scene':170B 'scholar':533B 'sculptur':189B 'seamless':58B 'secret':1408B 'see':883B,1117B,1164B 'seem':132B 'self':1410B,1539B 'self-defens':1538B 'self-portrait':1409B 'sell':196B 'sens':1123B 'sensibl':50B 'separ':512B,638B 'sergio':1075B 'settl':1348B 'sever':1380B 'shanzuo':16B,399B,529B,601B,1155B,1516B,1590B,1612B 'share':106B 'shen':988B,1011B 'shi':477B 'show':496B,1289B 'shown':1601B 'sibl':103B 'side':298B,1066B 'signific':437B 'sinc':1426B 'sing':481B 'six':178B 'slain':1294B 'slip':972B 'smile':493B 'smooth':679B 'soak':1356B 'social':310B 'somber':1416B 'someth':681B,736B,875B,892B,1165B,1521B 'sometim':337B,350B,353B,656B,664B,709B,731B,945B,1114B,1158B 'south':297B 'space':376B 'special':771B 'specif':294B 'spent':1353B 'sprawl':368B 'stage':357B 'stand':351B 'star':66B 'start':175B,618B,1046B,1192B 'state':183B 'stay':469B 'still':124B,127B 'stop':1171B 'street':385B 'stress':1548B 'stretch':343B 'stroll':1414B 'struggl':922B 'studi':993B 'studio':321B,373B,1617B 'style':1245B 'stylish':428B 'surpris':669B 'switzerland':237B 'tai':1534B 'take':708B,1237B 'talent':713B 'talk':1574B,1587B 'team':140B,519B 'tenth':391B 'terminolog':581B 'textur':1373B,1456B 'theori':1001B 'thicker':1467B 'thing':553B,825B,1204B,1251B,1495B 'think':81B,796B,860B,1227B,1511B 'though':55B 'thought':543B 'threaten':968B 'three':1471B 'three-dimension':1470B 'time':960B,1135B,1240B 'togeth':31B,516B,787B,868B,1068B,1119B,1145B 'top':1603B 'total':596B 'trace':1447B 'tradit':538B,1327B 'train':509B 'tri':546B 'trust':1111B 'turn':1148B,1428B 'twenti':116B 'twenty-eight':115B 'twitter':1633B 'two':13B,107B,359B,552B,866B,1065B 'ultim':87B 'unexpect':737B 'uniqu':40B,982B 'unit':182B 'univers':1006B 'use':1543B 'valu':791B,816B 'vast':316B 've':153B 'verbal':1133B 'vibrant':1424B 'view':1385B 'vision':95B 'visit':20B 'visual':83B 'w':383B 'wasn':559B 'way':832B,1213B,1337B 'whatev':847B 'white':271B 'whole':59B,1143B 'wisdom':156B 'won':849B 'work':89B,114B,305B,328B,677B,786B,1104B,1181B,1322B,1367B,1507B 'world':212B,233B,1334B 'would':545B 'writer':1630B 'wrong':814B 'year':118B,1023B,1310B 'young':14B,1225B 'younger':415B,438B 'zhou':2A,19B,121B,246B,277B,363B,507B,1020B,1084B,1179B,1391B,1401B,1433B,1607B,1610B,1613B","thumbnail":null,"editor_pick":false,"category_name":"Interviews"},"related":[{"id":13767,"title":"Anticipating a Season of Art: Five to Talk to – Nikko Washington","excerpt":"","body":"
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.
“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.”