Michael Workman

No clearer statement about the value of arts in our culture has recently been put forth than the 9/11 commission's repeated use of the phrase "lack of imagination" to describe our democratic society's failure to protect itself. That lack of imagination has not gone unnoticed by this country's visual artists. In this campaign-year homestretch, political art has enjoyed a marked, though still depressingly minor, resurgence. A flurry of campaign signs, bumper stickers, television ads and promotional materials in every imaginable medium, for instance, has attended the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Similarly, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago has scooped up a representative sample of all that election year ephemera for "Sounding Off, Part I."

Director Lorelei Stewart has enlisted Chicago artist and curator Philip Von Zweck for a roundup of "posters, banners, signs, news articles, ads, etc. hand made or commercially available." The first in a two-part series, the second opens August 7 and will include political works by visual artists Andrea Bowers, M.W. Burns, Steve Lacy and "breakout" artist Deborah Straatman.

In this first installment, the sense of rage and despair at the Bush administration assaults the viewer as a palpable force. There are the typical silk-screened posters, of course, as well as newspaper clippings from the New York Post and New York Times. A tote hangs from pins in the wall emblazoned with the slogan "President Nixon: Now More Than Ever." A Saddam Hussein mask has been affixed to a mold, capped with a cowboy hat sporting a "Jackson Hole, Wyoming" sticker with clip art of a bronco rider, all served up on a silver platter. One enterprising young contributor merely scrawled on the wall with permanent marker: "Thank you for destroying Maxwell Street! Good job UIC!" While this collection of objet trouveno doubt presents its own share of personal sentiment, sarcasm and irrational emotions, there are worse things to go off the deep end about than an economy polarized by class bias, the horrors of an unjust war and the persecution of artists such as Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble (see www.caedefensefund.org for more info) whom the lawmakers themselves should recognize as the source of our much-needed imagination.

Weapons of Mass Instruction
A new gallery set in a little River West building's lobby recently opened "Machines of Power and Other Stuff," a show of New York artist Lee Wells images of our most revered war toys. Planes, tanks and battle cruisers are checkered over with blocks of white paint. It's a quaint place to view soaring jetfighters on the wall next to an elevator that dings on and off as visitors and tenants come and go through the gallery space. On the ceiling directly overhead, a massive rusted steel winch hangs precariously from the wooden ceiling beams marking the elevator's former location. This mechanical detritus fits in well with the "other stuff" that together implies a longed-after obsolescence of such technologies, a need to block out the brutal, almost purely clinical realities of armed conflict.

Coalition Building 101
While the United States adventure in Iraq was launched with a coalition of international supporters that included some of the smallest, most defenseless countries on the map, art has not lost sight of its sense of global community. One gallery in town, for instance, exists solely to cultivate and promote such multinational relationships, at least as they concern the visual imagination. Lipa Gallery (a name that has two meanings--as an acronym for "links for international promotion of the arts" and also as a reference to the linden tree of the same name, traditionally known as a community gathering place) has relocated to a new space in the Fine Arts Building in the Loop.

Upon entering, visitors are confronted with triangular rows of tiny tanks origamied out of sheets of graph paper, a cohesive representation of the banality of war-making's inherent evil. A painting on aluminum of a rack of JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) that was originally staged in an upper hall has now been moved downstairs, apparently to appease queasy building management. It's a show that reaches out to audiences in the simplicity of its political obviousness; military defense requires dependable allies. In an attempt simultaneously to christen the new space and reassert its mission of international art exchange, the current show, "Summer Summit," mirrors a similar exhibition in Poetovio, Slovenia, a city recently accepted into the European Union.

"Sounding Off: Part I" shows at Gallery 400 at UIC, 1240 West Harrison, (312)996-6114, through August 7. Lee Wells, "Machines of Power and Other Stuff" shows at Lobby Gallery, 731 North Sangamon, (312)432-4372, through September 4. "Summer Summit" shows at L.I.P.A. Gallery, 410 South Michigan, 5th Floor, (312)751-9241, through October 15.

(2004-07-27)

Also by Michael Workman

Tip of the Week
Wheaton-born artist Andrew Guenther sees dead people
(2004-07-20)

Tip of the Week
It's not everyday that a future gut rehab becomes the site of an art event
(2004-07-13)

There's no place like home
For Thomas Frank, this time it's personal
(2004-07-13)

Eye Exam
Book lists offer a way of charting "the cognitive terrain covered" by others
(2004-06-29)

Soapbox Studs
(2004-06-22)

Eye Exam
(2004-06-22)

Plasticman
(2004-06-16)

Eye Exam
(2004-06-16)

Tip of the Week
(2004-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2004-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2004-06-02)

Eye Exam
(2004-05-25)

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