Out of the Box: A Walker Night In

Mario García Torres
Untitled (Cerámica Suro), 2003–ongoing
ceramic plates
Unique, various dimensions
Walker Commission

Mario García Torres (Mexico, b. 1975) is one of the most internationally renowned Latin American artists. He uses a variety of mediums, including film, sound, performance, “museographic installations,” and video. Often blurring original and reenactment, past and present, the artist’s work questions universal ideas about truth, certainty, and time. García Torres’s first US museum survey show, Illusion Brought Me Here, was organized by the Walker in 2018.

Like a library or archive, these ceramic dishes hold an inventory of colors used by Cerámica Suro, a workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico. As the pottery is made, artisans write their calculations for different glazes in pencil on leftover plates, using them as a kind of instruction notebook to formulate the shade and intensity of each color.

García Torres has a standing agreement with the workshop: they are to send him a plate or cup for each project they make, even if the original items were designed as a set of jars, a special commission, or other forms. By amassing the objects over time, the artist’s ongoing artwork can be seen as both a changing sculpture and an informal record of the workshop’s activities.

Alexa Horochowski
Lava Fold, 2021
dye sublimation printing on fabric
Edition of 75
28 x 36 in.
Walker Commission

With work informed by international travel and immersion in a diverse range of landscapes, Minnesota-based artist Alexa Horochowski (US, 1965) creates sculptures, photographs, video works, and installations that examine the fraught relationship between humankind, nature, and time. Her objects and images are often chosen for their complex histories, foregrounding both our impact on the earth and our vulnerabilities to climate change.

Lava Fold relates to a group of recent works on fabric in which Horochowski incorporates imagery from the lava fields of the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Big Island, Hawai’i. These imposing landscapes, she notes, are evidence of how “the destructive force of lava becomes fragile and regenerative once cooled.” On fabric, the imagery is animated, suggesting the powerful flow of lava, while the delicacy of the sheer material alludes the earth’s inherent fragility.

Jim Denomie
Tree People Tote, 2021
20oz natural canvas duck, leather
Edition of 100
15 x 13 in.
Walker Commission

Jim Denomie (US, b. 1955) is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe who lives and works in Franconia, MN. Primarily a painter, he also works in printmaking, photography, ink drawings, and found object sculpture. His narrative paintings focus mainly on political, social, cultural, and personal events (both current and historical) pertaining to issues important to Native Americans as well as his own identity. His work has been shown in 130 exhibitions throughout the United States as well as internationally and is featured in numerous private and public collections including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Denver Art Museum. Over the course of his career, he has received a number of prestigious accolades including a Bush Fellowship, two McKnight Fellowships, and most recently the 2019 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Denomie has selected a limited edition tote depicting a recent oil painting. The artist often sketches his dreams upon waking then later pulls from these images when he paints later in the day. Denomie has said that he uses women as warriors in his work because he sees them as leaders in modern tribes.

Haegue Yang
Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker), 2020
custom-made enamel pin
2 x 1 in.

Haegue Yang (South Korea, b. 1971) is probably the most celebrated contemporary Korean artist of her generation. She often creates multisensory experiences that incorporate sound, scent, and touch. In recent years, her work has taken on a performative dimension, with moveable objects arrayed in increasingly elaborate choreographies.

Part of Walker exhibition The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Yang was commissioned to make Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker) in 2020. Constructed from everyday materials such as office chair casters, these life-size marionettes are covered in skins of brass bells. They generate a subtle rattling sound when moved through space by performers transforming the historical lineage of time-based performance into spatial, sculptural, and sensorial abstraction.

The work was eventually acquired for Walker’s permanent collection, deepening a long-standing relationship with the artist. After completing the work, the artist produced a custom-made enamel pin depicting the three sculptural elements both to function as the logo for the exhibition and as a celebratory memory of the event.

Frank Big Bear
Coloring Book, 2016
paper
9 x 6 in., 16 pages
Walker Commission

Minnesota-based artist Frank Big Bear (White Earth Nation, b. 1959) is known for his intricate collages, paintings, and drawings that portray dreamlike worlds teeming with activity. His vivid and colorful scenes are often populated by myriad characters, including humans, animals, and supernatural figures. Inspired by keen observations of the environment as well as his dreams and memories, the artist’s images are rendered in a unique figurative style that blends elements from traditional Native American art, Cubism, and Surrealism with references to history, religion, pop culture, and science.

Part of the Walker’s collection, Big Bear’s work has been collected and shown by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, and the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, among others. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and United States Artists. In 2008, the artist was awarded the Bush Foundation’s Enduring Vision Award for his contribution to the arts in Minnesota.

This coloring book was made from 13 original pencil drawings. Youth from Little Earth Arts Collective wrote the text inspired by the images.

Chasity Brown
A Walker Night In Playlist, 2021
various digital platforms
Walker Commission

Chastity Brown (US, b. 1982) grew up surrounded by country and soul music in Tennessee. In the gospel church of her childhood, she played saxophone and drums and found her singing voice and a passion for music. Now based in Minneapolis, Brown has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, been featured on NPR’s “Favorite Sessions” and “First Listen,” and is in heavy rotation on 89.3 The Current.

“What I’ve realized is that the personal is political,” Brown said in a recent interview. “Just by me being a biracial, half-Black, half-white woman living in America right now is political. Just being a person of color, a queer woman of color, for that matter, is freaking political. … I’m really intrigued by the perseverance of the human spirit and the complexities and contradictions that we embody as human beings.” Melding folk, roots, and soul music, her music seems especially timely.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Brown has curated an exclusive playlist of favorite tunes that you will want to listen to again and again—not just tonight, but every night.

Jason Moran, Lizzie Fitch, and Ryan Trecartin
The Last Jazz Fest, 2018
multimedia performance
Walker Commission

“Not only a pianist and composer but also a fluent traveler in the realm of contemporary art.” —New York Times

Celebrated jazz pianist/composer/visual artist Jason Moran’s Walker-commissioned multimedia performance The Last Jazz Fest examines various ways jazz functions: as freedom music, as a model of democracy, and as a prop. The work features Moran’s trio the Bandwagon (with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) and DJ Ashland Mines in collaboration with artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, whose narrative-driven video installations explore the fluid nature of identity, community, and cultural subjectivity.

