under cover of a solid object, 2022
Relief in floor wax, excerpt from the artists’ contract for the work deposition (2021), debris removed from ventilation ducts under the Chicago Board of Trade’s former corn futures trading floor, gelatin silver print (circa 1974, photographer unknown; Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois, Chicago).
In 2018, Rueter, Benedict, and de Paula acquired a used trading pit from the Chicago Board of Trade, now obsolete as trading goes digital. A huge octagon with seven tiered levels where traders bought and sold corn futures, the pit itself has since traveled to Sao Paolo and back to Chicago. Here it appears only as an outline at full scale, a ghost of itself that questions what can be distilled from a thing’s remnants. A pair of documents and a photograph appear like footnotes above the floor and in the opposite corner of the gallery.
The Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA
Marissa Lee Benedict, Daniel de Paula, and David Rueter
next: a conversation between machines about Mallarmé (regarding the state of the gallery lights)