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 Eye Exam Bursting at the seams
Three shows right now aim for rooms bursting, garage-sale style, with
art. "Solo Show/Solo Soul" at the West Loop's Vedanta Gallery, along
with "This Thing We Do" and "Summer Group Exhibition" nearby at the
shared Western Exhibitions and Lisa Boyle Gallery, are all group shows
that take up almost every inch of available wall space. They also share
elements of reflection on individual experience. Often, this gets
expressed in work that places the emphasis on craft, as drawing often
does. And drawings, an unusually personal medium, are big at these
shows. Despite these commonalities, there are also reasons why they
simply don't compare.
At Vedanta, viewers first encounter Marie Lorenz's "Locust Swarm,"
an installation rising up in a huge bubble of loosely mounted plastic
strips. Each strip has been printed with row after row of locusts, with
the whole planted in the middle of wicker and paper cut to resemble
tufts of grass and water. Does this tattered, hanging form embody an
intentionless action, matter churning in nature's inability to either
create or destroy? Or should we cast its subject in religious terms,
holy pestilence visited on a cursed land? Thrilling in its excess, the
show at Vedanta Gallery comes from a strategic attempt to revitalize the
gallery's program. And it could. Seven artists, selected by gallery
mainstay Chris Johanson, have divided up the space into an equal number
of individual "rooms." Hung as if seven different solo shows, each area
has been filled to brimming and sometimes manages to overflow. In
Johanson's space, patrons must crouch and slide through the tight spots
of a maze-like construction, white boards jutting from walls at uneven
heights and lengths.
As a strategy, Johanson's taste for abundance selectively
metabolizes--in older works, figures going into a grinder are depicted
coming out both as rainbows and streams of shit--the oftentimes
spiritually anemic state of the society he depicts. In his sketch-like
works on paper and in wood cutouts, his cartoonish and often grotesque
two-dimensional caricatures reach after the essence of souls altered by
life on the margins and the experience of democracy at its most
indulgent. The absurd range of material here both absorbs and disgorges
the baggage of its subjects. Many of the artists Johanson has chosen
from New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere share his
concerns with self-reflection: notebook-like sketches heavy with pencil
and paint-pen texts are layered with marker, screen prints, spray paint
and bricolage. Materials are matched only by the number of mediums.
Viewers are barraged with a diversity that includes c-prints, Polaroids,
gouache, acrylics, foils, found objects--in essence, the gallery
resembles a Hollywood ransack scene in which the file cabinets were torn
out, the secret files heaved about the room.
But while the secret's out at Vedanta, the future promise of these
second two galleries remains a mystery. None of the scatology of
Johanson's works is in evidence here: rather, these surgically
picked-over works evoke cleanliness and a particularly graphic approach
to art-making. Their list of artists are geographically distinct enough:
a majority of the artists at Western Exhibitions are from outside
Chicago, while all of the artists in the Lisa Boyle exhibit are
Chicagoans. Their partnership in the space requires a steady degree of
diplomacy, since visitors must first pass through Boyle to reach the
Western Exhibitions space. They've also got their Kinzie location on a
deal to rent below market until an offer comes in, with no promise of
how long they'll hang onto it. Ultimately, the partnership's a sort of
"medusa's raft" solution for these aspiring gallerists: there's strength
in numbers. Boyle's show contrasts as the more spare of the two. She has
selected mostly sculptural works, including recent Art Institute
graduate Zachary Harper's "Palmyra to Lockport." In it, a huge brown
dustpan and oversize wooden broom are posed against an orange cardboard
trough filled with small green cubes of floral foam. Another of Harper's
pieces also uses a rectangle of the glittering green floral foam,
half-bitten by a pair of industrial-grade scissors, black paint chipped
off with age.
Head to the back room, however and the barrage begins anew. Western
Exhibitions Director Scott Speh has brought out his whole arsenal,
filling every available nook and cranny of the space. And he's got
plenty of it. There's one room off to the left of the entrance that he
refers to as the gallery's "plus" space (disdaining the current trend in
so-called "project spaces," usually a ghettoized exhibition outside of
the main showroom) and another nook in the rear facing a sun-drenched
four-pane window. Opting out of the curatorial role, Speh invited his
list of artists to pick their own favorites and then invite them to send
in work for the show. It's the short time between Boyle's invitation to
join her in the space and opening night that lends to the preponderance
of small works, easy to ship through the mail. New boss
While the art world continues to absorb the news of Mike Lash's
dismissal from the city's Public Art Program, the highly capable Gregory
Knight will take his place. It's a good hire. Knight's a strong and
steady hand, has supervised the Public Art Department before and brings
a record of twenty-three years' worth of excellent Cultural Center
programming to the job. Knight also inherits much unfortunate political
baggage, however, in accepting his new commission. Among the first items
on his agenda should be setting transparent standards of use for the
Percent for Art Program, the lack of which led to damaging claims of
financial mismanagement during Lash's stewardship. Should people
realistically expect that 1.33 percent of the construction budget for,
say, an O'Hare expansion will flow to public art? No doubt Chicago's
politics, with its occasional need for scapegoats, will be hard to
shake--but with a little courageous honesty, success will follow. "Solo Show/Solo Soul" shows at Vedanta Gallery, 835 West
Washington Avenue, (312)432-0708. Through August 31. "This Thing We Do"
shows at Western Exhibitions, 1648 W. Kinzie, (312)655-5475. Through
July 24. "Summer Group Exhibition" shows at Lisa Boyle Gallery, 1648 W.
Kinzie, (312)655-5475. Through July 24.
Also by Michael Workman Plasticman
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