Michael Workman

Is it really "us" versus "them"? Are our current art options as simple a choice as between "alternative" and commercial? The distinction between art and life and art and making a living may itself be less relevant than it seems.

Two of the exhibits up now in "personal" spaces in Chicago ("personal" meaning exhibitions run out of peoples' homes, garages and in spaces that have customarily been considered an alternative to the "white cubes" of traditional gallery spaces) explore concerns with pervading issues of public paranoia and private romantic excesses. The first appears at one of the eldest of such spaces, Dogmatic, run out of director Michael Thomas's house in Pilsen, and offers an impressive collection of work by Gabe Fowler and Jeff Scharf. Being from New York, Scharf's work in part reflects on the World Trade Center disaster, and branches out or is rooted in the formless fascination with witnessing violence. Stark black-ink drawings on paper are everywhere, filled with images of handguns, eyeballs floating across the paper, and similar other loosely drawn, darkly catastrophic imagery. One ink drawing explicitly references a William T. Vollman novel in which a character vomits severed limbs and various other body parts into a swimming pool.

In the rear of the room, the viewer encounters a boarded-up window-frame shrine surrounded by beveled wall mounts holding white candles in front of candle-shaped wood cutouts that cast long shadows. Across from this display of shadows in light are Scharf's watercolors, vaguely evoking the Twin Towers, all in the dirty green color of night vision. Still feel secure? Throughout the room, sections of drywall are punctured with hundreds of little sword-shaped cocktail skewers, creating a sense of the literal violability of barriers meant to protect.

In the lower level of the house, Fowler's work shares some surprising resonances with Scharf. Though there is some older work here, walk the claustrophobic hallway to the dirt-floored cellar in the far back corner and you're confronted with two tombstones jutting from the floor attributed only to "Us" and "Them." Actual chills result.

Down the street from Dogmatic, Bucket Rider Gallery offers "Halfway Home," a show of sculpture and installation by Emily Counts. The split-level front room at Bucket Rider has been put to laudable good use by Counts, who has installed a life-sized dollhouse environment in the space. A life-sized, snarling pink polar bear greets patrons, reared up in a two-legged pose and baring rows of jagged fangs. Symbolizing the beast of a cold hard reality that threatens just outside the safe confines of the fantasy environment that is the dollhouse, a fear of its animal triumph over human fantasy informs the fable of girlhood solitude constructed within. The instinctual compulsion and menace embodied by the polar bear stands in tension to the innocence and girlish vulnerability incarnated as a bevy of white and pink rabbits (themselves symbols of sexual enthusiasm).

Several ornate shadowboxes loaded with miniatures portray folktale scenes contrived in the wool gatherings of a languid pubescence. A polar bear terrorizes a family of white rabbits in an ice cave. A white rabbit and pink dog court in a forest scene against a backdrop of black strawberry fields. Counts acknowledges the ability of this fantasy to wound reality's ability to terrorize: in one scene, apparently shot (cut down by a very real human weapon), a polar bear stares woozily back at its own fallen carcass. Not powerful enough however to fully counter this fallen reality, Counts trumps her own defense of adolescent caprice with a nod to the piercing force of this budding sexuality. In a touch of bratty morbidity, we find a baby seal strewn across a bed, expression frozen in a death-grimace, coagulated bite-wound glistening on its neck.

Opening shots:

Promising upcoming exhibitions on the commercial side include openings in the West Loop. Though divergent in form, the May 2 Walsh Gallery opening of Indian-born sculptor Ravinder Reddy clearly segues from the concerns with femininity present at the Bucket Rider show. Besides depicting couples in flagrante delicto, Reddy also takes snapshots of average women (and occasionally men) off the street, casts their heads in polyester resin fiberglass and then paints them in bright, iconic colors. These large, freestanding heads stare back at the viewer with a magnetic, eerily serene gaze. Meant to evoke the sensuality and fertility of women at all ages, Reddy prepares the heads of teenage girls and aging housewives alike. Entrancing and even somewhat gaudy, the sculptures share the pedestrian enthusiasms of Pop art.

Opening the same night in the same building is "Wiyya To Hell Owwa That," a solo exhibition of Argentinean-born Santiago Cucullu at Julia Friedman Gallery. Reflecting an urban fascination with violence curtailed, the title of Cucullu's show comes from the Beckett radio play "All That Fall," and references his concern with "control and restraint devices." Following Cucullu's practice of arranging found objects into assemblages, barricades are constructed from mounds of tires, sandbags and other remnants. Cucullu's other past work, which he develops out of historical events and then imbues with both personal and political significance, includes watercolor and wall drawings made using contact paper that he has hand-cut.

Gabe Fowler and Jeff Scharf show at Dogmatic Gallery, 1822 South Desplaines, (312) 492-6698. Emily Counts' "Halfway Home" shows at Bucket Rider Gallery, 565 W. 18th, (312)421-6993, through May 18. Both are open Saturday noon-6pm, or by appointment. Ravinder Reddy shows at the Walsh Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)829-3312, through July 11; and Santiago Cucullu's "Wiyya To Hell Owwa That" shows at Julia Friedman Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)455-0705, through June 14.

(2003-04-30)

Also by Michael Workman

Sex in Public
Three years ago, while working on a feature-length video, this graduate of the School of the Art Institute's master's program placed an ad in a local paper seeking production assistance for a work-in-progress. Local filmmaker and Z Film Fest director Usama Alshaibi offered her space at Heaven Gallery that he was using to stage the first installment of his annual program. Kristie accepted his offer, and ended up shooting a party scene in the space. The two became friends and eventually married.
(2002-12-12)

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