THE STOLBUN COLLECTION AT SULLIVAN GALLERIES

David Horvitz + Thomas Huston + Brad Troemel

APRIL 29–MAY 17 2017

Culminating a three-year residency in Chicago, The Stolbun Collection at Sullivan Galleries is pleased to present three recent acquisitions that collectively address the urgent concerns of today’s practicing artists. Produced within a two-year span coinciding with the time it takes to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree, these works by David Horvitz, Thomas Huston, and Brad Troemel represent the afterlife of art once it has left the studio. Having already completed their advanced studio degrees, the collective return of these artists to the space of the MFA Show becomes a haunting admonition. Indeed, Huston displayed his Standard Moving Blankets in the previous iteration of the MFA Show, transporting his peers’ artworks to and from this gallery.

This time, Huston’s blankets have been used to transport the work of Troemel from New York City and Horvitz from Los Angeles. Huston and Stolbun retrieved Counterfeit and Real Princess Di Beanie Baby in a bundle geocached in Central Park with a set of GPS coordinates purchased from the artist. In an economy that barely permits artists to pay rent for cramped studios, Troemel’s practice speculates on the possibility of free-range, crowdsourced art storage to safeguard works in the last frontier of public, urban space. Horvitz’s Untitled (Dead Horse Bay / San Pedro) complicates the question of storage and transport given the utter delicacy of this handblown glass object that has been re-amalgamated from found vitreous debris. Fortunately for these works, they have all been collected, ensuring that they receive a modicum of care, attention, and display in their indefinite afterlives. United in this exhibition, the works of Horvitz, Huston, and Troemel are synecdoches for the lives of the artists who have been brought together in an unlikely collaboration by the work of making, shipping, storing, and collecting contemporary art.

—Elliot J. Reichert

ELLIOT J. REICHERT is a Chicago-based critic and curator. He is Art Editor of Newcity and formerly Assistant Curator at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University.