The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development is pleased to present Window Dressing, a site specific installation by Chicago-based artist Diane Simpson. The installation will be on view from January 26th to March 12th, 2014 at 80WSE Gallery’s satellite space, a series of five street-level windows located at the corner of Broadway and East 10th Street. A reception for the artist will be held at 80WSE Gallery’s main space at 80 Washington Square East, on Sunday January 26th from 1-3pm.

Diane Simpson is best known for her preparatory drawings and sculptures, which combine unconventional materials including fiberboard, perforated metals, faux fur, linoleum, and corrugated cardboard. Window Dressing pays homage to the “window dressers” of the 1920’s and 1930’s through the creation of a sprawling installation that is designed to exist in a series of inaccessible storefront windows and be viewed entirely by pedestrian traffic. Simpson’s conception of the project stemmed from her discovery of a 1928 bound collection of monthly trade journals for window designers, entitled MERCHANTS RECORD AND SHOW WINDOW. This publication, itself a manual containing how-to articles on designing merchandise display windows, advertisements for fixtures, mannequins, and artificial foliage, became repurposed as a sourcebook for her contemporary practice. Simpson finds endless possibility and inspiration in the window display format, which allows her to seamlessly integrate her sculptural works that are suggestive of clothing with backgrounds that evoke design of the deco period. The layering of these many components, comprising the complete installation, reflect the artist’s continued interest in blurring the distinctions between architecture, clothing, and design of various cultures and historical periods.

80WSE’s presentation of Window Dressing will be the second incarnation of the project, which was originally commissioned and installed in the six street-level windows of Wisconsin’s Racine Art Museum in 2008. For this version, Simpson has substantially reconfigured the installation, much in the way that traditional window displays exist as an ever-changing arrangement. As was the case with the window spaces in which Window Dressing was first shown, the original life of 80WSE’s window spaces was amidst a bustling department store district on lower Broadway in the late 1920’s. With each presentation of this project, Simpson seeks to transcend common notions of site specificity, instead facilitating a homecoming in which her work and the space collapse the past and the present.