Courtesy of the artist
Courtesy of the artist
Across a growing body of work, Isabelle Frances McGuire turns to figures that loom large in the cultural imagination or those that keep reappearing over time, sometimes against all odds. In past exhibitions this has included major historical figures, pop culture icons, and recent internet obsessions rising out of online subcultures. In Year Zero, they expand the cast of characters to include a U.S. President, vampires, and the fame-destined Hollywood ingénue, among others. McGuire embraces these apparent archetypes and the stories they keep generating while giving them a new uncanny life or a kind of feral energy.
For the Chicago-based artist, Year Zero began by thinking about the lasting lionization of Abraham Lincoln and the symbolic relics associated with his birth. It expanded from there to incorporate other origin stories and revivals, along with different forms of re-enactment. Picking up on the looping repetitions in today’s culture, McGuire tests out different approaches to revisiting the past, re-animating old models, or re-wilding familiar symbols. Ultimately this effort sweeps up personal biography, political lore, and proliferating movie adaptations.
On a material level, McGuire merges an abiding interest in digital models with a hands- on sculptural sensibility and a DIY approach. With the steady inquisitiveness of an engineer, they consistently seek out new tools to create sculptures, installations, and props for videos, such as 3D printing and computer-controlled milling. Borrowing techniques from gaming culture as readily as from the history of art, McGuire also uses methods like “modding” and “kitbashing,” in which existing 3D models are altered or combined to make new forms.
Rather than trying to crack some hidden cultural code, in the end McGuire is playing a more unscripted game, intent on conjuring up possibilities or following new forking paths. As digital source materials are given embodied form, something unexpected is born. At the Renaissance Society, the artist’s work also spills beyond the gallery space, occupying the building’s stairwell, the museum’s vitrines in the fourth floor hallway, and another display case in the basement. In a way, Year Zero asks all of us to join the search.
Curated by Karsten Lund.
Isabelle Frances McGuire (b. 1994, Austin, Texas) lives and works in Chicago. Selected solo and two person presentations include What Pipeline (Detroit, MI), King’s Leap (New York, NY), Scherben (Berlin, DE), Mickey (Chicago, IL), Good Weather at Et al. (San Francisco, CA), From The Desk of Lucy Bull (Los Angeles, CA), and Prairie (Chicago, IL). Recent group shows include High Art & Sister (Seoul, KR), Artists Space (New York, NY), Petzel Gallery (New York, NY), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL), Bel Ami (Los Angeles, CA), shore (Vienna, AT), M. LeBlanc (Chicago, IL), In Lieu (Los Angeles, CA), and Alyssa Davis Gallery (New York, NY).
Friends of Isabelle Frances McGuire Patron Circle: Murat Ahmed & Katherine Mackenzie, and Zach Smith.
Major annual support for the Ren is provided by the Mellon Foundation. Ren programs are partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Annual support is provided by The Provost’s Discretionary Fund at the University of Chicago.
All Renaissance Society publications are made possible by The Mansueto Foundation Publications Program.
