Jorge Lucero

ART TROUGH

An event/performance commissioned by Alt-City: the fourth component of the Chicago Public Schools' All-City Visual Art Exhibition (April 26, 2013). Artists Maria Gaspar and Jorge Lucero worked with a small group of CPS high school students to produce a site-specific participatory project during the exhibition's closing event. The event was held at Gallery 37 and facilitated by Evan Plummer. Taking on the form of the ubiquitous food buffet, each student occupied a station wherein visitors were invited to receive a quickly-wrought, however highly conceptualized, work of art. Incrementally, throughout the evening, the collective of students would perform a type of dance they called "Gazed Donuts". This mini-work within the larger ART TROUGH saw the young practitioners leaving their buffet stations while ringing their call-bells; they gathered around a light table where half a dozen glazed donuts sat. They gazed at them for a set time (30 seconds) and then returned to their stations and resumed making small "carry out" works of art. The work ran for the duration of the entire CPS event. As an intermission for the work, one of the students (Morley) delivered a public speech in the form of a "press conference". This press conference was to announce his resignation from the company that created the "national chain of Art Troughs". The full body of that speech is forthcoming.