The lifespan of a typical artist-run space is brief.
But the Suburban, the Oak Park-based “off space,” as its founders call it, is still thriving after a decade of programming — likely because spouses and co-founders Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam are anything but typical gallerists.
“Projects at the Suburban are kin to working in your studio,” Grabner says, seated at a table in the heart of her sunny bungalow. A storage shed was converted to a project space in 1999, and a second space was added four years later. “(Usually) there are curators, preparators, dealers who start shaping and controlling your product. But here, we try to strip away all of those prosthetics and let display and exhibition take control.”
Grabner, who is a professor and chair of the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute, doesn’t disagree when I suggest that her space is the exhibiting artist’s ideal: complete control of the work and installation, and free lodging to boot. Most Suburban artists fly in from afar — Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Australia — and live in the Grabner-Killam household while installing the work.
The Suburban’s simple philosophy — artists provide the art, hosts provide the hospitality — has earned its tiny, 217 square feet a much larger place in art world and beyond. Painter Luc Tuymans, the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, exhibited in 2003. Groups visit from Seattle — and the Art Institute.
Released this month is a hefty 1,200-page retrospective catalog documenting the Suburban’s first 10 years. Meanwhile, Grabner and Killam are diving into the next 10 with the Poor Farm, a space in Manawa, Wis., they’ve converted for artists’ programming and residencies. Grabner hopes that by 2020, the Poor Farm will run on green energy.
“(Our aim is to) get a beautiful exhibition space off the ground and off the grid,” she says. “It’s far reaching. But we have 10 years.”
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