A tricked-out Fiat is suspended from a wall in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s atrium. “It’s kind of a gravitational mindfuck,” senior curator Dieter Roelstraete says of the piece, the entry point into “Metamorphology,” the first major museum survey in the U.S. of the British conceptual artist Simon Starling, opening June 7. A stone’s throw away at the Arts Club of Chicago, an associated Starling show, “Pictures for an Exhibition,” debuts June 6.
One can’t look at Starling’s research- and process-based works and immediately grasp the artist’s many art-historical, social, political, scientific, and economic references. For the necessary context, there’s wall text, which is part of each work rather than external to it, and which Starling writes himself.
“Pictures for an Exhibition” 6/6-9/26 Arts Club of Chicago 201 E. Ontario 312-787-3997artsclubchicago.org Free
