Taking its title and inspiration from the seminal publication Fantastic Architecture (1970), edited by Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins, this exhibition presented various approaches to architecture, urban space, and the built environment within an international community of artists associated with Fluxus and conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s. Fantastic Architecture was presented in conjunction with the re-siting, following a major conservation treatment, of Vostell’s Concrete Traffic (1970), a monumental event-sculpture in the University of Chicago’s Campus Art Collection. The exhibition contextualized Concrete Traffic in relation to Vostell’s related works from the period, including photomontage proposals for alterations to architectural and urban spaces and event scores for happenings intended for specific cities, as well as the work of his artistic peers and interlocutors. Like its eponymous exemplar, the exhibition embraced the porousness and intellectual ferment of the experimental art world of the time, a context in which forms and concepts circulated among an international community of artists. The exhibition included works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Shigeko Kubota, Rosemary Mayer, Jim McWilliams, and Wolf Vostell. It was presented with additional support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Curated by Jacob Proctor