Michelle Grabner

current exhibition
NOW ON VIEW! Michelle Grabner: Get Better Mrs. Michelle!, MINUS SPACE project space, Brooklyn, NY, March 27 – May 1, 2010 Michelle Grabner, Untitled, 2010 Black gesso & silverpoint on 300lb Arches hot press paper 30 x 22 inches March 27 – May 1, 2010 Opening: Saturday, March 27, 2010, 3-6pm MINUS SPACE project space 98 4th Street, Buzzer #28, Brooklyn, NY 11231 between Hoyt + Bond | Carroll Gardens / Gowanus Hours: Fridays & Saturdays, 12-6pm > directions MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce a new exhibition of drawings by Chicago-based artist Michelle Grabner. Grabner works primarily in painting, drawing, and printmaking, and her practice is commonly organized around straightforward mathematical systems. For her exhibition, Grabner will present a new series of drawings made from black gesso and silverpoint on heavyweight paper. In contrast to her other work, Grabner thinks of her drawing practice as “purely playing — it’s curiosity.” She continues saying, “The drawing just has to be executed, I have to play through it. I’m working on a lot of silverpoints right now; they’re not painting, but in their presence, I see them as an extension of painting.” Michelle Grabner has exhibited her work extensively, including in North America, Europe, and Australia. Her work has been presented at museums, such as the Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Kunsthalle (Bern, Switzerland), Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), Smart Museum (Chicago, IL), Mary and Leigh Block Museum (Evanston, IL), Naples Museum of Art (Naples, FL), Ulrich Museum (Wichita, KS), and Tweed Museum of Art (Duluth, MN). Her work has been reviewed widely and is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), Musée d’Art Moderne (Luxembourg), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), Daimler Art Collection (Berlin, Germany), and Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC). Michelle Grabner is also a professor and chairperson of the Department of Painting and Drawing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University in Chicago, and an MA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. In addition to her artistic work, Grabner and her husband, artist Brad Killam, founded and direct The Suburban, a very well regarded, experimental exhibition space in Oak Park, Illinois. Grabner has also written extensively for publications, such as ArtForum, Modern Painters, Frieze, and X-tra. In collaboration with MINUS SPACE, Grabner recently organized the online VIEWLIST project There are many things in the air and all of them are for free, published in May 2009. Her work was also included in the group exhibition Open House for Butterflies at MINUS SPACE in August 2009. A comprehensive interview with Michelle Grabner by Saul Ostrow appears in the March 2010 issue of Art in America magazine.