Screenhouse | Millennium Park
Edra Soto
Screenhouse
Boeing Gallery North
Expanding on her ongoing architectural intervention series titled GRAFT, Soto created Screenhouse, a freestanding social structure inspired by Puerto Rico’s lower and middle class residential architecture. Learn more about GRAFT here: edrasoto.com/section/476999-Graft-Chica…
Screenhouse incorporates the rejas patterns into a modernized gazebo structure that allows for these decorative patters to permeate the space, while immersing the viewer.
Constructed from approximately 400 charcoal-hued, 12-inch cast concrete blocks, the 10-foot high pavilion-like structure comes out of an ongoing series exploring symbolic transplants of iron grills and decorative concrete screen blocks found throughout the Caribbean and the American South. These decorative screens, known as rejas and quiebrasoles, are ubiquitous in Soto’s birthplace in Puerto Rico. In Screenhouse, Soto transforms the quiebrasol form from a planar screen that divides public from private into a nearly fully enclosed, free-standing structure that functions as both a sculptural object and a social gathering place.
MILLENNIUM PARK ANNOUNCES NEWLY–COMMISSIONED SCULPTURE EXHIBITIONS BY TWO CHICAGO-BASED ARTISTS
New works by Edra Soto and Christine Tarkowksi will be on display in the Boeing Galleries from late September through 2021
The Millennium Park Foundation and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events are pleased to announce two new sculpture exhibitions in the Boeing Galleries North and South. The newly commissioned works, on display through 2021, are site-specific installations by Chicago-based artists Edra Soto and Christine Tarkowski.
“Few spaces offer the expansive environment for monumental art of this scale, said Mark Kelly, commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. “The millions of visitors that come to visit Cloud Gate and Crown Fountain will be thrilled to engage with these new installations by two accomplished Chicago artists.”
“Millennium Park’s Boeing Galleries have an international reputation for presenting public art of an uncompromisingly high standard, said Scott Stewart, Executive Director of Millennium Park Foundation. Edra and Christine’s contributions promise to continue this tradition of excellence while also breaking new ground as unique, site-specific responses to Millennium Park and the Galleries themselves.
Presented by Millennium Park Foundation and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). “Edra Soto and Christine Tarkowski in Millennium Park” are supported by The Boeing Company and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. We also acknowledge Rande and Cary McMillan’s generosity in dedicating this exhibition to John and Neville Bryan and honoring the spirit of John’s vision for Millennium Park
EDRA SOTO PRODUCTION CREDITS
Dan Sullivan and the Navillus Woodworks team: Wyatt Mitchell, Robbie Shymanski, Julio Vargas, Remi Lucien Bordas, Colette Hamann, Gina Hunt, Caroline Robe, and Pete Moorman, as well as Fine Concrete, Fast Radius, Bob Magruder/Goodfriend Magruder Structure, Julian Arandas.
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