Streaming Now…
Monday–Friday: 12–1:30pm, 4:30–10pm
Saturday & Sunday: 1–7pm.
March 30: 5–10pm / April 14: 12–1:30pm / June 14 & 15: 4:30–10pm
Holiday hours may vary
Unicorn in the Garden by Jonathan Monaghan
Unicorn in the Garden is a mesmerizing 3D-animated dreamscape that interweaves ancient mythological symbols with contemporary elements. Inspired by the iconic medieval Unicorn Tapestries, the artwork reimagines the tapestries as a hypnotic collage that invites the viewer to explore and decode the layers of symbolism and meaning embedded within. The piece’s intricate attention to detail and the seamless interplay between the historical and the modern create a dynamic and immersive experience that challenges our perception of time and history while exploring the rich visual language of myth and storytelling.
The piece’s intricate attention to detail and the seamless interplay between the historical and the modern create a dynamic and immersive experience that challenges our perception of time and history while exploring the rich visual language of myth and storytelling.
Drawing inspiration from disparate sources such as ancient mythologies, commercial architecture, and corporate logos, Jonathan Monaghan creates a mythical world where the boundaries between nature and technology are subverted in fantastical and often satirical ways. Monaghan adopts the glossy, computer-generated aesthetics and techniques used in video games and advertisements. While this familiarity provides an accessible entry point, the works also probe the viewers’ anxieties about the digital landscape and its potential consequences. Through his critical reflections, Monaghan challenges us to confront our relationship with technology and its ecological impact.
“Traditionally, mythological stories have been born out of a desire to understand humans’ relationship to the natural world and are deeply connected to the human psyche. Fantastical and otherworldly visions of mythical creatures sometimes offer the best channel to understanding the complexities of human nature and the inhabited world. Today, in the midst of an often dehumanizing technological experience, my work aims to answer the question: what would a contemporary mythology look like?” —Jonathan Monaghan
Monaghan’s work has been exhibited at the Sundance Film Festival and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue Italia, and The Washington Post.
Visit jonathanmonoghan.com to learn more about Jonathan Monaghan’s work.
Deborah Jack in partnership with MCA Chicago
In conjunction with the exhibition Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today at the MCA Chicago, 150 Media Stream is proud to present a new installation by Deborah Jack, one of the MCA exhibition artists. This installation entitled “…wonder at the heartbreak and reassemble the fragments of shattered symmetries, until…” is a brief meditation on power that exists in the quiet moments of the natural world. It investigates how altering our speed and proximity to nature can impact us. Deborah Jack uses flora and the sea as metaphors for trauma and healing. The power lies in the in-between spaces where the water meets the land and in the resistance of a petal.
Deborah’s work at the Forecast Form exhibition at the MCA Chicago is a 7 channel video installation entitled “the fecund, the lush and the salted land waits for a harvest…her people… ripe with promise, wait until the next blowing season”. This piece incorporates video and still images. It uses Dutch archival videos of colonial footage of labor in a salt pond and juxtaposes it with the lush flora of the land. This is in keeping with the artist’s practice of looking at the history of extraction capitalism, as experienced in smaller landscapes.
“My work explores the relationship of the natural world to memory, personal and cultural. The hurricane, the sea, the shore, the land and the flora all play a role in creating memorials. In these narratives I’ve created a seasonal memorial. These works of mine are cycles of memory. The title to the installation for the 150 Media Stream is based on a quote from the poet Derek Walcott, ‘Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.’ This was taken from his Nobel essay, Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory. So in the title I was considering the notion heartbreak, that can be the aftermath of the fracture not as tragedy but as a place of wonder. How the Caribbean has transcended and shown how the archipelagic gives us an alternate world view. That the fragment is poetic and therefore expansive. The footage of the work was shot on the island of St. Martin on both the French and Dutch parts. It is a celebration of the poetic of the waves interacting with the shore. That the sea with its troubled history also feeds and nurtures. The flowers, a symbol of beauty and strength, are from the Grand Poinciana or the Flamboyant trees. They are known throughout the Caribbean region, but can also be found in Asia, Africa. The sea brought these seeds over in the hill of ships or perhaps in the braids of the enslaved. The poetic of this duality, the awful and the beautiful, is place of inspiration for my work.” —Deborah Jack.
Conversation between artist Deborah Jack and MCA curator Carla Acevedo-Yates at the public reception of 150 Media Stream, February 15, 2023 at 150 N Riverside, Chicago.
Deborah Jack is a St. Maarten and Jersey City based multi-disciplinary artist whose work is based in video/sound installation, photography, painting and text. Her work engages a variety of strategies for mining the intersections of histories, cultural memory, ecology and climate change, while negotiating a global present. Her work will be featured in the upcoming Fall 2022 exhibition Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990’s-Today at the MCA Chicago. Group exhibitions include the Perez Art Museum of Miami exhibition The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago. Her work has been exhibited at the 2014 SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Jersey City Museum, and TENT Rotterdam. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Art Burst Miami, and the New York Times. In Fall 2021 Deborah Jack: 20 Years was presented at Pen + Brush in New York City. Deborah is currently a Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.
Streaming Next… Kenny Schachter in partnership with Expo Chicago
April 14: Opening Reception with Artist Talk, 6–8 pm CT, lobby of 150 N Riverside
Follow 150 Media Stream
#StreamOn