Art Metropole

23 Nov. 2024

Book Launch: "But tell me, is it a civilized country?" by Max Guy

Time

5:00-7:00

Please join Art Metropole on Saturday, November 23rd, for the Canadian launch of Max Guy’s recent publication “But tell me, is it a civilized country?”, published by The Renaissance Society on the occasion of Guy’s solo exhibition by the same title.

This book accompanies Max Guy’s exhibition “But tell me, is it a civilized country?”, an installation of new works centered on The Wizard of Oz. The title is drawn from a conversation between the Witch of the North and Dorothy in which the Witch defines “civilized” as not including magic.

Anchored in Chicago—where L. Frank Baum’s novel was written and first published, and home to enduring monuments to Oz fandom—the exhibition and book bridge the parallel universes of the Emerald City and its birthplace, drawing out the traces each carries of the other. A number of latent currents course underneath the work: critical perspectives on modernist urbanism, the peculiar products of fan culture, and the transformative power of storytelling and other acts of world-making.

This catalog features essays by artists and writers Brit Barton and Matthew Goulish, and the exhibition’s curator, Michael Harrison, as well as the transcription of a conversation between Guy and artist Irena Haiduk. The book will also include a new artist project made specifically for the book in the form of an annotated bibliography created by Guy of writings and images that relate to and inspire his practice.

Max Guy lives in Chicago. Guy works with paper, video, performance, assemblage and installation. He uses fast, ergonomic ways to make poetry of the world, filtering it through personal effects. Guy received his BFA in 2011 from Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in 2016 from Northwestern University. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Krannert Museum of Art (Urbana-Champaign); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Prairie Gallery, Produce Model, and Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago); Malmö Museum of Art (Malmo, Sweden); CAVE (Detroit); and Galeria Federico Vavassori (Milan, Italy).

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