A sacramental deity, food, friend, or foe? Does the animal represent wild abandon or domesticated companionship? Is animality something (or someone) that is on the other side of humanity? Or: is it an element that wells up from the depths of humanity itself? Primordial and otherworldly, what is animal might be thought of as that which resists the symbolic chain of language, yet forms a link between sentient beings through varied modes of sensorial transactions and as such forms something of a peculiar kinship with the arts.

Animality, the exhibition, grew out of an interdisciplinary OPC seminar held this past spring that incorporated a series of visiting lecturers who discussed the subject of “the animal” in relation to their own work. The series included: artist, Pierre Huyghe; scientist, Dr. Roland Kays; media theorist & University of Chicago professor, W.J.T. Mitchell; and art critic, Jan Verwoert. Through the lecture series, discussions, films, and field trips seminar participants endeavored to question the orthodoxy that maintains the line separating humans from animals and the ways in which art itself figures into the debates surrounding animal life.

The exhibition is not intended as a didactic argument lodged in the field of animal studies, but is more of a messy thesis, one which is not hemmed in by the strictures of its own conceits, modestly seeking instead to comprehend something like an animal aesthetic. In keeping with its categorical blurriness or blurry categorizations (classroom as animal, exhibition as menagerie, education in/of the field), the show includes art and artists from beyond the territorial boundaries of the seminar that expand the definition of animality.

Contributors to the exhibition include: Marius Aleksa, Theresa Ganz, Sara Garth, David Giordano, Jacqueline Hendrickson, Samantha Jones, Stacee Kalmanovsky, Melanie Kassel, Jessie Mott, Jasmine Neal, Elle Opitz, Hannah Pae, Valentina Solano, Cassandra Troyan, Jan Verwoert, Erik Wenzel and May Yeung.

Work by Gabrielle Garland, Jacqueline Hendrickson and Emily Jones.

In her art, Jones suggests that sensitivity to topical issues is predominately a matter of our relationship to the respective genres that mobilize them, rather than what’s innate to the issues themselves. Likewise, the substance of her art is as much its subject matter as it is the void of artistic or moral directives. For over a year she has been working exclusively with African-American actor Darren Jones on video performances called The Emancipation Of The Women.

Take Back The Night is the first public presentation of that work, less the initial recording that played somewhere at the groundbreaking of the Logan Center last year and will play here this May 18-21.

Emily’s videos are distributed in part by V-Tape (Toronto), but she also gives them away. They are not yet seen on Youtube, but this week at the Gallery you’ll see at once:

David Cordero and Elliot Layda contemplate ineffectual attempts of togetherness and self-improvement in a collaborative installation at DOVA Temporary in Hyde Park.

This exhibition is co-curated by Renee Stout and Rebecca Zorach in conjunction with their CAA Centennial Panel, Our Demons.

Work by Carol A. Beane, John W. Ford, Maria Jönsson, Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Mary Patten, Michael B. Platt, Laurie Jo Reynolds, roycrosse and travis.

Exhibiting artists include Dawn Brennan (MFA 2002), Benjamin King (MFA 2005), Jennifer Krantz (MFA 2008), Carey Lin (MFA 2007), Nicole Mauser (MFA 2010), Brian McNearney (MFA 2007), Matthew Metzger (MFA 2009), Martina Nerhling (MFA 2001), Jenny Roberts (MFA 2003) and Valerie Snobeck (MFA 2008).

The exhibition is co-curated by Laura Letinsky, Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts, and Katherine Griefen, Director of A.I.R. Gallery in New York City.