Molly Zuckerman-Hartung Show Opens Tuesday At The MCA

By Julia Weeman in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 29, 2012 3:00PM

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, What's in the front, whose in the back, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Photo: Tom Van Eynde

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s process-based abstract paintings incorporate collage, objects, and sculpture and have earned her a reputation as one of Chicago’s most promising emerging artists. Her work is often inspired by found objects. “Things have weight. When I bring something into my studio, it begins to exert pressure on me, whether this thing is a tube of oil paint, a copy of the porn magazine Club International, or the thought of an octopus, this pressure builds,” Zuckerman-Hartung said in an email interview with Chicagoist.

Her first solo museum exhibition opens on Tuesday at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works series.

Zuckerman-Hartung's work is deeply personal and meticulously crafted, sometimes over a period of several years. She described her process as frequently slow-moving as she wanders through a studio filled with objects that, in her words “act on my consciousness until I stumble into them.” This pace is vital to her work and reveals meaning and connectedness in the objects that surround her. “There is very little inspiration, it is more leaden, weighty, grief-filled than inspiring; but through working with a length of rope, the shell of a sea urchin, a piece of plexiglas, or paintbrushes…relationships develop, things are combined or severed,” she said.

Zuckerman-Hartung teaches painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is co-founder of an artist-run exhibition space called Julius Caesar Gallery. She says her work as an artist is largely about teaching and giving something to others. She advises other emerging artists to “to work hard on themselves, to be self-critical and critical of capitalism. To work with the institutions that we have, and to be critical of those institutions, and to find out what they have to give to the world.”

She describes being an artist as both a great privilege and a great responsibility. She spoke of this as “a huge need for people who can see clearly, and share that vision, and who can connect deeply with others and sit with sorrow in themselves.” Her connection to her work is evident in the distinct mood and personality that each piece conveys.

See Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s work May 1-July 24 at the MCA. Zuckerman-Hartung will also be holding an artist talk on May 8 at 6 p.m. Curator Pamela Alper and associate curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm will be leading a tour of the work on July 17 at noon.