BIENNIAL PROJECT
Modern Living
The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial presents a new chapter in Gerard & Kelly’s ongoing project Modern Living, with performances at The Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1945. Alongside these site-specific performances on September 15-16, the first two chapters of a film are presented here in the City Gallery at the Historic Water Tower.
The two-channel film, Modern Living: Schindler/Glass, was shot at R.M. Schindler’s house in Los Angeles, the site of an early experiment in communal living, and The Glass House in New Canaan, where the architect Philip Johnson and his partner David Whitney lived for over 40 years. Featuring performances by L.A. Dance Project and original music by SOPHIE and Lucky Dragons, Modern Living: Schindler/Glass explores intimacy and domestic space within legacies of modernist architecture. Throughout the life of the project as it travels across sites and from live performance to video installation, the artists posit questions around the livability of queer space—its pleasures, tensions, and impossibilities—and reimagine iconic architecture as sites of experimentation in living.
BIO
Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly have collaborated since 2003. Their installations and performances use choreography, writing, video, and sculpture to address questions of sexuality, memory and the formation of queer consciousness. Their work has been been exhibited internationally at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and The Kitchen, New York; among other institutions.
Modern Living, an ongoing project exploring queer space, was recently presented by The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles, in association with Art Production Fund.
Gerard & Kelly completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2010, and received their MFAs in 2013 from the UCLA Department of Art. They have received numerous recognitions for their work, including the 2014 Juried Award from The Bessies as well as grants from the National Dance Project (2015), Art Matters (2014), and the Graham Foundation (2014).