The world premiere on May 18–19, 2018, was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Jason Moran, on view in the Walker galleries April 26–August 26, 2018. The Walker’s rich history with Moran has included unique concerts, residencies, publishing projects, and commissions/premieres like Milestone (2005), his landmark collaboration with Adrian Piper, one of his first interdisciplinary works.

Amir George
Shades of Shadow, 2015
with original score by Astralblak
digital video; 6 min.
Walker Commission
Courtesy of the Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Shades of Shadow was shown in the Walker’s Sound for Silents film festival in August 2019, with Minneapolis-based Astralblak as the featured band. Created solely with found footage, this metaphysical collage of psychedelic live action/animation delves into spiritual mysticism and ritual.

Amir George, a filmmaker and curator based in Chicago, is a programmer at True/False Film Fest and cofounder of Black Radical Imagination with curator Erin Christovale. As an artist, George creates spiritual stories, juxtaposing sound and image into an experience of nonlinear perception. George’s films have screened at institutions and film festivals including Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Glasgow School of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Afrikana Film Festival, among others.

Astralblak is made up of five musicians/producers—MMYYKK, Proper-T, Greg Grease, DJ Just Nine, and Elliott—who see themselves as part of a larger movement searching for Black Excellence. Armed with various synths, drum machines, and instruments, they set out to bring a new, exploratory modern sound influenced by the greats of funk, soul, and jazz with electronic excursions, hard grooves, Afro-futurism, and soulful melodies. “Astralblak is church, it’s therapy, it’s family, it’s a space where we can express ourselves freely as black men with no limitations,” says multi-instrumentalist/vocalist MMYYKK, “Astralblak is a vessel, a spiritual and sonic culmination of our own experiences and the influences of our ancestors.”

Note: Shades of Shadow contains brief nudity.

Daniel del Prado
Martina Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit, 2021
passionfruit, mango, Thai chili, and orange bitters

Chef Daniel del Prado was born in Buenos Aires to parents of Spanish and Italian descent where his exposure to the culinary industry began at a young age. In his early 20s, del Prado began his career in Colorado—cooking at night and snowboarding during the day. He then moved to Minneapolis where he had the opportunity to work in some of the finest kitchens in town, including La Belle Vie and Solera. In 2009 he teamed up with his mentor Isaac Becker to open Bar La Grassa. In 2013, he again partnered with Becker as the executive chef of Burch Steak and Pizza Bar. He began opening his own family of restaurants in 2017 which now include the Argentinian-inspired Martina and adjacent pizza oven Rosalita in Linden Hills, Tex-Oaxcan Colita in the Armatage neighborhood, and the highly anticipated Josefina and Pizza Fina in Wayzata. Del Prado will also soon open a temporary pop-up, Café Ceres, at the Walker this spring.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, del Prado has selected his Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit. A delightful mix of rosa vermouth, passionfruit, mango, lime, Thai chili, and orange bitters, the kit includes multiple recipes, garnishes, and additional spirit recommendations.

Jamie Malone
Keep It Grand, 2021
gourmet hors d’oeuvres and chef-curated luxuries

Chef Jamie Malone has always had a life that revolved around food. She grew up cooking with her dad in St. Paul, then traveled and studied extensively abroad, immersing herself in each region’s cuisine. Her culinary career began under Chef Tim McKee at the highly lauded La Belle Vie. In 2011, she took the position of chef at Sea Change where she gained national attention and became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Rising Star Chef” in 2013 and “Best Chef Midwest” in 2014, 2015, and 2018. In 2013, Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2017, Malone opened her own restaurant, Grand Café, which became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best New Restaurant” in 2018, the same year Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2019, she earned another semifinalist spot in James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best Chef Midwest” list.

Malone has recently taken over Eastside Restaurant in Minneapolis, a glossy downtown space dedicated to serving large format food and cocktails. Her ingenuity early in the pandemic led to the delectable Keep It Grand meal kits which are filled with luxurious imported and chef-crafted delights to go. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Malone has crafted a selection of exquisite tapas that you may enjoy tonight or days from now, offering you the flexibility to carve out the perfect time to elevate your night in.

Malone’s menu includes: mini shokupan loaf (with the following spreads: duck rillettes, seasonal preserves, lobster cream cheese with Espelette chili, beurre de baratte with white anchovies and lemon zest), citrus marinated olives, spiced popcorn, Ibérico ham chips with vinegared crème fraîche dip, and banana, hazelnut, and milk chocolate parfait.

Alex DeArmond
Out of the Box, 2021
cardboard and 3d model
Edition of 75 + 3 AP
Walker Commission

Alex DeArmond is an independent graphic designer, design educator, and publisher based in Minneapolis. He earned his MFA at the Werkplaats Typografie, Netherlands. His work has been included in the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno (Czech Republic) and the Istanbul Design Biennial and has been recognized in international design competitions by AIGA, the national association for design. He’s a professor in the Department of Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout where he teaches typography and graphic design.

The division between our virtual and physical realities is becoming more and more indistinguishable on a daily basis, as we work from home, communicate with our friends and family through video calls, and even engage with art online. Several of the objects in the Out of the Box collection are in fact virtual objects, and when imagining a suitable container for such a hybrid collection, DeArmond turned to 3D animation technologies to create the evocative graphic treatment. The physical boxes were first rendered virtually in a digital space, and then with the help of game designer Joshua Seaver, DeArmond simulated an animation of liquid pouring down on to the stacked boxes—a digital fountain of sorts. By manipulating the variables within the program (viscosity, speed, volume, angle, color, etc.), DeArmond was able to use this visualization technique to pour the virtual liquid in hundreds of different ways and create the beautiful patterning on the surfaces of the physical box. Recipients are invited to set up their boxes in their homes to create a sculpture that simultaneously exists as both a physical and a virtual object.

