Tony LewisThe Long and Short of It

For his first solo museum exhibition in Chicago, Tony Lewis offers a rich but concise introduction to his various uses of shorthand notation as a catalyst for drawing. Serving as a lively primer to his practice, across more than a decade, the exhibition brings together monochrome drawings in graphite; denser compositions that add colored pencil into the mix; and labor-intensive wall works that greatly increase the scale. New drawings appear alongside a number of works Lewis has made since 2013, revealing lasting through-lines even as he tries out new moves and methods.

Gregg shorthand—a stenographic language the artist has learned over time—is used to transcribe speech into quick fluid strokes based on its sounds; in this way, shorthand unites words and gestures with an immediate kinetic energy. Lewis has carried this quality through multiple series of drawings, each one its own visual and tactile exploration of meaning, abstraction, and form. Leaping off from the original uses of written shorthand in other settings, Lewis’s drawings take us to unexpected places as language and gesture converge.

Lewis’s exhibition also foreshadows a larger publication to follow, which will offer a more comprehensive look at his various series of shorthand-related works. The full title of the exhibition and the book — The Long and Short of It: An Introduction to Gregg Shorthand as the Amalgamator of Language Systems, Drawing, Abstraction, and Improvisational Gesture in the Work of Tony Lewis — broadcasts the project’s aim to be a far-reaching thought exercise. At the same time, the faux academic tone that Lewis offers here hints at the more fundamental spirit of his work: this is serious business but also a realm where humor and hidden surprises lie in wait. Language, like drawing, is something to play with, even as it leads the way, potentially, toward truths that aren’t always plain to see.

Lewis has lived and worked in Chicago since 2009 and he completed an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. Over this span of time, Lewis has developed an inventive practice that has drawing at its core. Often working at a large scale, he uses his chosen materials in different ways to feel out what the medium can do, while turning to a range of visual and written sources. From the start, Lewis has been probing the formal qualities of language, how writing can turn into a kind of abstraction, and how linguistic systems get tied up with the dynamics of power and race. Lewis’s drawings are beguiling to look at given their material richness, poetic undercurrents, and evident human touch. They offer a lot to think about, too.

Curated by Karsten Lund.

TONY LEWIS (b. 1986, Los Angeles, California) lives and works in Chicago, IL. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art (2023); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2018); the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2017); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2016); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2015). He participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and was the 2017-2018 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence at the Rose Art Museum. In 2025, the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, invited Lewis to participate in the exhibition What drawing can be: four responses, where he presented several new works including a site-specific commission.

Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Murat Ahmed & Katherine Mackenzie and Gary Metzner & Scott Johnson. Major support is provided by School Museum Fund, The Hees Family.

Friends of Tony Lewis Patron Circle: Gwendolyn Hatten Butler, Susan A. Gescheidle, and Abby Pucker & Michał Dzitko.

Renaissance Society programs are supported by Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.