Opening Reception for The Chicago Cli-Fi Library

5701 South Woodlawn Avenue,Chicago IL 60637

22 February, 2023

Description

Climate change is the single greatest existential crisis faced by humankind in its 300,000-year history – yet the apocalyptic prospect of global warming and other consequences of this great disruption hardly make themselves felt in the mainstream of cultural production. Whether we consider art, film, literature or music, the specter of climate change has yet to produce the Anthropocene’s defining masterpieces. One could make the case that it is the very enormity of the challenge of imagining the unimaginable – the end of life on Planet Earth as we know it – that causes this paralysis in the artistic mindscape in particular. The Chicago Cli-Fi Library is a modest attempt to make sense of this paralysis, suggesting that art’s response to the complexity and enormity of the issue at hand can only ever be piecemeal, ad hoc, and hyperlocalized – all of which must be understood as virtuous. Named after the emerging literary genre of “climate fiction” or “cli-fi” and accordingly bookish in both conception and outlook, this exhibition will feature the work of Chicago-based artists Beate Geissler & Oliver Sann, Jenny Kendler, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Dan Peterman. Please join us for a reception to celebrate the opening of this exhibition. Curated by Dieter Roelstraete. IMAGE: Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, 18 West 11th Street, March 6, 1970, 2006.