Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

In conjunction with the Chicago Humanities Festival, Spertus hosts an exhibition by New York-based artists and identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes, who invented a method to render, by hand, an accurate camera-obscura style tracing of the world onto a curved surface. The exhibition will include drawings, made this summer for this project, of Chicago points of interest. These include the award-winning new Spertus building, Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (pictured right) and the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, vistas of the Chicago River, historic Michigan Avenue architecture, and more.

Double Vision will be displayed in Spertus' ground floor vestibule during the Chicago Humanities Festival and will be the exclusive showcase for not only the Chicago drawings but also a series of early sculptures about light and vision that lead up to the conception of this revolutionary idea.

Ryan and Trevor Oakes graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2004. Their work is characterized by an in-depth investigation of light, vision, and the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina.

Twins' singular vision of how humans see world
By Charles Storch
Chicago Tribune
August 3, 2008

Identical twins Ryan and Trevor Oakes have shared a fascination with how the world is experienced and interpreted through sight since their childhood in Boulder, Colo.
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