VOSTELL CONCRETE 1969–1973 at Smart Museum of Art

During this time, Vostell mobilized concrete’s ambivalent connotations of permanence and inflexibility, strength and violence, to engage with postwar urbanism, particularly German reconstruction and American urban renewal; with unrest and war, including the civil rights marches in Selma, the Paris student protests, the Vietnam and Cold wars; and with the international, if not yet global world, particularly as manifest in transatlantic travel, postcards, and the Munich Olympics.

Vostell Concrete is animated by questions of why the materials of art making matter and how they signify. It features the artist’s little known, first uses of concrete and redresses a too-limiting understanding of Vostell as a mere performance artist or belated German Pop artist. Drawn from the Smart Museum and other local, national, and international collections, the nearly 50 works on view span a variety of media, from sculpture to film, performance, collage, watercolor, and printmaking.

CONCRETE HAPPENINGS

The exhibition is part of Concrete Happenings, a collaborative series of public exhibitions, screenings, symposia, and happenings that mark the return of Vostell’s colossal Concrete Traffic (1970) to public view following a major conservation effort. The sculpture—a 1957 Cadillac encased in concrete—is part of the University of Chicago’s public art collection.