Trisha Baga
Untitled, 2021
ceramic vessel
Unique, various dimensions
Walker Commission

Trisha Baga (US, b. 1985) is a New York–based artist whose installations navigate between the virtual and actual, projecting moving images punctuated by 3D technology onto handmade and found objects, including studio detritus and ceramics. In 2011, Baga cofounded cc, a ceramics club hosted at the West Village Greenwich House Pottery. The group models itself on amateur “clubs” and brings together people of all backgrounds and generations to socialize, collaborate, and see what happens. In 2019, Baga’s immersive installation Mollusca & the Pelvic Floor was featured in the Walker exhibition The Body Electric, and subsequently accessioned into the collection, with the generous support of the 2019 Collector’s Council.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Baga has created 20 unique ceramic objects that draw on her everyday surroundings and life. Textured and glazed with various colors, the ceramics are at times functional and at others become eccentric and humorous keepsakes.

Note: This work is in development; the picture above is a representative image.

Ann Hamilton
OVERWEAR, 2017
hand-screenprinted on natural linen
Edition of 50
42 1/2 x 26 in. and 42 1/2 x 30 in.
Produced by The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA

Ann Hamilton (US, b. 1956) is a visual artist internationally recognized for her large-scale multimedia installations, public projects, and performance collaborations. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Her numerous major commissions include projects at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (France), the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and Dia Center for the Arts, (New York), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. She represented the United States in the 1999 Venice Biennale and has exhibited extensively around the world.

Produced entirely in-house at FWM’s Studio, Hamilton designed this functional unisex apron in two sizes and colorways. Its hand screenprinted motif is inspired by a drawing from an 18th-century weaving pattern book found in the Rare Books Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. OVERWEAR evolved out of the artist’s 2016–2017 exhibition Ann Hamilton: habitus and similarly explores the intersection between cloth and shared experiences

This limited edition artist multiple was created in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum for its 40th anniversary.

Dyani White Hawk
Guided, 2021
woven blanket; 85% wool/15% cotton
48 x 68 in.
Produced by Faribault Woolen Mill, Faribault, MN

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, b. 1976) is a visual artist and independent curator with a wide-ranging artistic practice that encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and more recently, video installation. Her works, which center the power of female strength and community, often bring together aspects of Lakota design motifs, gestures, and patterns, which the artist foregrounds to “call out the lack of representation in mainstream educational institutions and literature, break down misconceptions and generalizations, and reinforce the importance of Native voices within contemporary art.” Represented in the Walker’s collection, White Hawk also designs functional items, including jewelry and blankets, as seen in her design for a limited run winter blanket woven in Minnesota at the storied Faribault Woolen Mill, one of the last vertical woolen mills in America.

The Guided wool throw is skillfully manufactured by Faribault Woolen Mill, one of the last vertical woolen mills in America, in collaboration with the American Craft Council on the occasion of The Great Northern 2021.

Yakov Protazanov
Aelita: Queen of Mars, 1924
35mm film transferred to digital (black and white, silent); 99 min.
Courtesy of Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) is considered the first feature-length science fiction film to create a futuristic effect through elaborate set design and costumes. Aelita juxtaposes life on Mars with depictions of early 20th-century Moscow, evoking the class struggle present in Russian society after the October Revolution and during the beginning of Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Aelita: Queen of Mars inspired Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis.

The Walker holds in its collection a silent 35mm print of the film with English intertitles, one of two in the United States (the other is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art). This rare print was struck for the Walker on the occasion of the 1990 exhibition Art into Life: Russian Constructivism, 1914–1932. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, the Walker will produce a limited 25 digital copies for the Champion’s and Connoisseur’s Crates.

Mario García Torres
Untitled (Cerámica Suro), 2003–ongoing
ceramic plates
Unique, various dimensions
Walker Commission

Mario García Torres (Mexico, b. 1975) is one of the most internationally renowned Latin American artists. He uses a variety of mediums, including film, sound, performance, “museographic installations,” and video. Often blurring original and reenactment, past and present, the artist’s work questions universal ideas about truth, certainty, and time. García Torres’s first US museum survey show, Illusion Brought Me Here, was organized by the Walker in 2018.

Like a library or archive, these ceramic dishes hold an inventory of colors used by Cerámica Suro, a workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico. As the pottery is made, artisans write their calculations for different glazes in pencil on leftover plates, using them as a kind of instruction notebook to formulate the shade and intensity of each color.

García Torres has a standing agreement with the workshop: they are to send him a plate or cup for each project they make, even if the original items were designed as a set of jars, a special commission, or other forms. By amassing the objects over time, the artist’s ongoing artwork can be seen as both a changing sculpture and an informal record of the workshop’s activities.

Alexa Horochowski
Lava Fold, 2021
dye sublimation printing on fabric
Edition of 75
28 x 36 in.
Walker Commission

With work informed by international travel and immersion in a diverse range of landscapes, Minnesota-based artist Alexa Horochowski (US, 1965) creates sculptures, photographs, video works, and installations that examine the fraught relationship between humankind, nature, and time. Her objects and images are often chosen for their complex histories, foregrounding both our impact on the earth and our vulnerabilities to climate change.

Lava Fold relates to a group of recent works on fabric in which Horochowski incorporates imagery from the lava fields of the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Big Island, Hawai’i. These imposing landscapes, she notes, are evidence of how “the destructive force of lava becomes fragile and regenerative once cooled.” On fabric, the imagery is animated, suggesting the powerful flow of lava, while the delicacy of the sheer material alludes the earth’s inherent fragility.

Jim Denomie
Tree People Tote, 2021
20oz natural canvas duck, leather
Edition of 100
15 x 13 in.
Walker Commission

Jim Denomie (US, b. 1955) is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe who lives and works in Franconia, MN. Primarily a painter, he also works in printmaking, photography, ink drawings, and found object sculpture. His narrative paintings focus mainly on political, social, cultural, and personal events (both current and historical) pertaining to issues important to Native Americans as well as his own identity. His work has been shown in 130 exhibitions throughout the United States as well as internationally and is featured in numerous private and public collections including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Denver Art Museum. Over the course of his career, he has received a number of prestigious accolades including a Bush Fellowship, two McKnight Fellowships, and most recently the 2019 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Denomie has selected a limited edition tote depicting a recent oil painting. The artist often sketches his dreams upon waking then later pulls from these images when he paints later in the day. Denomie has said that he uses women as warriors in his work because he sees them as leaders in modern tribes.

Haegue Yang
Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker), 2020
custom-made enamel pin
2 x 1 in.

