Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory

Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory

Exhibition
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Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 2nd floor
Add to Calendar 2025-05-02 08:30:00 2025-06-07 17:00:00 Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory In 2020, Alan Longino (1987-2024) joined the Department of Art History as a doctoral student studying postwar Japanese conceptual art. One year prior, he had co-curated with Reiko Tomii the first U.S. solo exhibition of the work of Yutaka Matsuzawa (1922-2006). In the show, Alan presented Matsuzawa’s gradual move away from the manipulation of matter, to text, and eventually toward psychic, or quantum, communication as a path suffused with contemplation of death and dying. My Own Death (1970), a text panel hanging at the entrance of an empty room, reads: When you go calmly across this room, go my own death across your mind in a flash of lightning, that is my future death and is similar  not only to your own future death but to past hundred hundred millions of  human beings’ deaths and also to future thousand trillions of human beings’ Death, for Matsuzawa, is not a state of separation and longing, but one of reunion, connection, and expanded—even telepathic—consciousness. Death completes the circle. Alan embraced this attitude, writing that Matsuzawa's late work demands of the viewer the “sensing of a spiritual connection to that which has moved on from the world and meditating on the essence it leaves behind.”  In honor of Alan, this exhibition brings together work from his personal collection, from current students and alumni of the Department of Visual Arts, and from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection, a repository largely formed from gifts and requests from the community for the enrichment of teaching with, about, and in art. As you go calmly across these rooms, we invite you to celebrate and meditate on how artistic creation expresses, indexes, or advances quantum realities. Curators Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory is curated by Trevor Brandt, Lex Ladge, and Cybele Tom. Artists Maya Janine D’Costa Maya Janine D’Costa is an interdisciplinary artist from India, currently pursuing their MFA at the University of Chicago. They work with sensitivity and fragility as material to create encounters where ambiguity may precede prejudice and permanence. Susan Jablonski Susan Jablonski is an artist and photographer currently based in Chicago, IL. Working with analog photographic processes, her practice explores the notion of the “constructed image” and the dialogue between the camera lens and expected perspective. Her most recent work manifests itself through a collection of cyanotype prints depicting snapshot photography alongside abstract forms. Through this process of physically collaging and splicing imagery, she is interested in breaking down layers of embedded photographic thinking and the supposed “reality” of images. Susan earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Chicago. Faye Liang Faye Liang is a first-year MFA candidate, visual artist, and storyteller, born in 1990 in Guangzhou, China. She has worked as a photojournalist since 2015, covering a wide range of social issues in China. After the pandemic, in 2023, she quit her job and participated in an art residency in Switzerland, where she documented the severe retreat of the Alps’ glaciers due to global warming. In 2024, she joined the MFA program at the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, focusing on storytelling through everyday objects. Brett Swenson Brett Swenson makes sculptures and videos that explore the felt mechanics of seeing and perceiving. He’s particularly interested in the sticky relationship between surfaces and interiors, and in how these elements can physically rework each other to create new and relationally expressive forms. Drawing from a longstanding interest in the complexity of human-environmental interactions, his works often respond directly to materials, technologies, or places that muddy the distinctions between nature and artifice, chaos and control. Tilden Thornburgh Mueller Dear viewer, Welcome to my familiar otherworld. I mean for my drawings to transform the “elementary” materials of paper and pencil into biomorphic objects, spaces, and/or textures which metamorphose themselves in and out of various states in an effort to continually “become and unbecome” (Sarah Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others). My work is invested in the reorienting of the psyche towards a more caring future and the enacting of practices that will revolutionize, rather than further desensitize, individuals’ spirits and our surrounding, failing institutions. I enjoy when viewers experience my drawings as though they were a letter from a close friend, or a poem etched into the back of a subway chair. If you would like to discuss the work, other works, or the theoretical and/or personal texts that ground and unsettle my work, please contact me. Always question and never assume. Sincerely, T. 2025 Tianjiao Wang Tianjiao Wang is interested in acknowledging the presence of things. Through photographing and filming, she anticipates drawing others closer, while simultaneously keeping them perpetually within the realm of the other—without crossing boundaries, without encroachment, without fusion. Support  This exhibition is generously supported by the Department of Art History, the Center for the Art of East Asia, and the Department of Visual Arts at University of Chicago. Installation support and preparation provided by the curators, artists, Anju Lukose-Scott, Yutao Qian, and Ruoxuan Yuan.  Related Programming Open carefully, kayle cui, maya janine d’costa, el lee, kyle lowe, tongji philip qian, hyeseul song, Room 502, Gates-Blake Halls, Monday–Friday 9am to 5pm, March 25–May 5, 2025 Maverick Practices in Asian Art: Artists, Curators, and Scholars Breaching the Boundaries, May 2–3, 2025 Opening Reception for Drifting Timelines 流动时序 and Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory, May 2, 2025 Accessibility CWAC Exhibitions is committed to accessibility for all our exhibitions. However, the second floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center is accessible only by stairs. To request an accommodation or alternative format, please email visualresources@uchicago.edu.   Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 2nd floor Department of Art History drupal@seastar.uchicago.edu America/Chicago public
An exhibition in honor of Alan Longino, featuring works from his personal collection, the Joel Snyder Materials Collection, and by students and alumni of the Department of Visual Arts.

