Bluets

Part I — 09.25–27, 2020

Part II — 09.30–10.4, 2020

Co-Curated by Stephanie Cristello Ruslana Lichtzier

Presented as part of EXHIBITION Weekend by EXPO CHICAGO
and the NADA Chicago Gallery Open

CHICAGO, IL—Presented as part of EXHIBITION Weekend with EXPO CHICAGO, this selection of works is inspired by Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a treatise that brushes against the modes of human transformation, failure, and desire while meditating on the color blue and its cultural, historical, and social dimensions. These days, Bluets can be read with a sense of revived urgency—then again, when is good literature not acutely relevant? Still, Nelson’s search for blue echoes differently now. The ties of the color to solitude remains but one of its resonances.

“It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one’s solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.”

—Maggie Nelson, Bluets

The featured artists—Theodora Allen, Bianca Bondi, Joseph Grigely, Barbara Kasten, Ella Littwitz, Danielle Rosen, Kay Rosen, and Soo Shin—reverberate the themes of Bluets in their respective practices. 

Blue is the color of childhood’s skies and of the lover’s bruises. It is the color of frost and a flame at its peak temperature. Blue is the color of closeness and of distances that will not be reached              (as one approaches a continuously receding landscape or a lover; the closer you approach, the further it retreats.)It is the color of transition, of resistance, and of the failure to fully embody these modes.

After Nelson: of all perceptual hues, blue embodies symmetrical oppositions within the spectrums (of colors, of emotions), presenting an index of intimacy and longing, profanity and the sublime, the present time against futurity, the personal and the universal. Bluets introduces the limits of language that yearns to hold onto the perceptual beautiful by avoiding the touch (which will be the description). In this sense, this exhibition is an act of renunciation of and of admission to Bluets.

My Blue Heaven, Wild Blue Yonder, Blue Skies, blue screen . . . . . . . . . out of the blue . . . . . Blue Angels, Blue Moon, bleu cheese, blue planet.. . . . . . . . . . . Blue Ridge Mountains, bluegrass, Babe the Blue Ox, Blueberry Hill, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Blue Meanies . . . . . . . . . . black and blue, between the devil and the deep blue sea . . . . . . . . . . . Blue Bayou, Blue Point Oysters, Great Blue Heron, blue jay, Bluebird of Happiness, When Sunny Turns Blue, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Love Is Blue, Blue Monday. . . . . . . Blues For Mister Charlie, House of Blue Leaves . . . . . . . . . bluebonnets, Red Roses for a Blue Lady, Bluebeard, Ol’ Blue Eyes, Blues Brothers, Blues Magoos, Blue Guitar, Blue Period . . . . . Der Blaue Reiter, Bonnie Blue Butler, Little Boy Blue, The Blue Boy, Blue Velvet, Alice Blue Gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . blue ribbon, Pabst Blue Ribbon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blue Plate Special, blue jeans, blue collar, Blue Suede Shoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rhapsody in Blue, Birth of the Blues, Blusette, Blue Rondo a la Turk, Senor Blues, All Blues, true blue, Kind of Blue, Almost Blue, Blue Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blue Movie, Blue, Biloxi Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rhythm and Blues, talking a blue streak, talking till blue in the face. . .

—Kay Rosen

Originally published by The Tate, Micro Tate, “Kay Rosen on Yves Klein/IKB 79,” Issue 14. Fall 2008.

Part II of the exhibition will be hosted as part of the NADA Chicago Gallery Open, September 30–October 4, 2020.