Haegue Yang (South Korea, b. 1971) is probably the most celebrated contemporary Korean artist of her generation. She often creates multisensory experiences that incorporate sound, scent, and touch. In recent years, her work has taken on a performative dimension, with moveable objects arrayed in increasingly elaborate choreographies.

Part of Walker exhibition The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Yang was commissioned to make Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker) in 2020. Constructed from everyday materials such as office chair casters, these life-size marionettes are covered in skins of brass bells. They generate a subtle rattling sound when moved through space by performers transforming the historical lineage of time-based performance into spatial, sculptural, and sensorial abstraction.

The work was eventually acquired for Walker’s permanent collection, deepening a long-standing relationship with the artist. After completing the work, the artist produced a custom-made enamel pin depicting the three sculptural elements both to function as the logo for the exhibition and as a celebratory memory of the event.

Frank Big Bear
Coloring Book, 2016
paper
9 x 6 in., 16 pages
Walker Commission

Minnesota-based artist Frank Big Bear (White Earth Nation, b. 1959) is known for his intricate collages, paintings, and drawings that portray dreamlike worlds teeming with activity. His vivid and colorful scenes are often populated by myriad characters, including humans, animals, and supernatural figures. Inspired by keen observations of the environment as well as his dreams and memories, the artist’s images are rendered in a unique figurative style that blends elements from traditional Native American art, Cubism, and Surrealism with references to history, religion, pop culture, and science.

Part of the Walker’s collection, Big Bear’s work has been collected and shown by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, and the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, among others. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and United States Artists. In 2008, the artist was awarded the Bush Foundation’s Enduring Vision Award for his contribution to the arts in Minnesota.

This coloring book was made from 13 original pencil drawings. Youth from Little Earth Arts Collective wrote the text inspired by the images.

Chasity Brown
A Walker Night In Playlist, 2021
various digital platforms
Walker Commission

Chastity Brown (US, b. 1982) grew up surrounded by country and soul music in Tennessee. In the gospel church of her childhood, she played saxophone and drums and found her singing voice and a passion for music. Now based in Minneapolis, Brown has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, been featured on NPR’s Favorite Sessions and First Listen, and is in heavy rotation on 89.3 The Current.

“What I’ve realized is that the personal is political,” Brown said in a recent interview. “Just by me being a biracial, half-black, half-white woman living in America right now is political. Just being a person of color, a queer woman of color, for that matter, is freaking political. … I’m really intrigued by the perseverance of the human spirit and the complexities and contradictions that we embody as human beings.” Melding folk, roots, and soul music, her music seems especially timely.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Brown has curated an exclusive playlist of favorite tunes that you will want to listen to again and again—not just tonight, but every night.

Jason Moran, Lizzie Fitch, and Ryan Trecartin
The Last Jazz Fest, 2018
multimedia performance
Walker Commission

“Not only a pianist and composer but also a fluent traveler in the realm of contemporary art.” —New York Times

Celebrated jazz pianist/composer/visual artist Jason Moran’s Walker-commissioned multimedia performance The Last Jazz Fest examines various ways jazz functions: as freedom music, as a model of democracy, and as a prop. The work features Moran’s trio the Bandwagon (with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) and DJ Ashland Mines in collaboration with artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, whose narrative-driven video installations explore the fluid nature of identity, community, and cultural subjectivity.

The world premiere on May 18–19, 2018, was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Jason Moran, on view in the Walker galleries April 26–August 26, 2018. The Walker’s rich history with Moran has included unique concerts, residencies, publishing projects, and commissions/premieres like Milestone (2005), his landmark collaboration with Adrian Piper, one of his first interdisciplinary works.

Amir George
Shades of Shadow, 2015
with original score by Astralblak
digital video; 6 min.
Walker Commission
Courtesy of the Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Shades of Shadow was shown in the Walker’s Sound for Silents film festival in August 2019, with Minneapolis-based Astralblak as the featured band. Created solely with found footage, this metaphysical collage of psychedelic live action/animation delves into spiritual mysticism and ritual.

Amir George, a filmmaker and curator based in Chicago, is a programmer at True/False Film Fest and cofounder of Black Radical Imagination with curator Erin Christovale. As an artist, George creates spiritual stories, juxtaposing sound and image into an experience of nonlinear perception. George’s films have screened at institutions and film festivals including Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Glasgow School of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Afrikana Film Festival, among others.

Astralblak is made up of five musicians/producers—MMYYKK, Proper-T, Greg Grease, DJ Just Nine, and Elliott—who see themselves as part of a larger movement searching for Black Excellence. Armed with various synths, drum machines, and instruments, they set out to bring a new, exploratory modern sound influenced by the greats of funk, soul, and jazz with electronic excursions, hard grooves, Afro-futurism, and soulful melodies. “Astralblak is church, it’s therapy, it’s family, it’s a space where we can express ourselves freely as black men with no limitations,” says multi-instrumentalist/vocalist MMYYKK, “Astralblak is a vessel, a spiritual and sonic culmination of our own experiences and the influences of our ancestors.”

Note: Shades of Shadow contains brief nudity.

Daniel del Prado
Martina Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit, 2021
passionfruit, mango, Thai chili, and orange bitters

Chef Daniel del Prado was born in Buenos Aires to parents of Spanish and Italian descent where his exposure to the culinary industry began at a young age. In his early 20s, del Prado began his career in Colorado—cooking at night and snowboarding during the day. He then moved to Minneapolis where he had the opportunity to work in some of the finest kitchens in town, including La Belle Vie and Solera. In 2009 he teamed up with his mentor Isaac Becker to open Bar La Grassa. In 2013, he again partnered with Becker as the executive chef of Burch Steak and Pizza Bar. He began opening his own family of restaurants in 2017 which now include the Argentinian-inspired Martina and adjacent pizza oven Rosalita in Linden Hills, Tex-Oaxcan Colita in the Armatage neighborhood, and the highly anticipated Josefina and Pizza Fina in Wayzata. Del Prado will also soon open a temporary pop-up, Café Ceres, at the Walker this spring.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, del Prado has selected his Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit. A delightful mix of rosa vermouth, passionfruit, mango, lime, Thai chili, and orange bitters, the kit includes multiple recipes, garnishes, and additional spirit recommendations.

