Carnegie Mellon's Miller Institute for Contemporary Art Hosts "Andrea Zittel: An Institute of Investigative Living" Jan 25-Mar 8, 2020

Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to present "Andrea Zittel: An Institute of Investigative Living," an exhibition curated by Miller ICA Director Elizabeth Chodos. This solo exhibition combines newly commissioned and existing works by artist Andrea Zittel and explores the core questions central Zittel's practice of "How to live?" and "What gives life meaning?"

The exhibition will be on display Saturday, Jan. 25 through Sunday, March 8. Friday, Jan. 24 there will be a reception from 6-8 p.m. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.

"Andrea Zittel's work rests at the intersection of art, architecture and design. A world-builder, Zittel's practice manifests within her live/work residence A-Z West — an artwork and homestead located on over 70 acres in the California high desert next to Joshua Tree National Park. Since its inception, A-Z West has functioned as an evolving testing grounds for living — a place in which spaces, objects and acts of living all intertwine into a single ongoing investigation into what it means to exist and participate in our culture today," Chodos said. Chodos goes on to explain that "Zittel's personal life and artistic practice has entailed exploring complex relationships between our need for freedom, security, autonomy, authority and control — observing how structure and limitations often have the capacity to generate feelings of freedom beyond open-ended choices. The exhibition demonstrates the immersive gestalt of Zittel's all-encompassing practice where every material aspect of daily life is examined and her ethos for living guides all action."

This exhibition surveys work spanning many years, and a wide range of media including furniture, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, painting and two newly commissioned room-sized patterned tile-floors.

About the Artist
Andrea Zittel was born in 1965 in Escondido, California. She received her BFA in painting and sculpture (1988) from San Diego State University, and MFA (1990) in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. In the early 1990s, she first established her practice in New York. One of her most visible projects there was A-Z East, a small row house in Brooklyn turned into a showroom or testing grounds for her prototypes for living. In 1998 she moved back to the west coast, eventually settling in the High Desert region next to Joshua Tree National Park where she founded A-Z West in 2000. A-Z West is the current site of her studio practice, as well as other living experiments including the Wagon Station Encampment and the Institute of Investigative Living. In 2002, Zittel cofounded High Desert Test Sites, a series of experimental art sites in the High Desert that supports works by both emerging and established artists.