In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell (1932–1998) used concrete as an actual material and an artistic motif in a surprising, unique body of work that includes Concrete Traffic, a Cadillac encased in concrete that is parked in a garage adjacent to the Smart Museum of Art. Presented as part of Concrete Happenings at the University of Chicago, Vostell Concrete features nearly 50 of Vostell’s works in a variety of media that mobilize concrete’s ambivalent connotations of permanence and inflexibility, strength and violence to engage with the postwar, internationalizing world.

Curators: Christine Mehring, Professor and Chair, Department of Art History, in collaboration with Diane Miliotes, Interim Curator of Modern Art and Design, Smart Museum of Art, and Caroline Lillian Schopp, Curatorial Research Associate and PhD Candidate in Art History.