Michael Workman

Are we truly alone in the universe? If that's too cosmic a question, then how about just alone in the world? Curated by Sabrina Raaf, "Tart" at Klein Art Works suggests that there's more to us than just the borders between nations and differences in custom. In the gallery's foyer, for instance, patrons encounter "Flashlights: Conversations In the Murky Past" by Christopher Furman, made of a pair of motorized antique flashlights in domed glass. They whir, swivel and flash senselessly, an activity meant to represent the numbing enervation and blinding emotions of uncontrolled desire. But these are just machines: neither have control of themselves. In his statement, Furman calls them "pathetic little fuckers."

Moving past these, a slight breeze cascades down from a ceiling-mounted propeller, activated by a motion sensor that starts two motors turning a belted length of felt with brown shirt buttons sewn onto it. As the belt turns, the buttons pass beneath a pair of rollers that open and close an electric circuit wired to a rotor with two telephone bells attached. Each of the buttons makes up a pattern of Morse code messages that artist Joseph Kohnke wants to tell his deceased father and dying grandfather. It's meant to evoke a longing beyond all considerations of justice, beyond all our merely human powers to satisfy: a longing for communication with the lost and a hope for their salvation in the afterlife. Its ringing bells mark the passage of his messages from our world to the next, much as they would in a séance. Except, rather than a shawled gypsy spiritualist waving her hands over a glass ball, here a robot helps make the contact. It's a strong piece in a consistently good show. That it's this gallery's last exhibit adds a layer of sad drama that hangs thick in the air as, more than anybody in the afterlife, we realize Kohnke's mystical whirlygig is trying hardest just to reach us.

By contrast, Fernando Orellana's piece "614-220-DUCK" asks us to reach it. It's a simple enough setup: a small plastic shelf stacked with a bean-shaped sculptural piece made of wood, metal lever with a ball of yarn at one end and a small LCD screen mounted on the wall above them. Instructions mounted on the wall tell viewers to activate the piece by dialing in on their mobile phones: doing so causes the lever to whack the bean. Simultaneously slapstick and insidious (isn't slapstick always a little insidious?), it's art that punishes itself.

And fear of Old Testament-style punishment seems a pervasive and relevant enough theme: in an era presided over by those willing to toss aside their fellow man and destroy life in the name of financial gains, trading the spiritual for the robotic make complete sense. While defensive laughter may be the intended subject of this show, the way our dependence on technology subtly replaces and justifies our lack of empathy is clearly its content. Take, for instance, Siebren Versteeg's "Emergency." It looks like the view from RockStar's popular "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" video game, adjusted to put the player in the perspective of its homicidal first-person avatar. If so, Versteeg has walked him out into one of the many vast, sprawling corners of the game's virtual environment, positioned him facing into the distance and output the results to a recorder. In this computer-generated display, a tree sways gently in the breeze as clouds drift across a serene blue sky, a scene that invokes a sense of well-being and connectedness in the viewer. But then a siren wails and two firetrucks race across the screen, trailed occasionally by an ambulance. Horror! Tragedy! Mass destruction! Intermittently, radio static also comes over the speakers, followed by a voice speaking in police code. It's out there somewhere, just waiting to get us.

Tech-art postscript

For those who just can't get enough, "fitter happier" opens the weekend at the DePaul University Art Museum. Based on a song by Radiohead that uses a computer to simulate human speech, the question here is of technology's role in art, rather than in society. Tackled by a host of art world all-stars such as D'Nell Larson, Karen Reimer and Anne Wilson, it's hard to imagine a simple answer. And there isn't one. Curated by Matthew Girson, an assistant professor in DePaul's Art and Art History department, a little Heideggerian explanation of art as referred to by the Greeks with the term "techne" starts this show at a conceptual gallop. Images such as Scott Stack's "Night Vision," an oil of a tree render in the horizontal screen-lines as viewed through night-vision goggles, attempt to separate technology from its utility. But it also inevitably reverts back to the killer potential of our technological advances.

"Tart" shows at Klein Art Works, 400 North Morgan, (312)243-0400, through May 8. "fitter happier" shows at DePaul University Art Museum, 2350 North Kenmore,(773)325-7506, through April 10.

(2004-03-31)

Also by Michael Workman

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Seven years in the making, Riva Lehrer has organized a show that depicts the experience of her participation in disability culture
(2004-03-25)

Eye Exam
Esther Grimm stands before a candlelit fireplace, welcoming all to the first exhibition in the new Three Arts Club galleries
(2004-03-25)

Tip of the Week
An overstuffed suitcase operates as a metaphor for a more universal truth in Lance Friedman's work
(2004-03-18)

Eye Exam
In the imaginary battle against Wicker Park's art community, now that The Pond and Standard Gallery have taken down their shingles for good, commercial interests have triumphed again in the battle for the soul of the neighborhood
(2004-03-18)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-10)

The answer
(2004-03-03)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-03)

Tip of the Week
(2004-03-02)

Tip of the Week
(2004-02-25)

Eye Exam
(2004-02-25)

Tip of the Week
(2004-02-18)

The pulpit of poetry
(2004-02-18)

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