KEVIN SHICK
THE COMMUTE
FEBRUARY 2016
CROSSWORD 1-6, 2013
Single images from grid
20 x 20 inches
$1000 each
DOWN # 4, 2013
iPEOPLE, 2013
20 x 20 inches
$1000
20 x 20 inches
$1000
LAUGHING, 2013
TALKING, 2013
20 x 20 inches
$1000
20 x 20 inches
$1000
All images are printed with archival pigment ink and paper, edition of 9
Unframed photograph prices and single images from grid prices are available upon request
WWW.KEVINSHICK.COM
TO PURCHASE ART PLEASE CONTACT CURATOR ELIZABETH WHITING
312 435 5942 OR [email protected]
Union League Club of Chicago  65 West Jackson Boulevard  Chicago, Illinois 60604  www.ulcc.org
AFRO, 2013
20 x 45 inches
$1800
DIRECT, 2013
20 x 45 inches
$1800
GREEN #5, 2013
20 x 45 inches
$1800
TAGGED, 2013
20 x 45 inches
$1800
ARTIST STATEMENT: THE COMMUTE
This series depicts the daily lives of commuters on the Rock Island train line in Chicago, just minutes from their
arrival at the terminal. This train passes by my house every day, and for years I ignored it, but one day I found myself
looking closely at the morning light on the passengers’ faces.
After I started photographing the riders, taking pictures almost every day for several months, I discovered that many
stood in the same place every day, doing the same thing, often wearing similar clothes and expressions. Others,
whether they were happy, pensive, worried, or self-distracted with a smartphone, seemed to have their actions and
outlooks determined less as the result of conscious choice than as the result of unconscious habit or unknown
personal experiences. I have come to see these pictures as windows into each rider’s personal outlook and the
experiences that may have created that outlook.
Because of the time and place where they are taken, these portraits reveal true identities, as opposed to the public
mask we often wear. As Luc Sante wrote in Walker Evans’ book of subway portraits MANY ARE CALLED, “time
spent commuting is a hiatus from social interaction…you can take off the face you wear for the benefit of others.”
We can all relate to the daily commute as a transition from our personal lives to our working lives and back. Each of
us has, by nature or habit, a unique view on life that is revealed in the unguarded moments during this transition. As
James Agee wrote in MANY ARE CALLED, “Each [person]…is an individual existence, as matchless as a thumbprint
or snowflake. … Each carries in the postures of his body, in his hands, in his face, in the eyes, the signatures of a time
and a place in the world.”
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2016 THE COMMUTE, Union League Club of Chicago
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2015 THE CHICAGO PROJECT VI, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2014 CREATIVITY IN PRACTICE, American College of Psychiatrists, San Antonio, TX
2013 THE CHICAGO PROJECT, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL