title: What Is Your Name
artist: Bryan LeBeuf
curated by: Fabiola Tosi
materials: Looping video installation
dimensions: N/A
location: Logan Square, Chicago IL, USA
What Is Your Name is a simulation of a game environment within a MMORPG. A portrait of a
vast virtual world looking towards the participant, melding physical and virtual space.
During the COVID-19 crisis in the first months of 2020, communities all over the world have
experienced extended times of isolation and social distancing became the norm. With our daily
routine significantly changing, many of us had to adapt to a new pace of life. In this
unprecedented situation, we share the feeling that time has slowed down. It is becoming harder
and harder to keep track of the days passing.
Unconventional Times, is a pop-up window exhibition that tracks time through art. This exhibit
presents a rotating selection of works from three Chicago-based artists: Naomi Elson, Bryan
LeBeuf, and Joshi Radin. Each selected artwork occupies the exhibition window space for two
weeks and then rotate. The same cycle of artworks is repeated throughout the duration of the
project, the end of which will correspond with the end of the COVID-19 lockdown.
With an increasingly static environment, we have the opportunity to experience our
surroundings in new ways. We notice small changes to our proximities that we were not able to
pay attention to before. With a continued two-weeks rotation of artworks, this exhibition will help
the local neighbor and community to track time in an unconventional way.
Unconventional Times is curated by Fabiola Tosi.
Photography by Amy Shelton.
Bryan A. LeBeuf is a new media artist working with 3D imaging, sound and game design. His
work examines community through collective memory, using overlapping experiences as a tool
to rebuild and reimagine his neighborhoods in Detroit, MI. The landscapes and design draw
inspiration from defined environments of early role-playing games and dating simulators,
weaving together imagery of post-industrialized neighborhoods. Bryan constructs these
environments from fragmented memories. These memories are stitched together from the
collective unconscious of his immediate community, and materialized through games. Human
subjectivity and the excavation and reconstruction of communal memory are major themes in
his work.
More on Bryan A. LeBeuf's practice
Game culture has been a great influence not only in his life but in the ethos of his work. For
Bryan, artwork can operate like a game instead of ending with the gallery wall. Games allow
people to share experiences as they unfold in a real-time. Though gameplay can easily be a
solitary activity, for Bryan it has always been a social one. He brings that ethos into what he
makes, into designing experiences meant to be shared, and to dialogue within his community.
Bryan A. LeBeuf holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.He is currently a
resident at Chicago Artist Coalition’s Hatch Program. Follow him on Instagram: @westnilebaptist
More on Fabiola Tosi's practice
Fabiola Tosi is a Chicago-based curator and arts administrator. Originally from Italy, Fabiola is an experienced project manager promoting international cultural exchanges. Her curatorial work aims to unveil cross-cultural practices as a platform for discussion around politically and socially engaged issues. Fabiola is the current Exhibits Project Manager at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, and formerly Assistant Director of Exhibition and Programs for the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. In 2017, she received her MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a resident at Chicago Artist Coalition’s Hatch Program. Follow her on Instagram: @faby_tosi