Tony LewisThe Long and Short of It

For a new exhibition at the Renaissance Society, Tony Lewis focuses on his ongoing use of stenographic shorthand symbols—which transcribe speech into quick fluid strokes—as a starting point for drawing. Its full title sets the scene: The Long and Short of It: An Introduction to Gregg Shorthand as the Amalgamator of Language Systems, Drawing, Abstraction, and Improvisational Gesture in the Work of Tony Lewis. Presenting new and recent works, from multiple series, the exhibition is shaped with the institution’s unique gallery space in mind. Leaping off from the original uses of shorthand in other settings, Lewis’s drawings take us to unexpected places as meaning making and gesture converge.

Over the past fifteen years, Lewis has developed an inventive practice that has drawing at its core. Often working at a large scale, he uses powdered graphite, pencil, and paper in varied ways to feel out what the medium can do or to explore new forms drawing might take. Across his practice over time, he has turned to a wide range of visual and written sources, including the stenographic systems at the heart of this show.

Lewis’s ongoing exploration of drawing is equally an investigation of language and how it is used. From the start, Lewis has been probing at the formal qualities of language, how writing can turn into a kind of abstraction, and how linguistic systems get tied up with the social dynamics of power, race, or humor for that matter. Lewis’s drawings are beguiling to look at given their material richness, poetic undercurrents, and evident human touch. They offer a lot to think about, too.

Lewis has lived and worked in Chicago since 2009, and he completed an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. This is his first solo exhibition at a museum in Chicago. A book will be published by the Ren following the exhibition, offering a more comprehensive look at the artist’s “shorthand” drawings over time.

Curated by Karsten Lund.

TONY LEWIS (b. 1986, Los Angeles, California) lives and works in Chicago, IL. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art (2023); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2018); the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2017); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2016); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2015). He participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and was the 2017-2018 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence at the Rose Art Museum. In 2025, the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, invited Lewis to participate in the exhibition What drawing can be: four responses, where he presented several new works including a site-specific commission.

Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Murat Ahmed & Katherine Mackenzie and Gary Metzner & Scott Johnson. Friends of Tony Lewis Patron Circle: Gwendolyn Hatten Butler, Susan A. Gescheidle, and Abby Pucker and Michał Dzitko. (As of August 18, 2026)