Description

“Melvin Charney’s ‘A Chicago Construction’ is the base of an imagined skyscraper with a grid that is both structural and symbolic. The conceptual work is made up of drawings like this one, an accompanying text, and a temporary physical model constructed in front of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Charney uses drawings to do things that are impossible in his physical constructions. In a drawing, he can convey multiple layers and fragments simultaneously, whereas in person they could only be experienced as a sequence of views.” –“Drawing After Modernism” exhibition text

Drawing publication history:

- Melvin Charney, “Parables and Other Allegories: The Work of Melvin Charney, 1975–1990” (Montreal, Quebec: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

Drawing exhibition history:

- "Options 12: Melvin Charney: A Chicago Construction," Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, May 14 – August 29, 1982. Curated by Mary Jane Jacob.

- “Parables and Other Allegories: The Work of Melvin Charney, 1975–1990,” Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal, Quebec, October 9, 1991 – January 12, 1992. Curated by Alessandra Latour, Guest Curator, under the direction of Phyllis Lambert, Director.

Further reading:

- Melvin Charney, “Melvin Charney, 1981–1983” (Kingston, Ontario: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1983).

Additional Information

Provenance: Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; Martin E. Zimmerman.

Type

signature

Location

front, lower right

Method

blue pencil

Text

M Charney '82