Jan Tichy

Jan Tichy (Czech, b. 1974)

Untitled (macchinetta)

2014

Archival pigment print

15 3/4 x 6 ⅝ inch image on 16 ¼ x 7 1/4 inch paper

Signed edition of 50

Known for creating bodies of work about institutional inquiry, history and critique, Untitled (macchinetta), a uniquely personal work by Jan Tichy, shares an aesthetic with his other endeavors in its minimal, abstract and black and white qualities. Yet the fields of black, crystalline white markings, and pocked metal gray are in fact the closeup surface of Jan’s worn and loved stovetop coffee maker, self reflexively alluding to its role as creative fuel for all of Tichy’s ambitious artistic undertakings.

Jan Tichy is a contemporary artist and educator. Working at the intersection of video, sculpture, architecture, and photography, his conceptual work is socially and politically engaged. Born in Prague in 1974, Tichy studied art in Israel before earning his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is now Assistant Professor at the Department of Photography. Tichy has had solo exhibitions at the MCA Chicago; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; CCA Tel Aviv; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; No Longer Empty, NY and Chicago Cultural Center among others. In 2011, he created Project Cabrini Green, a community-based art project that illuminated with spoken word the last high rise building at the Cabrini Green Housing Projects in Chicago during its month long demolition. In 2014 Tichy started to work on a long-term, NEA supported, community project in Gary, IN—the Heat Light Water Project.