Michael Workman

In the gear-up to the week when the entire city engages in its annual ritual of art binge and purge (ending in what the City of Chicago quirkily refers to for the benefit of tourists as "Art Immersion Weekend"), there's good and plenty available as an appetizer. What to see? What to do? While the buffet of choices might leave some feeling like they're standing in front of that signpost in M.A.S.H. giving direction to 50 or so possible destinations, we'd like to offer the following as a representative sampling of the available morsels.

Chicago architectural photographer Doug Fogelson this weekend takes his first stab at an established gallery with "Intersections," a show of Lambda C-prints at the West Loop's Kraft Lieberman Gallery. Fogelson's been pushing hard for recognition over the past year, hanging prints and making installations at restaurants and in his recent one-man show at Wicker Park's Heaven Gallery. Does he deserve the attention? A process that usually involves shining light through several negatives "sandwiched" together, printing in succession onto a single sheet of photo paper or simple outright Photoshopping, Fogelson's images are largely an attempt to treat layered images as a mainstage technique. Fogelson travels a lot and it's in an image from a San Francisco street corner that accomplishes his goal: a legion of black-boxed posts glowing with iconic red stop-sign hands bar the way forward under and through strips of hazy white as if seen through a superimposed mirror reflection.

Scary thoughts

Painter Elizabeth Shreve holds a Ph.D. in psychology, and it's not hard to see how she's put her discipline to imaginative use. If her show "House of Madness and Mirth," opening this weekend at River North's Carl Hammer Gallery, manages to resemble past work, the psychological tensions of social interaction will loom large. Her cracked-surface oils depict women participating in and backdropped by distorted landscapes littered with carnivalesque figures. Revealed in the depths of a too-grinning house marm offering a platter of biscuits or a folklorish canvas of birds in flight eyeing a piece of hacked meat, Shreve hints at stressed emotional interiors that color decisions and actions in the external world.

Private invasion

A bottle of Vicks Vapo Rub, a few stray tampons, some discarded Band-Aid wrappers. Pill bottles, razors and shaving cream. These are a few of the things that populate the slightly different interiors of New York artist Coke Wisdom O'Neal's "Medicine Cabinet (Portraits)" at the West Loop's Aron Packer Gallery. Who hasn't taken a peek in the medicine cabinet during a dinner gathering or at the house of some crashed party? Here, those sneak-peeks freely evolve into lingering, probing gazes at the exposed interior where people hide the antidote to their most private and embarrassing body problems.

Loves me/loves me not

Visitors familiar with the short track record of the West Loop's Three Walls exhibitions space will remark on its often muscular and always unblushingly romantic Eastern European internationalism. That romantic spirit culminates in a traveling show curated by Ryan Weber, "I'm Trying to Tell You I Love You" which comes to Chicago via Keim and Crime and the Projektraum des Kunstraum, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, both in Germany. Weber asked all of the artists in the show to make work based on the sense of hope and futility in the title phrase. The resulting video, installations and sound art can be seen starting Friday.

Red carpet

Add a cherry on top to this weekend's art viewing with a visit to the all-new Wendy Cooper Gallery in the West Loop. Not so long ago, Cooper's speculative move to the 119 North Peoria building was a whisper among gossipy art world insiders. Since the dust has cleared (literally--they've been working in the space day and night to prepare), the chatter has increased enough to register an orange alert. And rightly so: the move of a gallery to the West Loop not just from outside the neighborhood but outside the state is the biggest news in recent memory for this still-developing art district. Cooper brings with her a pruned list of worthies, some heavily represented in Chicago, others not so well known locally, including superstars Christian Holstad and Chris Verene as well as Wisconsonites Matt Fink, Tom Jones and Jamie Young. This weekend, the Madison transplant throws open her doors to offer up a show of paintings by Dan Attoe and University of Iowa grad Jered Sprecher. Cooper's chosen the safe road with Attoe, who's been just about everywhere lately: those who've even set foot in a gallery will recognize his work from recent shows at Bodybuilder and Sportsman and Western Exhibitions. Sprecher's a less known quantity.

Doug Fogelson shows at Kraft Lieberman Gallery, 835 West Washington, (312)948-0555, through May 28. Elizabeth Shreve shows at Carl Hammer Gallery, 740 North Wells, (312)266-8512, through May 29. Coke Wisdom O'Neal, "Medicine Cabinet (Portraits) shows at Aron Packer Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)226-8984, through June 5. "I'm Trying to Tell You I Love You" shows at ThreeWalls, 119 North Peoria, #2D, (312)432-3972, through May 30. Dan Attoe and Jered Sprecher, "New Space (figurative, abstract, literal)" shows at Wendy Cooper Gallery, 119 North Peoria, (312)455-1195, through June 6.

(2004-04-27)

Also by Michael Workman

Tip of the Week
Many of the paintings in Laurie Hogin's show "Pathological Colours" at the West Loop's Peter Miller Gallery seem taken right out of "Where the Wild Things Are"
(2004-04-22)

Eye Exam
In the sleepy northern Chicago suburb of Highwood, a 2,000-square-foot gallery called Street Level labors against the odds to import works of the imagination
(2004-04-22)

Tip of the Week
Make the trek this weekend down to Bridgeport's tenacious project space, MN Gallery, for British-born artist Fraser Taylor's deliciously gloppy paintings
(2004-04-09)

Eye Exam
"100 Cuts" at the West Loop's not-for-profit Gallery 312 examines the political and cultural situation that informs our often-suicidal relationship to real estate
(2004-04-09)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-31)

Tip of the Week
(2004-03-25)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-25)

Tip of the Week
(2004-03-18)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-18)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-10)

The answer
(2004-03-03)

Eye Exam
(2004-03-03)

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