Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand
Feb. 6 - Aug. 16, 2009
On the 20th anniversary of the Obey Giant campaign, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston opens the first museum survey of Shepard Fairey, the influential street artist who created the now iconic Obama poster. Stickers and posters of the artist's work have appeared on street signs and buildings around the world as part of a guerrilla art campaign of global scale. Featuring over 80 works, Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand traces the artist's career over 20 years, from the Obey Giant stencil to screen prints of political revolutionaries and rock stars to recent mixed-media works and a new mural commissioned for the ICA show. In complement to the exhibition, Fairey will be creating public art works at sites around Boston. The exhibition is accompanied by special ICA edition of Supply & Demand, the retrospective publication of the artist's work.

Momentum 13: Eileen Quinlan
March 18 - July 12, 2009
Eileen Quinlan's mesmerizing work captures the mystery and illusion of the photographic image. The Boston-born artist bases her work in the studio, using pre-digital techniques such as gels, strobes and smoke machines to create her hauntingly beautiful compositions. In her series Smoke and Mirrors, Quinlan records reflections of light, color, and texture, achieving a seemingly infinite range of prismatic abstractions. The artist has had solo presentations of her work in Art Statements, Art|39|Basel, Sutton Lane, London, and Galerie Daniel Bucholz, Cologne (all 2008). Momentum 13 will be Quinlan's first solo museum exhibition. The Momentum series examines new developments in contemporary art, inviting emerging artists from the U.S. and around the world to present their work at the ICA.

Acting Out: New Social Experiments in Video
March 18 - Oct 18, 2009
Acting Out presents recent works by artists—including Javier Téllez, Phil Collins, and Artur Żmijewski—whose experiments with video are developing a new form of social portraiture. Rather than create fictional narratives or raw documentaries, the artists engage non-actors to participate in activities that reveal the complex dynamics of social relationships. Facing physical challenges, disparate political ideals, or high-stakes competition, the participants express themselves in unexpected and often moving ways. Letting chance in and leaving acting out, the videos highlight the ongoing cycles of isolation, connection, and friction that shape our lives.

Damián Ortega
Sept. 18 - Jan. 17, 2010
Damián Ortega—one of today's leading Mexican artists—draws on his former experience as a political cartoonist to bring humor and animation to the sculptural form. Ortega's work often contains cultural references to his native Mexico, while exploring larger political and societal themes. The ICA has organized the first survey exhibition of the artist's work ranging from the early 1990s through to new production made specifically for the ICA show. Organized by Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan for the ICA, the exhibition features about 17 works, including sculpture, photography, video and graphic work.

Krzysztof Wodiczko
Nov. 4, 2009 - March 7, 2010
In a new, projection-based work for the ICA, Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko will focus on the experience of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Wodiczko's politically-charged works explore the relationship between art, democracy, trauma and healing. Often taking the form of public or gallery-based projections, Wodiczko's work creates an interplay between light and dark, drawing our attention to images and stories that might remain otherwise in shadows. His new work for the ICA will examine the impact of combat and its aftermath. In 1998, the ICA commissioned Wodiczko's "Bunker Hill Monument Projection" as part of an outdoor exhibition entitled Let Freedom Ring.