Nov 20th 2015

Mark Addison Smith: Years Yet Yesterday

@ Center on Halsted, 2nd Floor Gallery

3656 N. Halsted St., Chicago IL

Opening Friday, November 20th, from 7PM - 9PM

On view through Tuesday, January 5th

Years Yet Yesterday, a solo exhibition by New York artist Mark Addison Smith, consists of an abecedary of 24 text-based drawings inspired by playwright and activist Larry Kramer’s 2004 call-to-action speech, The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. Each drawing is dedicated to a letter in the alphabet, and drawn using three words—rewritten hundreds of times—that appear in the original speech (the complete set contains 24 works because Kramer’s speech did not include any words beginning with an X or a Z). This series was completed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kramer’s speech at Cooper Union Hall, with hopes of inviting viewers to reflect upon a decade-long sliver of the 30+ ongoing years of the AIDS crisis. Please read more about Smith’s series in Out Magazine and in his interview with New York City advocacy center Visual AIDS.

The drawings first began in Chicago in 2010 and Smith completed them in New York City in 2014—so, a Chicago exhibition completes the series, full-circle. Mark Addison Smith is honored to be partnering with the Center on Halsted to exhibit this work and will be there from 7pm until 9pm on November 20th signing limited edition artist’s books in tandem with the show. The original, framed works from the series will also be for sale through the Center on Halsted.

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