Chicago Works: Caroline Kent Victoria/Veronica: Making Room

How does language structure our world? Who gets to be inside or outside a language? What would it mean to invent a new mode of communication? And what social conditions make creating a new language necessary? These are questions that Chicago artist Caroline Kent (American, b. 1975) explores through paintings, drawings, sculpture, and performance works that speak in an abstract visual vocabulary she developed over years of practice. In Chicago Works: Caroline Kent Victoria/Veronica: Making Room exhibition, Kent encourages visitors to engage with her invented language of abstraction—one that defies easy interpretation or translation.

Caroline Kent (b. 1975 Sterling, IL) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Kent received a MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BS from Illinois State University. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Chicago Works (2021), MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL; Caroline Kent (2021), University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL;  A Sudden Appearance of the Sun (2020), Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Victoria/Veronica: The figment between us (2020), Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, IL;Writing Forms (2020), Hawthorn Contemporary, Milwaukee, WI; A Forms Walks Toward You In The Dark (2020), The TCNJ Art Gallery, Ewing, NJ; Beyond the Kármán Line (2020), St. Catherine University, MN; and Disappearance of the word, Appearance of the world (2018), The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, among many others. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Constructed Mysteries (2021), Bethel University Art Galleries, St. Paul, MN; Duro Oluwu: Seeing Chicago (2020), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; LatinXAmerican, The DePaul Art Museum (2020), Chicago, IL; Five Ways In (2019), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; So Close, Far Away (2018), Paint School, Flag Art Foundation, NY; Out of Easy Reach(2018), DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; and Axes for Abstraction (2016), Saint Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN, among many others. Kent is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2020 Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Grant, the 2020 Artadia Award Chicago, the McKnight Fellowship for Visual Arts (2016), and the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant (2015). Her work resides in the public collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, and Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN.

Installation view, Chicago Works: Caroline Kent
Victoria/Veronica: Making Room
August 3, 2021–April 3, 2022

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Photo: Evan Jenkins