Jamie Malone
Keep It Grand, 2021
gourmet hors d’oeuvres and chef-curated luxuries

Chef Jamie Malone has always had a life that revolved around food. She grew up cooking with her dad in St. Paul, then traveled and studied extensively abroad, immersing herself in each region’s cuisine. Her culinary career began under Chef Tim McKee at the highly lauded La Belle Vie. In 2011, she took the position of chef at Sea Change where she gained national attention and became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Rising Star Chef” in 2013 and “Best Chef Midwest” in 2014, 2015, and 2018. In 2013, Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2017, Malone opened her own restaurant, Grand Café, which became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best New Restaurant” in 2018, the same year Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2019, she earned another semifinalist spot in James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best Chef Midwest” list.

Malone has recently taken over Eastside Restaurant in Minneapolis, a glossy downtown space dedicated to serving large format food and cocktails. Her ingenuity early in the pandemic led to the delectable Keep It Grand meal kits which are filled with luxurious imported and chef-crafted delights to go. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Malone has crafted a selection of exquisite tapas that you may enjoy tonight or days from now, offering you the flexibility to carve out the perfect time to elevate your night in.

Malone’s menu includes: mini shokupan loaf (with the following spreads: duck rillettes, seasonal preserves, lobster cream cheese with Espelette chili, beurre de baratte with white anchovies and lemon zest), citrus marinated olives, spiced popcorn, Ibérico ham chips with vinegared crème fraîche dip, and banana, hazelnut, and milk chocolate parfait.

Alex DeArmond
Out of the Box, 2021
cardboard and animated gif
Edition of 75 + 3 AP
Walker Commission

Alex DeArmond is an independent graphic designer, design educator, and publisher based in Minneapolis. He earned his MFA at the Werkplaats Typografie, Netherlands. His work has been included in the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno (Czech Republic) and the Istanbul Design Biennial and has been recognized in international design competitions by AIGA, the national association for design. He’s a professor in the Department of Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout where he teaches typography and graphic design.

The division between our virtual and physical realities is becoming more and more indistinguishable on a daily basis, as we work from home, communicate with our friends and family through video calls, and even engage with art online. Several of the objects in the Out of the Box collection are in fact virtual objects, and when imagining a suitable container for such a hybrid collection, DeArmond turned to 3D animation technologies to create the evocative graphic treatment. The physical boxes were first rendered virtually in a digital space, and then with the help of game designer Joshua Seaver, DeArmond simulated an animation of liquid pouring down on to the stacked boxes—a digital fountain of sorts. By manipulating the variables within the program (viscosity, speed, volume, angle, color, etc.), DeArmond was able to use this visualization technique to pour the virtual liquid in hundreds of different ways and create the beautiful patterning on the surfaces of the physical box. Recipients are invited to set up their boxes in their homes to create a sculpture that simultaneously exists as both a physical and a virtual object.

1.
Banu Cennetoğlu 

CATALOG 2009, 2009–ongoing
c-print
Edition 1 + 1 AP
16 x 24 in.

In her wide-ranging cross-disciplinary practice, Banu Cennetoğlu (Turkey, b. 1970) uses objects, images, texts, and printed matter to continuously scrutinize, contemplate, and question the position of the artist/individual in relation to and within the complex geopolitical conditions of our time.

In 2019, the Walker acquired her most ambitious work to date, CATALOG 2009. This monumental moving image piece, originally created for the Turkish Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, includes the artist’s entire visual archive dating June 10, 2006–March 21, 2018. Produced to serve as a mail-order catalog, the book features 450 photographs from the artist’s personal archive. The images document various spaces and are classified into fifteen categories such as “caution,” “vanity,” and “replacement.” During the Biennale, viewers were invited to download selected images for free. Since November 22, 2009, the last day of the 53rd Venice Biennale, the work has continued to exist as an “old” catalog, with each photo available in 3 formats (S/M/L). All are editions of 1 + 1 AP.

2.
Pao Houa Her (SOLD)
untitled (black and white cut poppy), 2019
archival inkjet print mounted on Dibond
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
20 x 16 in.

untitled (opium flower with pink fabric), 2019
archival inkjet print mounted on Dibond
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
20 x 16 in.

Pao Houa Her (Laos, b. 1982) is an artist who lives and works in Minnesota. Through photography, the artist examines themes of migration, displacement, and diasporic cultures, particularly in relation to the Hmong American community. Her’s photographs draw on traditions of portraiture and still life, critically and playfully engaging the boundaries between artifice and reality, landscape and studio backdrop, color and black-and-white photography.

In this diptych, the artist focuses her lens on the poppy flower, a plant commonly featured in traditional Hmong studio portraiture. Despite its brilliant color and association with a period of prosperity due to Hmong expertise in opium cultivation, the flower also points to the violent history of Western interference in Laos, from French colonization to the American-led war in Vietnam. The Walker recently acquired a grouping of seven works from this same series, now on view in Five Ways In: Themes from the Collection.

3.
Baseera Khan (SOLD)
Acoustic Sound Blanket Notes, 2021
graphite on paper
20 x 16 1/2 in.

New York–based artist Baseera Khan (US, b. 1980) employs music, fashion photography, textiles, installations, and performances to grapple with capitalism and its exertion on our bodies, religions, and cultures. Rather than considering her art as a form of “activism,” however, her research-based practice brings to the surface the non-neutrality of the spaces that our bodies occupy, especially for those who are disenfranchised by capitalist-driven societies like the United States. Two of Khan’s works, a major sculpture and a digital collage, were recently acquired by the Walker.

This unique work is part of a series of chromatic collaged print sets realized in a handmade framing system with spacers made from the same Kashmiri rugs. Roman ruins, ancient mosques, and pages of Khan’s own reading material, including issues of Mosaik from the 1980s and Arundhati Roy’s End of Imagination, are pieced together to draw connections between political revolutionary activities in Central Europe and India.

4.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase (SOLD)
Dance Dress in the Dark, 2019
watercolor, marker, pen, plastic rhinestone, fingernail polish on paper
24 x 18 in.

Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s (US, b. 1989) is a rising star within the new generation of painters in the United States. His practice is a hybrid one, ranging across painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture, often all within the same work. Through contorted figures and fractured compositions that float seamlessly between historical and contemporary styles and references, Chase portrays a form of self-expression that puts the human touch at the forefront of his art. His figurative paintings highlight the daily lives of queer Black men and the difficulties faced by defining one’s identity as such in contemporary society. Walker has acquired two works by the artist: a major painting, Dawn Embrace (2018) and a recent work on paper, blown out (2020).

In the drawing Dance Dress in the Dark, 2019 the artist experiments with new forms of non-binary gender expression. His use of gendered items and symbolization, such as fashion and make-up, is rich in ball culture, which has for generations been a haven for LGBTQIA+ people of color. As a minority within a minority, many of Chase’s colors and cues are inspired by music and pop culture aesthetics common in the 1990s Black community in which he grew up.

5.
Walter Price (SOLD)
Ya daddy got ya a white Rottweiler! YO lil friends aint got these!, 2020
wax pastel, graphite, duct tape, oil pastel, pen, and color pencil on tag board
24 x 18 in.

Walter Price (US, b. 1989) is one of the most exciting American artists of his generation. His paintings and drawings tread the line between figuration and abstraction, grounded in a visual vocabulary informed by both personal and shared experience. Fusing a wide range of references that simultaneously signal individual identities and trans-cultural realities of the human condition, as well as a deep understanding of art history, Price’s work presents an intense investigation of the limits and possibilities of (visual) knowledge. In 2020, the Walker acquired a major painting titled Step into the Spotlight (2018), the first of Price’s works to enter the collection.

Drawing is the foundation of Price’s practice. “Everything starts with a line,” the artist says. He expands the mark-making possibilities of colored pencil, graphite, marker, and oil pastel in constantly varying gestures paired with collage––pages from books and magazines, torn pieces of paper, packing tape, commercial stickers––and appropriated printmaking methods. This drawing is part of a recent series of works produced during a residency at the Fürstenberg Contemporary held at the Heiligenberg Castle in Germany.

Anthea Hamilton
Cabbage Five Ways, 2020
pure natural perfume oils
Variable dimensions
Unique, five variations
Walker Commission

Anthea Hamilton (UK, b. 1978) works across mediums, incorporating sculpture, installation, and performance into her practice. Created from a combination of objects and images, both found and made, the environments she produces are live and conversational, at once humorous and serious, minimal and maximal.

On the occasion of The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, a major Walker exhibition opening Spring 2021, Hamilton has created a new commissioned work called Cabbage Five Ways, that responds to the Walker’s sculpture collection by exploring the correlations between body language and the familiarity of place. For this piece, Hamilton worked with the esteemed Creative Perfumers London to evolve five unique scents in five unique bottles. Each fragrance was inspired by the concept of the commission as well as the personalities and characters of the five Minneapolis-based performers who will wear them. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, each Connoisseur’s Crate will include one of the following unique profiles:

Joan Jonas
Untitled (Butterfly), 2015
cashmere, silk, and wool shawl in wooden box
Edition of 160 + 10 APs
55 x 55 in.
Produced by Fondazione Ratti, Como, Italy

Joan Jonas (US, b. 1936) is a pioneer of video/performance art and a multimedia artist. Her influence is crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theater. Throughout her prolific career, Jonas has been engaging in an elusive portrayal of female identity and the intersections of her physical and spiritual body. In 2019, on the occasion of the Walker exhibition The Body Electric, the Walker acquired a major installation titled Funnel (1974/2019). The work was first presented at the Walker as a public program accompanying the exhibition Projected Images (1974).

This hand-printed shawl, made in Como, Italy by Ratti S.p.A., is inspired by the artist’s aesthetic research. The central motif is the butterfly, which is an iconic, recurring element in her practice. As a nod to notable late 19th-century art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg, Jonas sees butterflies as symbols that fill the modern spiritual vacuum. Each shawl is hand-signed and includes a numbered Certificate of Authenticity.

Dyani White Hawk
We Walk Together, 2017
pure virgin wool and cotton un-napped, felt bound blanket with custom suede patch
Sold-out limited edition 64 in x 80 in.
Collaboration with Ginew; woven by Pendleton Woolen Mills, Portland, OR

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, b. 1976) is a visual artist and independent curator with a wide-ranging artistic practice that encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and more recently, video installation. Her works, which center the power of female strength and community, often bring together aspects of Lakota design motifs, gestures, and patterns, which the artist foregrounds to “call out the lack of representation in mainstream educational institutions and literature, break down misconceptions and generalizations, and reinforce the importance of Native voices within contemporary art.”

White Hawk also designs functional items through Četan Ska Designs, including jewelry and blankets, as seen in We Walk Together, a blanket project produced in collaboration with Ginew, a Native-owned apparel company based in Portland, Oregon.

Trisha Baga
Untitled, 2021
ceramic vessel
Unique, various dimensions
Walker Commission

Trisha Baga (US, b. 1985) is a New York–based artist whose installations navigate between the virtual and actual, projecting moving images punctuated by 3D technology onto handmade and found objects, including studio detritus and ceramics. In 2011, Baga cofounded cc, a ceramics club hosted at the West Village Greenwich House Pottery. The group models itself on amateur “clubs” and brings together people of all backgrounds and generations to socialize, collaborate, and see what happens. In 2019, Baga’s immersive installation Mollusca & the Pelvic Floor was featured in the Walker exhibition The Body Electric, and subsequently accessioned into the collection, with the generous support of the 2019 Collector’s Council.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Baga has created 20 unique ceramic objects that draw on her everyday surroundings and life. Textured and glazed with various colors, the ceramics are at times functional and at others become eccentric and humorous keepsakes.

Note: This work is in development; the picture above is a representative image.

Yakov Protazanov
Aelita: Queen of Mars, 1924
35mm film transferred to digital (black and white, silent); 99 min.
Courtesy of Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) is considered the first feature-length science fiction film to create a futuristic effect through elaborate set design and costumes. Aelita juxtaposes life on Mars with depictions of early 20th-century Moscow, evoking the class struggle present in Russian society after the October Revolution and during the beginning of Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Aelita: Queen of Mars inspired Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis.

The Walker holds in its collection a silent 35mm print of the film with English intertitles, one of two in the United States (the other is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art). This rare print was struck for the Walker on the occasion of the 1990 exhibition Art into Life: Russian Constructivism, 1914–1932. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, the Walker will produce a limited 25 digital copies for the Champion’s and Connoisseur’s Crates.

