Michelle Grabner

Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1962, Michelle Grabner examines power structures inherent in patterns and arrangements. Since the early 1990’s she has re-articulated vernacular and found abstraction in order to shift unobserved, banal, or decorative motifs into critical sight and interpretation. The questions she perennial asks in her studio are: How much difference can be introduced into a pattern field without collapsing the composition into unreliability? Will referential and overfamiliar patterns tip compositions into platitudes and precepts? What organizational conceits can be developed to unify disparity?

Grabner is the Senior Chair of the Painting and Drawing Department and the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. You can see some of her work at the James Cohan Gallery.

Photo Credit: Brad Killam