Does Steve McQueen have some big thesis? A concept that runs through all his images, moving and otherwise? What, for instance, binds the British artist’s two feature-length films, Hunger and Shame, whose respective protagonists are an imprisoned Irish nationalist and a Manhattan sex addict? Perhaps hunger? Or is it shame?
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McQueen is certainly all over the map in the Art Institute’s new survey show, “Steve McQueen”—not just thematically but geographically. His subject matter bounces from the UK, where he was born, to Granada, where his mother was born, to the United States, which seems to hold an increasing fascination for him. The first work you see is the hypnotic Static, a looped projection of the Statue of Liberty, shot from a circling helicopter. The sound fades in and out. You’re left to wonder what “static” means here, because the video is anything but.
The show offers a few departures from video form, including Mees, After Evening Dip, New Year’s Day, 2002—a fuzzy, nostalgic light-box photograph—and the more recent Queen and Country. The latter was created by McQueen in his creepily decorous capacity as an “official British war artist” and consists of a wooden, casket-shaped box with sliding panels that contain 168 sheets of postage stamps bearing the likenesses of 168 British soldiers killed in Iraq. War is the theme of another work, too: Illuminer, a color film the artist made at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. McQueen is barely visible in it, illuminated only by the TV he’s watching in a dark Parisian hotel room. A French-speaking announcer can be heard, reporting over sounds of gunfire.
Through 1/6: Mon-Wed and Fri-Sun 10:30 AM-5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM-8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artic.edu, $12-$18, free to Illinois residents on the first and second Wednesdays of each month.
