Joe Ivacic

Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Artist statement

Joseph Ivacic is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Ivacic’s practice begins with objects and images that seem immediately recognizable: a shield, a vest, a child’s backpack, a photograph drawn from current events. Working in glass and painting, he retains their outward familiarity while altering their material and function. Solid forms become transparent, protective objects become vulnerable, and documentary images recede beneath decorative floral layers. For Ivacic, recognition is only the first impression. Glass riot shields retain the posture of protection but are unable to provide it. Stenciled floral motifs drift and bleed across photographs of public events, altering how they move from immediate experience into collective memory. Across these bodies of work, power resides in what is shown, mediated, remembered, and ultimately preserved as history. Ivacic’s material transformations shift the familiar just enough for its underlying assumptions and consequences to come into view. Ivacic received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the National Liberty Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Dubuque Museum of Art. His work is held in private, institutional, and corporate collections, including Rush University Medical Center, Invenergy, and 200 S. Wacker Drive in Chicago. He received the 2018 Contemporary Artist Award from the Art...

Artwork