Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by Chicago based artist Anne Wilson. For this exhibition, Wilson presents sculpture, image/sound based works, and performance through three interrelated projects: Portable City, Notations, and Wind-Up.

In the large gallery, a sculptural project entitled Portable City consists of 47 stainless steel and wood vitrines. Each vitrine houses a structure of thread or wire filament under tension, suspension, compression, or collapse. The result is a city of tensile networks, deflated domes, flattened tents, linear pathways, and rubble where Wilson's delicate handwork alludes to new thinking about the viability of lightweight mesh structures in creating temporary and portable architecture. 

Notations is a collaborative installation of photographs of motion sequences by Wilson and sound by artist/composer Shawn Decker.  For this project, Wilson has invented a notational system that captures the repetitive, rhythmic, and cumulative hand gestures underlying winding, knit and crochet processes (the dominant structures in recent sculpture). The Notations are then interpreted as scores by Decker. Correlations between the sequential systems in both sound and textile hand production are inherent to this inquiry.

Preceding the opening of this exhibition, a collaborative team will perform Walking the Warp, the first action of Wind-Up. This performance will convert the front space of the gallery into a five day experience of walking, counting, rolling, and winding as Wilson and nine collaborators engage in the rhythmic act of building a 40-yard weaving warp on a 17 x 7 foot frame.

Walking the Warp can be viewed from the 118 Peoria Street sidewalk 10am - 4pm daily, from Monday January 21 - Friday January 25, 2008.

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Anne Wilson earned her MFA from the California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited extensively, including solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas (2004), and at MassArt, Boston (2002) and in group exhibitions including "Alternative Paradise" at the 21st Century Museum Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan (2005-6) and at the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2002 Biennial. Her work is currently featured in the exhibition "Out of the Ordinary" at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.