Robert Buck and John Neff in Conversation

4–5pm

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Second Hand concludes a two-part exhibition by Robert Beck/ Buck. On view at Ulterior is a selection of modified thrift store paintings that Buck began as a manifestation of his aesthetic self-renomination from Beck to Buck in 2008. In this ongoing series, he appropriates guest-book signatures from his past exhibitions as Buck and transcribes them using a one-inch ink grid onto found paintings­ by anonymous painters—second hand, as it were—then signs them “R. Buck.” The amended paintings are installed on 3-inch-grid display panels, which amplify the lattices on the paintings. Together, they engage larger social networks, e.g., commerce, ownership, identities, and authorship.On this occasion, Ulterior Gallery will host a conversation between Robert Buck and artist and curator John Neff.

John Neff is an artist, curator, and teacher. He is a founding member of Iceberg Projects, an alternative and experimental exhibition space in Chicago, and a core faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Low-Residency MFA Program. Neff has exhibited and lectured at galleries, museums, and universities nationwide for over twenty years, most recently at Artists Space, New York, NY, The Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington, Seattle, WA, and MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Robert Beck graduated with a BFA from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts Film and TV Department in 1983, and the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art a decade later. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since the 1990s. In 2008, motivated by developments in his art making, Beck changed his last name by a single vowel, from e to u. Beck/Buck’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Getty Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; among others. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Strange Attractor, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX (2017); Robert Buck: States of America, Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH (solo, 2016); and, in collaboration with Donald Moffett, Range: Experiments in New York, 1961 – 2007, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2017). Beck was born in 1959 in Baltimore, MD and moved to New York in 1978. Buck currently spends time in far west Texas.

Robert Buck’s new website will be launched concurrently with the Saturday afternoon conversation, and a limited edition poster by Robert Buck and Jeremy Biles, published by John Neff, will be available. Light refreshments will be served and the artist will take questions during and after the talk.