“Untitled” Painting from Viable Elevation V-3

Itatani received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 1976. She also graduated from the Kobe Jogakuin University in Japan. Her grants and awards include a John Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council Artist?s Fellowship, Chicago Artists Abroad Grant and Marie Walsh Sharpe New York City Space Grant. An Associate Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1979, Itatani teaches Studio Painting/Drawing, Undergraduate Critic Seminar, Graduate Project and Graduate Seminar. The Art Institute of Chicago, Tokoha Museum in Japan, Museu D?art Contemporani Barcelona, Spain and the Olympic Museum in Switzerland are among the museums that include Itatani?s works in their collections. Her worldwide solo exhibitions include Tokoha Museum in Japan, the Galeria Senda in Barcelona, Spain, and the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York. This monumental painting by Itatani demands the presence of the viewer with its sheer size and curious imagery. The large black field with an array of ellipses surrounded by stringy lines can be interpreted in various ways depending on the background of the spectator. The small painting located in the lower left-hand corner of this work looks like a smaller version of the fan-like imagery on the other side of the painting. The visual dialogue between the two images leaves the spectator contemplating the exact nature of their relationship.