Do you see what I see?

Darst Center, 2014 as a part of Why Marriage?

Do you see what I see? is a group show with two married artist couples, a divorced filmmaker, and a marriage counselor. While one couple, Sarah and Joseph Belknap, always develops their work together, the other couple, Jefferson Godard and Jeroen Nelemans, does not create work together. The show also includes artist Jennifer Reeder, whose videos focus on single women, and marriage counselor Alice Berry, who is available for public consultations. The grouping aims to raise questions about perspective and if marriage alters how we see the world.

Jeroen Nelemans’s work investigates light, space, and perspective. The works presented in “Do you see what I see?” apply digital techniques to images by Turner and Vermeer – often considered masters of perspective - to challenge their and our understanding of perspective. Jefferson Godard similarly engages the themes of the show but through experiential food.

In Jennifer Reeder’s film “Seven Songs about Thunder,” we never know the full story. This dark comedy involves the doubts and deceptions entangling a liar, a therapist, a couple, and a mother and daughter.

Sarah and Joseph Belknap invited 8 couples to wear GPS devices. The GPS devices monitor and track their movements together and apart from each other throughout the course of a week. Each couple’s locations are combined into a map and projected as a constellation of light.

Alice Berry is both an artist and a psychiatrist. She is available throughout the night to discuss the possibility of shifting your worldview to reflect a shared understanding. 

Tricia Van Eck is Director of 6018NORTH, a green, non-profit platform for experimental culture, performance, sound, and installation art within and for the community. Located at 6018 NORTH Kenmore in the Edgewater neighborhood on Chicago’s North side, its innovative projects include artists performing, creating installations, and directing communal engagement events involving food and conversation.

Previously, Van Eck was Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, where she was Associate Curator, presenting over 70 exhibitions much of which were audience engaged, interactive, or extended the MCA’s reach into the community. Examples include Mark Bradford’s Retrospective and community residency exhibition, Interactions: A Four month series of artist and audience activations as a companion to Without You I Am Nothing: Art and Its Audience, Jan Tichy’s Project Cabrini Green, Theaster Gates: Temple Exercises, Tino Sehgal’s Kiss, Here/Not There, and Hide and Seek: An Out of Gallery Experience. and Hide and Seek: An Out of Gallery Experience.