About the Performance by Brendan Fernandes

For this year’s Winter Break, event artist Brendan Fernandes has created an experience-based performance, an adaptation of a recent work entitled “Endless Summer”. Taking inspiration from his time this past summer at Ox-Bow where he was a visiting artist, he is thinking through the collaborative spirit and magic that happens at Ox-Bow. The landscape, the community and people allowed him to feel a sense of being at summer camp, specifically ballet camp where friendship and young romances can be forged. Not so different from Ox-Bow. For this piece dancers will engage in a fun, flirty and blissful dance about summer love. The dancers will move through the space of the event moving through crowds as they play a game of catch me if you can, eventually moving and ushering guests to the dining area as they give out flowers and throw petals onto the ground. The piece will end before dinner where they will dance a finale before running away!

Photos: headshot of Brendan Fernandes by Kevin Penczak; previous performances from the artist Summer Love, The Master and Form; 72 Seasons; Together We Are.

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Based in Chicago, Brendan’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. Committed to creating new spaces and new forms of agency, Brendan’s projects take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance party, part protest . . . to foster collaboration and solidarity through actions of generosity and kindness. Brendan is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship. In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, and is the recipient of a prestigious Canada Council New Chapters grant (2017), the Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020). Brendan’s projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) among many others. In his home city of Chicago he has exhibited solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Graham Foundation and DePaul Art Museum. He is Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Art Theory and Practice and represented by Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery. Current projects include performances and presentations at the Munch Museum, Oslo; The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; The Pulitzer Foundation, St Louis; The Phillip Johnson Glass House, New Cannan, and a commission by The DR Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen.

Steven Zick  
Senior Vice President  
Director, Chicago  

Steven Zick is a Senior Vice President and Director for Christie’s Chicago.  

Mr. Zick joined Christie’s in 2004, after six years with the San Francisco-based auction  house Bonhams & Butterfields. Steven and his colleagues in the Chicago regional office  cover a thirteen-state area and work with estate fiduciaries, private collectors, museums  and dealers coordinating appraisals and securing property for auctions held in New York,  London, Paris and a host of other international sales sites. Steven is also a charity  auctioneer and lectures on art and appraisal-related topics nationwide.  

Prior to joining the auction world, Steven was a lawyer with 14 years’ experience, most  recently with the Attorney General of Illinois. Specializing in federal habeas corpus and  criminal appeals, he practiced in every court, from the circuit courts of Illinois to the  Supreme Court of the United States.  

Board memberships have included the Museum Council of the Museum of Contemporary  Photography, the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum and the Junior Board of  Heartland Alliance. He also served on the Gala and Acquisitions Committees of the Society  for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Board of Governors of the  English Speaking Union. He is currently a board member of the Irish Georgian Society and a  member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council, and Emerge, the acquisition committee at  the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently, Steven joined the Trusts &  Estates Advisory Board of PAWS Chicago, an animal rescue charity. 

All Together Now is a funky little restaurant, wine shop, and cheese counter in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood. It exists to gather people around food and drink. The wine is natural, the cheese is extra-special, and the food highlights the tastiest things about being a Midwesterner.

All Together Now is led by Erin Carlman Weber (founder and owner), Abigail Zielke (chef), Kate Haleblian (sales and operations), and Rachel Johnston (GM). This quartet is backed by an indispensable team of hardworking, creative, often silly people.

All Together Now was founded in 2018 by Erin Carlman Weber and Derek Herbster, along with partners Chris Radtke and Jonny Hunter of Underground Meats.

A selection of photos from Ox-Bow’s 2022 Winter Break benefit held at Guild Row.

Photography by Jamie Kelter Davis