Andrea Carlson on the Modern Art Notes Podcast

Upon the occasion of her solo exhibition Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Andrea Carlson speaks with art historian Tyler Green on the Modern Art Notes podcast about her artistic practice and how she enacts narratives of decolonization and the land back movement through her work.

In the hour-long interview, Carlson and Green discuss her critiques of classic Western American landscape painting, her reformulations of cannibal horror movies from the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of “stacked landscapes” in works such as Ink Babel and Red Exit. Carlson describes how she employs layers of landscapes in her multi-paneled works on paper “to try to break up the staticness of painting and drawing. I want to give it movement, or a shimmering aspect, or a lived way – I want it to vibrate in a way.”

Carlson also describes the billboards featuring her print Exit, mounted in conjunction with the MCA Chicago exhibition along Interstate 94. The print arose out of driving between Minneapolis and Chicago and considering the effects of roadways on effigy mounds and the animals and humans traversing them. The billboards were envisioned “as a sigil…to protect people traveling on I-94, to protect people traveling across mound country.”

Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons remains on view through February 2, 2025.