Mario García Torres
Untitled (Cerámica Suro), 2003–ongoing
ceramic plates
Unique, various dimensions
Walker Commission

Mario García Torres (Mexico, b. 1975) is one of the most internationally renowned Latin American artists. He uses a variety of mediums, including film, sound, performance, “museographic installations,” and video. Often blurring original and reenactment, past and present, the artist’s work questions universal ideas about truth, certainty, and time. García Torres’s first US museum survey show, Illusion Brought Me Here, was organized by the Walker in 2018.

Like a library or archive, these ceramic dishes hold an inventory of colors used by Cerámica Suro, a workshop in Guadalajara, Mexico. As the pottery is made, artisans write their calculations for different glazes in pencil on leftover plates, using them as a kind of instruction notebook to formulate the shade and intensity of each color.

García Torres has a standing agreement with the workshop: they are to send him a plate or cup for each project they make, even if the original items were designed as a set of jars, a special commission, or other forms. By amassing the objects over time, the artist’s ongoing artwork can be seen as both a changing sculpture and an informal record of the workshop’s activities.

Alexa Horochowski
Lava Fold, 2021
dye sublimation printing on fabric
Edition of 75
28 x 36 in.
Walker Commission

With work informed by international travel and immersion in a diverse range of landscapes, Minnesota-based artist Alexa Horochowski (US, 1965) creates sculptures, photographs, video works, and installations that examine the fraught relationship between humankind, nature, and time. Her objects and images are often chosen for their complex histories, foregrounding both our impact on the earth and our vulnerabilities to climate change.

Lava Fold relates to a group of recent works on fabric in which Horochowski incorporates imagery from the lava fields of the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Big Island, Hawai’i. These imposing landscapes, she notes, are evidence of how “the destructive force of lava becomes fragile and regenerative once cooled.” On fabric, the imagery is animated, suggesting the powerful flow of lava, while the delicacy of the sheer material alludes the earth’s inherent fragility.

Jim Denomie
Tree People Tote, 2021
20oz natural canvas duck, leather
Edition of 100
15 x 13 in.
Walker Commission

Jim Denomie (US, b. 1955) is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe who lives and works in Franconia, MN. Primarily a painter, he also works in printmaking, photography, ink drawings, and found object sculpture. His narrative paintings focus mainly on political, social, cultural, and personal events (both current and historical) pertaining to issues important to Native Americans as well as his own identity. His work has been shown in 130 exhibitions throughout the United States as well as internationally and is featured in numerous private and public collections including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Denver Art Museum. Over the course of his career, he has received a number of prestigious accolades including a Bush Fellowship, two McKnight Fellowships, and most recently the 2019 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Denomie has selected a limited edition tote depicting a recent oil painting. The artist often sketches his dreams upon waking then later pulls from these images when he paints later in the day. Denomie has said that he uses women as warriors in his work because he sees them as leaders in modern tribes.

Haegue Yang
Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker), 2020
custom-made enamel pin
2 x 1 in.

Haegue Yang (South Korea, b. 1971) is probably the most celebrated contemporary Korean artist of her generation. She often creates multisensory experiences that incorporate sound, scent, and touch. In recent years, her work has taken on a performative dimension, with moveable objects arrayed in increasingly elaborate choreographies.

Part of Walker exhibition The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Yang was commissioned to make Sonic Intermediates – Triad Walker Trinity (Sonic Intermediate – Tripodal Venting Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Spinning Mask on Parasol Walker, Sonic Intermediate – Botanical Bi-Headed Creeping Walker) in 2020. Constructed from everyday materials such as office chair casters, these life-size marionettes are covered in skins of brass bells. They generate a subtle rattling sound when moved through space by performers transforming the historical lineage of time-based performance into spatial, sculptural, and sensorial abstraction.

The work was eventually acquired for Walker’s permanent collection, deepening a long-standing relationship with the artist. After completing the work, the artist produced a custom-made enamel pin depicting the three sculptural elements both to function as the logo for the exhibition and as a celebratory memory of the event.

Frank Big Bear
Coloring Book, 2016
paper
9 x 6 in., 16 pages
Walker Commission

Minnesota-based artist Frank Big Bear (White Earth Nation, b. 1959) is known for his intricate collages, paintings, and drawings that portray dreamlike worlds teeming with activity. His vivid and colorful scenes are often populated by myriad characters, including humans, animals, and supernatural figures. Inspired by keen observations of the environment as well as his dreams and memories, the artist’s images are rendered in a unique figurative style that blends elements from traditional Native American art, Cubism, and Surrealism with references to history, religion, pop culture, and science.

Part of the Walker’s collection, Big Bear’s work has been collected and shown by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, and the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, among others. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and United States Artists. In 2008, the artist was awarded the Bush Foundation’s Enduring Vision Award for his contribution to the arts in Minnesota.

This coloring book was made from 13 original pencil drawings. Youth from Little Earth Arts Collective wrote the text inspired by the images.

Chasity Brown
A Walker Night In Playlist, 2021
various digital platforms
Walker Commission

Chastity Brown (US, b. 1982) grew up surrounded by country and soul music in Tennessee. In the gospel church of her childhood, she played saxophone and drums and found her singing voice and a passion for music. Now based in Minneapolis, Brown has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, been featured on NPR’s Favorite Sessions and First Listen, and is in heavy rotation on 89.3 The Current.

“What I’ve realized is that the personal is political,” Brown said in a recent interview. “Just by me being a biracial, half-Black, half-white woman living in America right now is political. Just being a person of color, a queer woman of color, for that matter, is freaking political. … I’m really intrigued by the perseverance of the human spirit and the complexities and contradictions that we embody as human beings.” Melding folk, roots, and soul music, her music seems especially timely.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Brown has curated an exclusive playlist of favorite tunes that you will want to listen to again and again—not just tonight, but every night.

Jason Moran, Lizzie Fitch, and Ryan Trecartin
The Last Jazz Fest, 2018
multimedia performance
Walker Commission

“Not only a pianist and composer but also a fluent traveler in the realm of contemporary art.” —New York Times

Celebrated jazz pianist/composer/visual artist Jason Moran’s Walker-commissioned multimedia performance The Last Jazz Fest examines various ways jazz functions: as freedom music, as a model of democracy, and as a prop. The work features Moran’s trio the Bandwagon (with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits) and DJ Ashland Mines in collaboration with artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, whose narrative-driven video installations explore the fluid nature of identity, community, and cultural subjectivity.

