220 E. Chicago Ave., McCormick Tribune Gallery, main floor

Gallery tour of the installation led by JZ, August 19th, Noon (pictures of the lecture)

Since he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Jeff Zimmermann has worked primarily as a muralist. While he has completed important community-based murals in Pilsen (including one at 19th Street and Ashland), one of Chicago’s most vital neighborhoods and the home to many Mexican Americans, he also has created what he calls ‘private murals.’ His method is to locate suitable walls on which to create his dynamic paintings which are inspired by the built environment as well as the life of the community. The owners of these walls agree to leave the design and content of the murals entirely up to Zimmermann. One such mural can be found on Damen Avenue just north of Lake Street.

For his MCA project, Zimmermann has followed a similar working method: he has observed and responded to the area in and around the MCA. After getting to know this complex retail and residential neighborhood, he became acquainted with specific individuals, such as the policeman depicted on the west wall, as well as with what he calls "urban tumbleweeds," the snack bags and crushed soda cans that travel across sidewalks, streets, and plazas. He then juxtaposed these elements with his personal interests, including the Chicago Board of Trade’s derivatives market, mathematics, and politics to create the wall painting Dark Matter. This term, which is used by cosmologists to describe a yet-undetected matter or energy that is theorized to make up the majority of the universe, gives one important key to the work. Dark Matter interweaves the private and the public, the mental life of the individual with the complex interworkings of the society in which the individual exists.

Lynne Warren, Curator MCA, copyright 2003 The Museum of Contemporary Art