February 28– May 4, 2013
Reception: Thursday, February 28, 5-7pm
The
comical machines of American cartoonist and inventor Reuben Garrett
Lucius “Rube” Goldberg were never intended
to be built and used. His cartoon schematics of impossibly complicated
low-tech machines and designs poked fun at both bureaucratic systems and
the laborious machinations required to traverse them. While Rube
Goldberg took a light-hearted and humorous approach
to public concerns with a wink and a nod, Rube Goldberg’s Ghost: Confounding Design and Laborious Objects presents artworks that offer plausible deniability toward some of society's current obsessions, ills and issues. Rube
Goldberg’s complicated contraptions and their absurdist answers to real problems are at the heart of this exhibition
Curated by Elizabeth Burke-Dain
Participating Artists: Matthew
Aron, Karen
Bovinich,Juan Chavez, Brian
Dettmer, Fischli
& Weiss, Conrad
Friedberg, Joan
Giroux, Joanne
Greenbaum, Joseph
Hersher, Taylor
Hokanson, Industry
of the Ordinary, Heidi
Kumao, Betsy
Odom, Erik Peterson, Mark
Porter, Michael
Thompson and Graem Whyte.
Exhibition Contact: Mark Porter, mporter@colum.edu, 312-369-6643
