Michael Workman

At a time when curator Arutyun Zulumyan of the "Caution! Religion" exhibit in Moscow is being driven into hiding by the Russian Orthodox clerics, an understated atmosphere of excitement attends the opening of Chicago's fall season. While none of the work will likely incite a struggle between government and religious authorities, many raise specific doubts as to the quality of contemporary art's current direction.

Domesticated abstraction:

Will abstract painting enjoy a future resurgence? Has it ever waned? To find out, patrons should check out Northwestern University assistant professor Judy Ledgerwood's newest offering at the West Loop's Rhona Hoffman Gallery. A longtime methodical tinkerer in form, Ledgerwood has been described as working "at the critical edge of nihilism" and, gazing at her canvases, patrons are likely to experience the limnal spark that a skeptical acceptance of domestic bliss can breed. Her decorative elements, however, cut the taint of apprehension with melodic observations of that same domestic experience.

In this latest series, loosely gridded flower shapes and lines situated above rows of empty circles evoke the stare of a gardener who watches as her work fades with the season. Not all remains well within the confines of home, either: witness the stark black-and-white ribbons overlayed with skewed squares of "Friends and Enemies." Are we to read this as moral calculation, a checklist of who remains in and out of favor? Or an abstract representation of a crushed impulse to lash out at otherwise innocuous friends and neighbors? Whatever the answer, viewers must decide for themselves whether abstract painting maintains its status as a bastion of subconscious truths made manifest in the artist's materials, or if the individual action of clinging to its conventions have drained whatever soul remains in the form.

Postcards from Devo:

Remember Devo? As in "de-evolution?" Mark Mothersbaugh, former member of the legendary seventies and eighties band from Akron, Ohio, attempts a move from the medium of music to visual art with "Homefront Invasion" at the Aron Packer Gallery. A visual artist prior to his leap into pop-music fame, Mothersbaugh documented his world travels with the band on postcards. Begun as a way to fill downtime and intended once as quirky gifts for friends, Mothersbaugh now views his collection of some 25,000 postcards as a kind of cultural encyclopedia. Part of the motive behind "Homefront" is to explore the belief systems that cause people to act self-destructively for the sake of higher powers.

Scanning images from and drawing directly onto store-bought postcards, Mothersbaugh "embellished and distorted [them] with text, photographs, and other additions, such as plastic googly eyes." The resulting visual diary, a catalog of afternoons and pre-performance time-filling, is somehow simultaneously brooding and poppy. The postcards are affordably priced, so that even people who have never purchased art can take home a Mothersbaugh original without breaking the bank.

Natural charms:

Formerly of Chicago, Maine-based artist Chris Patch pushes the realms of possibility of works on paper in "New Pictures" at Monique Meloche Gallery. Previous efforts have yielded storybook imagery that investigates the mystical sense of reality as material presence. In past work, tree branches loom ominously overhead, dark skies shifting behind and the slimy, crystallized drippings of deep caverns rendered in baby blues and pinks invitingly yawn.

The kind of nature-mysticism that suffuses Patch's work is akin to a dog watching a plastic bag tumbling past in the breeze, unable to determine whether the bag is animate of its own volition or just blowing in the wind. Either way, this artist's works on paper--for instance, folded origami-style to make elaborate carousels of huddled birds--reverberate with a basic wonder difficult to not appreciate.

Out with the old:

Northwestern University assistant professor Lane Relyea has organized "Allover and At Once" with support from curators at the Pond Gallery. Based on an essay of the same name to be published in the West Coast art magazine X-Tra, the exhibit includes wall-painting, video, drawing and more. Relyea seeks a new direction from the current state of "allover" which Relyea defines as "an art world indistinguishable from the ceaseless flow of entertainment programming and information." Relyea opposes the "allover" with an "at once" that he hopes will turn the "emphasis away from endless context and toward the viewer, away from design and toward drama." For this show, Chicago-based artist David Coyle produces photos of crumbled sheets of paper with writing on them that turn out to be high-school love letters.

Basically, according to Pond member Howard Fonda, the point is to analyze the inherited traditions of "Modernism and how it got us where we are now, which Lane isn't very happy with." In practice, that means returning to a more experiential notion of "a contained art object that the viewer confronts, and which is a pointed intellectual event."

"Homefront Invasion" at Aron Packer Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)226-8984. Opening reception September 5, 6-9pm.

"New Pictures" at Monique Meloche Gallery, 951 West Fulton Market, (312)455-0299. Opening reception September 5, 6-9pm.

"Judy Ledgerwood" at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 118 North Peoria. (312)455-1990. Opening reception September 5, 5-7:30pm.

"Allover and At Once" at The Pond, 1152 North Milwaukee, Ste. A, (773)368-8484. Opening reception September 6, 6-9pm. Film screening and discussion September 27, 8pm.

(2003-09-04)

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