REVIEW: Loving Repeating at the Hyde Park Art Center
Loving Repeating, installation view. Photography by Anatoli Karapanagiotidou
REVIEW
Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger: Loving Repeating
Apr. 10, 2022 - Sep. 3, 2022
Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S Cornell Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60615
By: Anatoli Karapanagiotidou
Loving Repeating is an exhibition of married couple Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger’s recent collaborative project, housed at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago’s South Side from April 10th to September 3rd. The exhibition explores themes such as relationships, loneliness and intimacy – all timeless but particularly pertinent in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the duo’s largest multimedia installation to date, but they seem to wield a certain mastery over making the installation intense, immersive and interactive.
The show features their signature shadow-play of their own silhouettes: a 20 by 80 foot vinyl mural consisting of the couple’s silhouettes in various playful and suggestive poses and positions in relation two each other, as well as a 55-foot cut paper garland of the same silhouettes hanging from the ceiling and wall, and shadows of these silhouettes projected onto the mural-covered walls. In addition, this visual kaleidoscope effect is even further strengthened by the actual shadows cast on the walls of the exhibition space by the hanging paper silhouettes. This creates a repeating pattern of the human experience between two lovers who connect and disconnect, and the ways their daily interactions make up the passage of time.
Loving Repeating, installation view. Photography by Anatoli Karapanagiotidou
These many projections of human forms attempt to pay tribute to the rhythms of relationships, in particular queer intimacy and loneliness, and the way these are affected by external circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The significance of physical touch takes on a different dimension at this moment in time when we have all been reminded of it through its sudden absence.
The exhibition also features a large interactive aspect: Burnt, a pile of paper cranes in the center of the room which visitors can add to by making their own paper crane as advised at a table on the mezzanine connecting the room to other exhibitions. In tribute to this piece’s name, Miller and Shellabarger plan to hold a bonfire at the end of the exhibition on September 3rd to burn this piece and place the ashes in a pine box. This will accompany the two existing pine boxes on display as part of Loving Repeating, as part of the Burnt series. The existing pine boxes contain ashes from similar projects in two other exhibitions, in Baltimore and Chicago. Through Burnt, the duo celebrates the mortality of artwork as well as of the human body, re-framing the way we think about time and mourning.
The artists aim to get people thinking about the importance of small daily rituals and moments of connections with others, which tend to blend into a routine but hold much beauty to be appreciated.
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