CHICAGO.- The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago presents The Here and Now, through February 20, 2005. The formal influence of Minimalism and Performance Art on contemporary sculptural practice allows the possibility of discarding the figure in favor of creating gestures that instead include the body of the viewer. From a floating base for the world (Javier Tellez), to street-legal Buddhist bowls (Sanford Biggers), and an expansive high plain mountain landscape (Katrin Sigurdardottir), The Here and Now presents three objects that give physical presence metaphoric transcendence. The active figurative space offered by these sculptures grounds their transcendence in a concrete materialism that proves no man is an island, even if his head is in the clouds.