Michael Workman

Perhaps less to evoke the musical influences of Whodini on his work than to attempt a literal interpretation of the song title, Rich Lehl's canvases are an adventure in fantasies of a gothic banal. Much of the imagery in "The Freaks Come Out at Night II" at the West Loop's Aron Packer Gallery will likely prove familiar to viewers. Fast-food restaurants, foggy trails through dusky woods and a darkened highway overpass are only a few of the backdrops borrowed from city and suburbs. Through these environments, lonely figures wander, flashlight or disposable soda cup in hand, aimless and unshockable. In a few instances, Lehl depicts the sudden injection of the uncanny or of traumatic natural violence: a white-hot meteor, for instance, suspended inches away from its descent to the parking-lot asphalt. Lehl's figures are all male and always dressed in about the same clothes (even a jogger wears a white shirt, black pants and shoes, for instance) and are typically painted to appear as anodyne as their surroundings or, conversely, as fantastic. In "Iceberg," a nude male figures stands in profile, arms at his sides, staring submissively off the canvas as a glowing night sea shimmers in the foreground. Isn't he cold? Such limp surreality has the potential to either dully mystify or induce mild contempt at the limitations of such an aphoristic style.

Lehl founds his images on an attempt to convey his daydreamers' limitations, willfully caged as they are in the activity of their daily lives and obsessed with a sort of prideful reserve, simultaneously humble and lonely. In this womanless world, Lehl's subjects accept their reduction to the absurd. In minimizing their role in the world, Lehl often represents his subjects as nothing more than the clothes they wear: in such portraits as "Invisible Man," for instance, Lehl portrays a single figure defined by a pair of pants, shoes, a fluorescent orange traffic vest, glasses and cigarette. In "Hat," a bowler separated from its owner drifts past in the breeze. No human presence, male or otherwise, characterizes the use of the apparel as other than mere decoration. It's this vacuity that figures the man stranded passively on the iceberg, his canvases notably bereft of such human reactions as rage or indignation. Lehl's subjects do not fight or challenge their condition; they long for a natural, morally appeasing way out--where none exists.

Lehl's oils depict basic distortions of daily life tinged with an unmanageably desperate, impossible need for escape. In "Nocturnal Emissions" for instance, a teenage boy, suspiciously similar to the boy on his bike in E.T., sails with a jetpack above the rooftops, propelled upward by the power of his adolescent sexual unconscious.

Known unknown

Preparing for her first fall season in Chicago, Wendy Cooper has organized "Getting to Know You" at her gallery, a show that explicitly wishes to acquaint her artists with the city's patrons. It's also a chance for a sneak peek of what's to come: many of the artists in this show will have solo shows in coming months. It looks promising: fans of Michelle Grabner will get a treat, and a host of lesser-known artists such as Carolyn Swiszcz will get a trial run. Painting "structures built chiefly for commerce" often taken for granted by the pubic that traffics them, Swiszcz revitalizes the leftover husks of commercial property's drained potential. Her "Chuck's China Inn," for instance, evokes the unexpected ghostly presence conjured by a Chinatown parking lot with an empty car and sunlit U-Haul. Moving away or staying for the night, in this lot nothing moves for too long.

Peter Gallo, a "scholar on French and German philosophy and poetry" who has worked as a psychiatric social worker, will have his first-ever solo this October. Gallo paints on a diversity of found materials including wood and old sheets and often addresses socio-cultural issues, including queerdom, with a cannily morose sense of humor. The word "faggot" has been erratically scratched into the layers of paint in his canvas of the same name. It's a derogatory term, of course but Gallo takes his interrogation of gay hatred a step further. Cutting the canvas so that it vaguely resembles the shape of a bushy-tailed four-legged creature, he neatly interrogates paranoiac hetero fears of gay males as inherently perverse and sadistic.

Monkey business

The new collectible toyshop on Chicago Avenue is hosting a show organized by hobby toy-making venture adFunture who invited a list of more than fifty artists and designers to each decorate an identical vinyl "Fling the Monkey" figurine. Now displayed on several shelves in the back of the store are the results of those efforts, with contributions from such diverse locales as Australia, France and Honolulu. Part of an effort to put on 100 exhibits of the same Fling figurine, the project began with a 2003 Hong Kong exhibit. For more information and to view some of the designs, visit adfuntureworkshop.com/monkeyshow.

Rich Lehl, "The Freaks Come Out at Night II" shows at Aron Packer Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)226-8984, through August 21. "Getting to Know You" shows at Wendy Cooper Gallery, 119 North Peoria, #2D, (312)455-1195, through September 4. "The Monkey Show" shows at Rotofugi, 1953 West Chicago Avenue, (312)491-9501, through August 29.

(2004-08-03)

Also by Michael Workman

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