We are in the process of creating an art film inspired by Henri Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit (“Thus, the Night”) quartet, a seminal work for string quartet written in 1976, steeped in the aesthetics of surrealism and the avant-garde. From the immediate to the diffuse, the tactile to complete abstraction, our film magnifies the sense of being submersed in the darkness of night, and the creation of a mirror journey through the forest of one’s own mind. Light in darkness is disorienting: it can transform the unfamiliar and make familiar unknown – like surrealism itself. Situated in three distinct environments of our region –  the lakeshore, the prairie, and the metropolis – this film is also a love letter to Chicago, highlighting the magnificent organism that is our city's world at night. Alongside more familiar scenes, Antonia Contro's stunning visual imagery guides the mind as it traverses around the twists and turns of the twilight hours. 

Equal parts music video and short film, this project is produced by the visionaries at Four/Ten Media. 

Spektral Quartet is grateful to the following for their support and partnership in making our vision a reality: Gensler, CBRE Realty, the Ragdale Foundation.

ABOUT ANTONIA CONTRO

Antonia Contro is a visual artist whose practice ranges from intimate drawings to site-specific installations and multidisciplinary collaborations. Contro’s work explores the nature of time and the meaning of knowledge: how and when we come to know what we know. Her materials include paint, pencil, video, collage, and clay, as well as sound and found objects.

Theorem, a collaborative visual and literary book with poet Elizabeth Bradfield, was published by Candor Arts in 2019 and a trade edition was released in 2020. Other site-specific exhibitions include Tempus Fugit at the American Philosophical Society Museum in 2012, Ex Libris at Chicago Cultural Center in 2011, Field Guide at Chicago’s Notebaert Museum in 2007–8, Closed/Open at The Newberry Library in 2006, and Descry at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2002.

Contro’s art was featured in Was/Is/Ought and Only Connect at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in 2020, Surrealism: The Conjured Life at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015–16, A Sense of Place, the Italian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, The Centennial Celebration: New Acquisitions 2001–2011 at the New York Public Library, and Chicago Artists at the Block Museum, 2007. She has also done numerous private commissions.

Contro’s work is in the American Philosophical Society Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Block Museum, Brandeis University, Davis Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Illinois State Museum, Hammer Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Menil Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, New York Public Library, Polaroid Collection, Smith College, Stanford, Taubman Museum, Wellesley College, Yale University, and others.

She received a Ragdale Themed Residency in 2022, a CAAP grant in 2011, a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council in 2007, and a Rockefeller fellowship in 2002.