Through sculpture, text, photography, video and performance, Industry of the Ordinary (IOTO) are dedicated to an exploration and celebration of the customary, the everyday, and the usual. Their emphasis is on challenging pejorative notions of the ordinary and, in doing so, moving beyond the quotidian.

 

Making use of a variety of art-making strategies, IOTO have primarily been concerned with the dynamics and aesthetics of public and performative spaces. Drawing inspiration from Joseph Beuys’s theory of ‘social sculpture’ and the Situationists, IOTO have explored non-traditional sites for art works where accidental audiences can be found. Often collaborating with multiple members of the community, these works attempt to occupy and invigorate public thoroughfares. The work is intended to provoke and promote public discourse, to bring fine art out of the gallery or performing arts venue, and, without becoming didactic or pedantic, make it readily available to the non-art-trained audience.

 

 

Industry of the Ordinary were formed in 2003. The two artists who make up this collaborative team, Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson, have long histories as visual and performative artists. They bring complementary sensibilities to their activities.

 

Their projects exist in temporal terms but have also been conceived to function on the web site associated with the collaboration, http://www.industryoftheordinary.com.

 

They have had solo shows at multiple venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and, most recently, a major mid-career survey at the Chicago Cultural Center that was received with much acclaim. 

 

 

Lemonade, 2015, is a sculptural installation and social space designed to foster generative contexts, provide moments of respite, and add a little bit of sweetness to our otherwise sour social conditions.

 

EJ Hill (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) currently lives and works in Los Angeles and New York City. Concentrating on an endurance-based performance practice, he uses his body as the literal and symbolic site for examining the many ways in which physical and ideological bodies may transcend their afflictions. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Buenos Aires and Berlin. Hill is a 2015 recipient of the CCF Fellowship for Visual Artists and is a 2015-16 Artist In Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He received a BFA in 2011 from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in 2013 from the University of California, Los Angeles.