Grunt’s Radio is a sound series presenting the fixed media sound work of Chicago-based musicians and sound artists. The series, played through a radio in the bookshop during gallery hours, offers artists an opportunity to show new, unreleased, or longform sound works. Grunt's Radio is curated by Lia Kohl and began with a series of her original, unreleased compositions.
December 19th, 2025 - February 1st, 2026
Grunts Rare Books is pleased to announce the next iteration of Grunt’s Radio with Jeff Kolar, curated by Lia Kohl.
Jeff Kolar is a composer, sound artist, and founder of Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010. His work has been exhibited internationally at The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Museum of Arts and Design, CTM Festival for Adventurous Music (Berlin, Germany), Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro (Valparaíso, Chile), Radio Revolten Radio Art Festival (Halle Saale, Germany), and reviewed in The New York Times, The Wire Magazine, Red Bull Music Academy, and more. His work has been commissioned by ORF Kunstradio (Vienna, Austria), Deutschlandradio Kultur (Berlin, Germany), Ràdio Web MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), and aired on independent radio stations all over the world.
September 20th - November 9th, 2025
Grunts Rare Books is pleased to announce Grunt’s Radio with Whitney Johnson and Allen Moore, curated by Lia Kohl.
Whitney Johnson is an artist using sound to understand bodies and minds. Based in Chicago, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording. As artist-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and Inkonst in Malmö, Sweden, she composed sine waves, marimba, viola, ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and Halldorophone into a multi-channel performance-installation and her latest LP, Hav (2024, Drag City). As Matchess, the Stena cassette (2024, Drag City) embodies an alter ego to join the cult of Hermaphroditus in Cypriot and Greek antiquity. Recent performance-installations FIAT (2023-2025, Indexical, Roulette Intermedium, Forecast Platform Berlin), The Tuning of the Elements (2023, Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago), Death in Trafo (or, The Crater) (2023, Logan Center for the Arts), and Huizkol (2020, Lampo) consider the possibility of brainwave entrainment, an alternative healing technique using binaural beats to induce relaxed or energized mental states. These works offer audiences the opportunity to explore their own skepticism and belief in the effects of sound on bodies and minds. In tandem with her sound practice, she received her doctorate in the sociology of sound from the University of Chicago in 2018. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship on sound and technology in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala Universitet in 2022 and an artist research residency on gender-based canonization at Q-O2 Brussels in 2025. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Technology/Sound Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Allen Moore (he/him) is a Black interdisciplinary visual artist, experimental turntablist, sound artist, educator, and youth mentor born and raised in the historic village of Robbins, IL. Allen holds a Bachelor of Arts from Chicago State University, a Master of Arts from Governors State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Northern Illinois University. Through his work, Allen analyzes signifiers of Blackness through performative improvisation and experimentation. He is driven to nurture and expand the agency of the Black imagination. His recent body of work investigates the audio and visual elements of Black death and grief. Moore has exhibited and performed in spaces across the greater Midwest including Tritriangle, Heaven Gallery, Compound Yellow, Experimental Sound Studio, Elastic Arts Foundation, Threewalls, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Lula Cafe, Star Media Group, Union Street Gallery, The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, and many other spaces.
July 25th - September 7th, 2025
Grunts Rare Books presents Grunt’s Radio curated by Lia Kohl.
Lia Kohl (b. New York, NY) is a composer and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments, and radios into her work. Kohl gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She performs as a soloist, a collaborator and composes works for ensembles.
Recent venues for Kohl's work include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Renaissance Society, Union Station Chicago, Eckhart Park Pool, and Big Ears Festival. She has created sound installations for Experimental Sound Studios' Audible Gallery and Roman Susan Art Foundation. She has been a resident artist at ACRE, Vashon Artist Residency, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Stanford University, and Mills College and a Transmission Art Fellow at Wave Farm. An active recording artist, Kohl has arranged strings and recorded with Makaya McCraven, Circuit des Yeux, claire rousay, and Steve Hauschildt, among others.
Kohl has been featured in Pitchfork, The Quietus, The Chicago Tribune, The Wire Magazine, and Downbeat Magazine, and on NPR, NTS Radio, Kunstradio, BBC Radio 6 Music, Dublab, and WFMU. Recent releases include The Ceiling Reposes on American Dreams Records and Normal Sounds, on Moon Glyph; recent duo releases include with Whitney Johnson on Drag City and Zander Raymond on unjenesaisquoi. She tours nationally and internationally.
Listen here.