The world premiere on May 18–19, 2018, was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Jason Moran, on view in the Walker galleries April 26–August 26, 2018. The Walker’s rich history with Moran has included unique concerts, residencies, publishing projects, and commissions/premieres like Milestone (2005), his landmark collaboration with Adrian Piper, one of his first interdisciplinary works.

Amir George
Shades of Shadow, 2015
with original score by Astralblak
digital video; 6 min.
Walker Commission
Courtesy of the Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection

Shades of Shadow was shown in the Walker’s Sound for Silents film festival in August 2019, with Minneapolis-based Astralblak as the featured band. Created solely with found footage, this metaphysical collage of psychedelic live action/animation delves into spiritual mysticism and ritual.

Amir George, a filmmaker and curator based in Chicago, is a programmer at True/False Film Fest and cofounder of Black Radical Imagination with curator Erin Christovale. As an artist, George creates spiritual stories, juxtaposing sound and image into an experience of nonlinear perception. George’s films have screened at institutions and film festivals including Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Glasgow School of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and Afrikana Film Festival, among others.

Astralblak is made up of five musicians/producers—MMYYKK, Proper-T, Greg Grease, DJ Just Nine, and Elliott—who see themselves as part of a larger movement searching for Black Excellence. Armed with various synths, drum machines, and instruments, they set out to bring a new, exploratory modern sound influenced by the greats of funk, soul, and jazz with electronic excursions, hard grooves, Afro-futurism, and soulful melodies. “Astralblak is church, it’s therapy, it’s family, it’s a space where we can express ourselves freely as black men with no limitations,” says multi-instrumentalist/vocalist MMYYKK, “Astralblak is a vessel, a spiritual and sonic culmination of our own experiences and the influences of our ancestors.”

Note: Shades of Shadow contains brief nudity.

Daniel del Prado
Martina Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit, 2021
passionfruit, mango, Thai chili, and orange bitters

Chef Daniel del Prado was born in Buenos Aires to parents of Spanish and Italian descent where his exposure to the culinary industry began at a young age. In his early 20s, del Prado began his career in Colorado—cooking at night and snowboarding during the day. He then moved to Minneapolis where he had the opportunity to work in some of the finest kitchens in town, including La Belle Vie and Solera. In 2009 he teamed up with his mentor Isaac Becker to open Bar La Grassa. In 2013, he again partnered with Becker as the executive chef of Burch Steak and Pizza Bar. He began opening his own family of restaurants in 2017 which now include the Argentinian-inspired Martina and adjacent pizza oven Rosalita in Linden Hills, Tex-Oaxcan Colita in the Armatage neighborhood, and the highly anticipated Josefina and Pizza Fina in Wayzata. Del Prado will also soon open a temporary pop-up, Café Ceres, at the Walker this spring.

For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, del Prado has selected his Paraíso Cordial and Paraíso Cocktail Kit. A delightful mix of rosa vermouth, passionfruit, mango, lime, Thai chili, and orange bitters, the kit includes multiple recipes, garnishes, and additional spirit recommendations.

Jamie Malone
Keep It Grand, 2021
gourmet hors d’oeuvres and chef-curated luxuries

Chef Jamie Malone has always had a life that revolved around food. She grew up cooking with her dad in St. Paul, then traveled and studied extensively abroad, immersing herself in each region’s cuisine. Her culinary career began under Chef Tim McKee at the highly lauded La Belle Vie. In 2011, she took the position of chef at Sea Change where she gained national attention and became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Rising Star Chef” in 2013 and “Best Chef Midwest” in 2014, 2015, and 2018. In 2013, Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2017, Malone opened her own restaurant, Grand Café, which became a semifinalist for the James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best New Restaurant” in 2018, the same year Malone was also named one of Food and Wine magazine’s “Best New Chefs.” In 2019, she earned another semifinalist spot in James Beard Award Foundation’s “Best Chef Midwest” list.

Malone has recently taken over Eastside Restaurant in Minneapolis, a glossy downtown space dedicated to serving large format food and cocktails. Her ingenuity early in the pandemic led to the delectable Keep It Grand meal kits which are filled with luxurious imported and chef-crafted delights to go. For Out of the Box: A Walker Night In, Malone has crafted a selection of exquisite tapas that you may enjoy tonight or days from now, offering you the flexibility to carve out the perfect time to elevate your night in.

Malone’s menu includes: mini shokupan loaf (with the following spreads: duck rillettes, seasonal preserves, lobster cream cheese with Espelette chili, beurre de baratte with white anchovies and lemon zest), citrus marinated olives, spiced popcorn, Ibérico ham chips with vinegared crème fraîche dip, and banana, hazelnut, and milk chocolate parfait.

Alex DeArmond
Out of the Box, 2021
cardboard and animated gif
Edition of 75 + 3 AP
Walker Commission

Alex DeArmond is an independent graphic designer, design educator, and publisher based in Minneapolis. He earned his MFA at the Werkplaats Typografie, Netherlands. His work has been included in the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno (Czech Republic) and the Istanbul Design Biennial and has been recognized in international design competitions by AIGA, the national association for design. He’s a professor in the Department of Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout where he teaches typography and graphic design.

The division between our virtual and physical realities is becoming more and more indistinguishable on a daily basis, as we work from home, communicate with our friends and family through video calls, and even engage with art online. Several of the objects in the Out of the Box collection are in fact virtual objects, and when imagining a suitable container for such a hybrid collection, DeArmond turned to 3D animation technologies to create the evocative graphic treatment. The physical boxes were first rendered virtually in a digital space, and then with the help of game designer Joshua Seaver, DeArmond simulated an animation of liquid pouring down on to the stacked boxes—a digital fountain of sorts. By manipulating the variables within the program (viscosity, speed, volume, angle, color, etc.), DeArmond was able to use this visualization technique to pour the virtual liquid in hundreds of different ways and create the beautiful patterning on the surfaces of the physical box. Recipients are invited to set up their boxes in their homes to create a sculpture that simultaneously exists as both a physical and a virtual object.