CHICAGO — University campuses provide a protected space for intellectual, creative, and personal exploration. The work produced in such spaces can be questioning, probing, and thoughtful — but not necessarily fully formed. Substitute Equal Amounts presents the work of seven graduate students and emerging artists from the University of Chicago at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts.
Even at the highest level, group shows are an unwieldy endeavor with each artist bringing different perspectives. Part One attempts to unify the ideas presented through an exhibition text riddled with statements like “[a] cliche knows it’s worn out before it ever enters us — its melody teleological; its yet unsated obviousness: panging” and other equally poetic but difficult to parse lines. In both instances, the show is best approached not as a whole, but piece by piece. Laveen Gammie’s tiny ghostly ceramic bunnies and odd sculptures made in part from thrift store bric-a-bracs lead you around Rebekka Federle-McCabe’s playful yet heavy geometric wood dog sculptures. Meanwhile, Susan Jablonski’s handmade ceramic vessels and striking explorative prints hang on the walls, feeling almost entirely separate from the other work.
Part Two follows a similarly offbeat trajectory. It is, the press release claims, “linked by an impulse to draft a character primed to rebuff the projections they are prone to solicit.” Magicfeifei’s vibrant and artificial anime-inspired works contrast with Eleonore Zurawski’s hued landscapes and prairie-inspired sculptures. Alice Ding’s black and white polaroids, abstract prints, and minimalist drawings are all coolly analytical, while Drew Parkinson’s rough-hewn canvas and rock sculpture conjure a more tactile, physical experience.
Though artworks on the wall, floor, and ceiling inevitably interrupt and talk over one another, there are strong individual pieces to be found. I adored Zurawski’s “lost at a lawn” (2025), which suspends a prairie of dandelions from the gallery ceiling. Delicate and ethereal, the white puffs dangle above a rectangle of found tiles, dirty and rust-colored. Two fluorescent lights illuminate the sculpture. In its juxtaposition of the ephemeral textures of nature with the enduring permanence of industry, it is weighty and light, hard and soft, delicate and brutal all at once.
Federle-McCabe’s “Slapstick” (2025) hangs framed pages torn from a dog training manual. Ripped from context, the banal advice takes on new meaning. One page advises that “You must be heartless that first night. Let him howl and cry. If you break down and take him to bed with you, he will keep you up all night ….” Another entry explains that “[h]e will actually crave to satisfy you one [sic] he has been properly taught.” A framed silver chain hangs nearby. Using language and props, Federle-McCabe blurs the line between pet ownership and sadomasochism in ways that verge on the explicit but maintain tenderness.
Ultimately, this exhibition presents as what it is: a final project. Some ideas were overwrought, some were incomplete, some went over my head entirely — and some were successful. But even so, I don’t want to make a habit of “grading” MFA shows. They’re less about presenting a fully formed artistic statement than about showcasing a moment — an open house of the zeitgeist. A time for these artists to celebrate their hard work and show off a little, just before they dive headlong into the professional art world. We’re witnessing the early drafts of careers — and these early attempts are uneven, but promising.
Substitute Equal Amounts, part 2 of the University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts 2025 Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, continues at Logan Center Exhibitions (915 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois) through June 15. Part 1 took place in the same space from May 2–18.
