Rare Retrospective

Steve McQueen at ARTIC

With the release of his first feature film Hunger in 2008, which swiftly gained him the Camera d’Or award from the revered Cannes Film Festival panel, British director Steve McQueen quickly catapulted to fame – further solidified with the release of his 2011 independent blockbuster, Shame. But despite his recent rise to superstardom, McQueen has been a visual artist for some 20 years, with an impressive set of artistic achievements tucked under his belt (including the prestigious 1999 Turner Prize), and a penchant for addressing hard-hitting issues including genocide, gun violence and sex addiction, to name but a few.

Hailed now by Art Institute of Chicago curator James Rondeau as one of our generation’s most important artists working with moving image, McQueen’s first major US retrospective will feature 15 works from his repertoire. Must-sees include short, silent film Bear, his first work produced while at university in 1993, and Queen and Country, a 2006 tribute to soldiers in Iraq, which McQueen completed as an official British war artist and now makes its debut outside the UK. This unique exhibit is on view now through early January, when it travels to Schaulager, Basel in Switzerland.