In 2020, Alan Longino (1987-2024) joined the Department of Art History as a doctoral student studying postwar Japanese conceptual art. One year prior, he had co-curated with Reiko Tomii the first U.S. solo exhibition of the work of Yutaka Matsuzawa (1922-2006). In the show, Alan presented Matsuzawa’s gradual move away from the manipulation of matter, to text, and eventually toward psychic, or quantum, communication as a path suffused with contemplation of death and dying. My Own Death (1970), a text panel hanging at the entrance of an empty room, reads:

When you go calmly across this room, go my own death across your mind in
a flash of lightning, that is my future death and is similar 
not only to your own future death but to past hundred hundred millions of 
human beings’ deaths and also to future thousand trillions of human beings’

Death, for Matsuzawa, is not a state of separation and longing, but one of reunion, connection, and expanded—even telepathic—consciousness. Death completes the circle. Alan embraced this attitude, writing that Matsuzawa's late work demands of the viewer the “sensing of a spiritual connection to that which has moved on from the world and meditating on the essence it leaves behind.” 

In honor of Alan, this exhibition brings together work from his personal collection, from current students and alumni of the Department of Visual Arts, and from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection, a repository largely formed from gifts and requests from the community for the enrichment of teaching with, about, and in art. As you go calmly across these rooms, we invite you to celebrate and meditate on how artistic creation expresses, indexes, or advances quantum realities.

Curators
Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory is curated by Trevor Brandt, Lex Ladge, and Cybele Tom.

Artists

Maya Janine D’Costa
Maya Janine D’Costa is an interdisciplinary artist from India, currently pursuing their MFA at the University of Chicago. They work with sensitivity and fragility as material to create encounters where ambiguity may precede prejudice and permanence.

Susan Jablonski
Susan Jablonski is an artist and photographer currently based in Chicago, IL. Working with analog photographic processes, her practice explores the notion of the “constructed image” and the dialogue between the camera lens and expected perspective. Her most recent work manifests itself through a collection of cyanotype prints depicting snapshot photography alongside abstract forms. Through this process of physically collaging and splicing imagery, she is interested in breaking down layers of embedded photographic thinking and the supposed “reality” of images. Susan earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Chicago.

Faye Liang
Faye Liang is a first-year MFA candidate, visual artist, and storyteller, born in 1990 in Guangzhou, China. She has worked as a photojournalist since 2015, covering a wide range of social issues in China. After the pandemic, in 2023, she quit her job and participated in an art residency in Switzerland, where she documented the severe retreat of the Alps’ glaciers due to global warming. In 2024, she joined the MFA program at the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, focusing on storytelling through everyday objects.

Brett Swenson
Brett Swenson makes sculptures and videos that explore the felt mechanics of seeing and perceiving. He’s particularly interested in the sticky relationship between surfaces and interiors, and in how these elements can physically rework each other to create new and relationally expressive forms. Drawing from a longstanding interest in the complexity of human-environmental interactions, his works often respond directly to materials, technologies, or places that muddy the distinctions between nature and artifice, chaos and control.


Tilden Thornburgh Mueller
Dear viewer,

Welcome to my familiar otherworld.

I mean for my drawings to transform the “elementary” materials of paper and pencil into biomorphic objects, spaces, and/or textures which metamorphose themselves in and out of various states in an effort to continually “become and unbecome” (Sarah Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others). My work is invested in the reorienting of the psyche towards a more caring future and the enacting of practices that will revolutionize, rather than further desensitize, individuals’ spirits and our surrounding, failing institutions.

I enjoy when viewers experience my drawings as though they were a letter from a close friend, or a poem etched into the back of a subway chair. If you would like to discuss the work, other works, or the theoretical and/or personal texts that ground and unsettle my work, please contact me. Always question and never assume.

Sincerely,
T.
2025

Tianjiao Wang
Tianjiao Wang is interested in acknowledging the presence of things. Through photographing and filming, she anticipates drawing others closer, while simultaneously keeping them perpetually within the realm of the other—without crossing boundaries, without encroachment, without fusion.

Support 
This exhibition is generously supported by the Department of Art History, the Center for the Art of East Asia, and the Department of Visual Arts at University of Chicago. Installation support and preparation provided by the curators, artists, Anju Lukose-Scott, Yutao Qian, and Ruoxuan Yuan. 

Related Programming
Open carefully, kayle cui, maya janine d’costa, el lee, kyle lowe, tongji philip qian, hyeseul song, Room 502, Gates-Blake Halls, Monday–Friday 9am to 5pm, March 25–May 5, 2025

Maverick Practices in Asian Art: Artists, Curators, and Scholars Breaching the Boundaries, May 2–3, 2025

Opening Reception for Drifting Timelines 流动时序 and Go Calmly Across This Room: In Memory, May 2, 2025

Accessibility
CWAC Exhibitions is committed to accessibility for all our exhibitions. However, the second floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center is accessible only by stairs. To request an accommodation or alternative format, please email visualresources@uchicago.edu.