A few weeks ago we were given the opportunity to work with the Chicago Loop Alliance, a chamber of commerce-like organization that serves the downtown loop area merchants. They started their Pop-Up Art Loop gallery project and gave us the old Ritz Camera store to engage with a project.
We are opening a new joint project [...]

We are going to miss all of our new friends from the Tupajumi Foundation. Their exhibition at the Co-Prosperity Sphere was a great example of how  awesome a group show can be.
You can check out documentation of the C-PS show here and here. We look forward to working with them in the future. And you [...]

Long ago in a world without internet, a few critical publications helped inspire and activate insurrection and counter cultural thinking here in the U.S. These publications provided real cultural coverage and analysis of how our lives were being consumed, co-opted and recombined by The Corporations.  The Baffler was one of them. Their critique was a [...]

One of the most interesting public art projects we have ever seen is taking place on a lake in Minnesota. Check out  how Art Shanty Projects unfolds. It opens tomorrow!

Tonite we had the great fortune of briefly visiting the Don Celender exhibit by Public Collectors, an archive and research project created by Marc Fischer. Marc is a trailblazing researcher, formidable conceptual artist, and socially engaged art worker and I love the fact that he puts so many amazing hard to find materials on the [...]

The Artists Run Chicago Digest is out. Researchers, historians and art educators should not sleep on the beautifully JNL designed, limited edition journal. Co-produced by Green Lantern Press and threewalls it contains:
Interviews, essays and responses along with floorplans, exhibition histories and other visuals archive and present a 10-year time period in Chicago’s artist-run culture while [...]

The cacophony of voices declaring the death of print is a topic of great concern, but don’t believe the hype. Yes, mainstream newspapers and the corporate publishing houses are in decline, but independent and niche publishing is on the rise.
The unique analog properties of books and indie magazines deserve some attention, some celebration.  For this [...]

This Sunday, May 10 the Hyde Park Art Center will open its Artists Run Chicago show in Gallery 1. Proximity and its related tentacles will  participate in quite a few ways.  First we asked our friend Michael T Rea to bring over his Spacesuit for Steven Hawking to represent Reuben Kincaid Artist Management. As part [...]

Proximity Magazine invites you to participate in the (Con)Temporary Art Chicago Guide. The Guide showcases the best cultural offerings in Chicago during the Spring season – late April to early May 2009. We are  creating a map and publication – including directories, articles, and interviews – about what’s happening at places both prominent and secret [...]

We forgot to mention earlier last week that that one hundred years ago, on February 20,  the Futurist Manifesto was presented on the frontpage of Le Figaro. Well, Dutch Art mag Metropolis M didn’t forget nor did many other European art fags. Here is a handy link to Futurist Cookbook recipes that we can all [...]

Art Shanty at Iron Studios (2006)
Proximity Magazine invites you to participate in (Con)Temporary Art Chicago. This 80-96 page book, to be released along with the next issue of Proximity Magazine, will showcase the best cultural offerings in Chicago during the art fair season – late April to early May 2009.
Our goal is to showcase Chicago [...]

Just added at the Bureau of Public Secrets website:
DON QUIXOTE ATTACKS THE WINDMILLS
Miguel de Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” is one of the most wonderful books in the world. A middle-aged country gentleman, brain addled by reading too many chivalric adventure stories, adopts the trappings of a medieval knight and sets out to rescue damsels in distress [...]