Michael Workman

"Who Makes Self-Portraits in 2004" opens this weekend at Wicker Park's Heaven Gallery and, as curator Jason Lazarus hopes, the artists he picked for the show will demonstrate "new boundaries for the genre." Lazarus was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a form of congenital birth defect that for him translated into a displaced hipbone and underdeveloped body musculature. Self-portraiture has evolved for him into a method of contending with his own body dismorphia and the attendant social effects of working as an artist with the disease. The artists he picked, though not all chosen for their body consciousness, are informed by this idea of self-portrait as a way of achieving acceptance as people outside the norm. "Usually when I think of self-portraiture, I expect it to bore me," explains Lazarus. "It has a rap as a phase that most go through in art school. I went into that phase as somebody with a business background: I graduated from DePaul with a marketing degree in 1998 and I photographed my way through as this person with a physical disability; I was using myself as an actor to comment on contemporary society."

So Lazarus sought out artists using self-portraiture as a way of looking outward rather than inward, as he had done. His search paid off, and he discovered a treasure trove of people using their own image particularly as a way to join the conversations surrounding the artist in society. "I really wish people could see how these images are only the tip of large conversation these artists have been having for years," he says. Take Christine Reinsch, for example. Her images are of clothes stretched over modeling forms used by fashion designers, every stitch shoplifted by the artist. Are these the clothing of a human being stripped of her social concepts of personhood, taken from outside the accepted norms of behavior as they are? Another series of images come from each instance in which she was caught in the act, bestowing an aura of simple criminality upon her project redeemed only by her imaginary state of outcast made very real. And then there's Robert Rainey, a commercial portrait photographer for many years who specialized in family groups. At times, he would offer to shoot their portraits for free if he was allowed to shoot and keep an image with himself in the place of the male patriarchal family figure. A gay man, Rainey's images explore the concepts of maleness rooted in our deepest familial traditions.

Amongst all these serious issues of who we are, where we come from and just what we might become are little snippets of humor, glimpses of just how seriously we actually take all these pitfalls and downsides that come with contemporary American culture. Have a look at Lazarus, in all his bare-assed glory, flopping straight and smiling through the air into a pool of crystal blue water. More than "The Artist on Vacation," this certainly invokes the artist at his best--skinny legs and all.

Fish tank out of water
It's a discreet opening smack in the middle of the holiday season, but patrons will be well served to drop into the Chicago Cultural Center for a glimpse at the new show by Arthur Tress. It's got a simple, binding theme: fish-tank scenes. Tress has taken those little diver-suited figurines and rock formations that are in just about everybody's fish tank and used that as inspiration for full-blown fantasy worlds without number.

Not all are aquatic-themed, though many are. Tress obviously has a taste for the fisherman's pastime and for the object of his passion, those underwater dwellers of all shape and size. There are also painters staring through frames at a miniature Picasso sculpture, toads in topcoats and cavemen battling a bulldozer--a bulldozer, that is, mounted on the four legs and tail of a dinosaur. Aside from fishing, Tress also takes a joyful passion in the kooky and the colorful: each tank reads like the page from some wonderful little children's book, evoking wooded places and magical ponds. Each tank's a small collection of Americana, of keepsakes and souvenirs picked up on wanderings through flea markets and thrift shops while lodging at his cottage in Catskill, New York. It's a place that was also once the home of painter Thomas Cole, who famously documented the Hudson River and whose series "The Voyage of Life" Tress took as his inspiration. While Cole only aimed to assemble a portrait of the four stages of a man's life, however, Tress has assembled something more ambitious indeed: the many stages of a man's harmony in the imagination.

Goodbye Ed
A last note before this column goes on a two-week vacation through the holidays: it has been widely reported that on Thanksgiving day Chicago lost one of its most vital and significant creative sons with the death of painter Ed Paschke. Paschke, who was 65, was a visionary painter, one of the original Chicago Imagists who changed Chicago art around the globe. It's a loss that can never be replaced.

Arthur Tress shows at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington Street, (312)744-6630. OPENING RECEPTION: December 11, 5-7pm. Through February 13. " Who Makes Self-Portraits in 2004?" shows at Heaven Gallery, 1550 North Milwaukee, (773)342-4597. OPENING RECEPTION: December 10, 6-10pm. ARTIST'S DISCUSSION: December 11, 1-2pm. Through December 31.

(2004-12-07)

Also by Michael Workman

Tip of the Week
Those looking to pass on a little bit of Chicago this Christmas could do worse than a stop at River North's Schneider Gallery for work by George Ciardi, Doug McGoldrick and Cassio Vasconcellos.
(2004-11-30)

Eye Exam
The 83rd New York Art Director's Club Annual Awards Exhibition will showcase the best and brightest from the world of "integrated media"
(2004-11-30)

Eye Exam
For his show "Kala versus the World of Men" at Suitable, Jason Robert Bell made charcoal drawings eight feet high that cover all of the available wall space
(2004-11-22)

Tip of the Week
It's a black fuzzy thing with adjustable limbs and a single eye planted square in the middle of its boxy little head
(2004-11-17)

Reconstruction
(2004-11-17)

Eye Exam
(2004-11-17)

Tip of the Week
(2004-11-09)

Eye Exam
(2004-11-03)

Tip of the Week
(2004-10-27)

Gaylen Gerber
(2004-10-27)

Eye Exam
(2004-10-27)

Eye Exam
(2004-10-20)

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