Sybille Canthal finds the gallery world’s stuffy “white cube structure” confining not just physically but intellectually. “There are a lot of artists out there, and as we know there are only a few who get shown in galleries. At some point the question becomes not so much about money and whether the art will sell, but whether it’s ever going to be seen.”
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Over the years, the graduate student in arts administration at the School of the Art Institute became interested in unconventional exhibits. A fan of Matthew Girson’s one-man shows installed in the bed of his pickup truck, she was also struck by shows like one put up by some UIC students in a hotel room last summer and two in Los Angeles–one in a city zoo, the other at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “It wasn’t the greatest work, but part of it was the idea of going to the DMV and how blah those places are,” she says.
“It’s challenging to work in a space that huge in one sense, but it’s limiting in another,” Canthal says. “I’ve had to throw out just about everything I’ve learned because it didn’t work in this space. For example, you usually use a level when you put up shows. I had to chuck it.”
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