Michael Workman

The nonprofit Gallery 312 has reopened--four months after closing at 312 May Street--in a vacant upper-floor apartment on a strip busy with forklifts and delivery trucks on Fulton Market. Visitors must enter through a main door halfway down the block, journey down a long hall to an elevator in back, then down another long hall to Gallery 312's new location in a corner apartment. The doors to other apartments along the hall hang open, revealing empty spaces within. Gallery 312's new home is a tiny little rehab loft space divided into an entry hall, front and main rooms, all very new-smelling wood and drywall. At opening night, it had a literal vernissage aura with hints of fresh paint still in the air, though it should be noted that there were no frames here to paint.

Handfuls of patrons wandered in to view the first artist to show at the new space, Michael X. Ryan, whose "x" gets made much of in the catalog essay by Matthew Girson for "Roadstains and Travels." As in "x" marks the spot, as in the mathematical variable for which "x" stands in for something, anything. But for Ryan, the name may mean only the exercise of movement, travel, and of opening that physical space made new in his own experience of it, an experience he meticulously charts out on city maps of his seven years worth of wanderings. Many of his works are self-explanatory, most part of a series titled "Antfarm Self-Portrait," with subtitles such as "Where did I travel within the Chicago city limits from mid-February through early March during the years 1999-2000-2001?" or "Travels in Manhattan." Each takes a map of the location in question, which Ryan then traces his route onto in a thick chiaroscuro.

Ryan has become entranced with the "roadstains" he encounters on his travels, the "Spilled Coke on Potomac Ave." and "Block Party beer stain on Potomac Ave.-July 04," in which he traces in graphite or paints out in watercolor on Mylar. They often strikingly resemble the trembling line of his finished city maps or resemble maps of islands, all of them providing an illusion of simplicity while managing somehow to retain the extreme complexity of a world seen simultaneously from both above and below.

Unsolved Mysteries

It's easy to compare the canvases in Leeah Joo's show "Window Tales," opening this week at River North's Andrew Bae Gallery, with Balinese shadow puppetry. And there is a resemblance: through her window frames we glimpse moments of domestic calm, vague sexual play, or moments of sheer bone-crushing enervation. Slices of hidden worlds, glimpsed here only momentarily--and often with a woman who may be the artist staring back out at the viewer--offer a deeper transparency into the domain of the imagination's often-necromantic interiors.

A graduate of the famed Yale painting school that has produced such luminaries as Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin, Joo has not enjoyed the kind of meteoric acclaim that her classmates have, but her choice of context or subject matter is just as strong. Joo's oil and acrylic works use the ready-made square of her canvas as the borders of windowsills, often including dressings that help set the environment for the story occurring within, such as "silk brocade curtains, fine lace, or beads of steam from the shower on a window pane." Two types of windows occur, one a series of clear-glass windows meant to evoke American-style and a second, with opaque wood and paper coverings, meant to evoke those found on Korean homes. Each presents the viewer with an unsolved mystery, a moment of either profoundly intense or simply mundane emotional magic. Either will do, since with Joo, it's the mystery that counts the most.

Cutie Crawlers

After three years off the radar, Chicago artist Ann Wiens opens "Creature Comforts" this week at River North's Byron Roche Gallery. This series of oils come from a stint last fall at the Field Museum's research collections, where Wiens photographed a variety of different "moth, butterfly and beetle specimens" that became the subject of these paintings. Borrowing from Imagist traditions, Wiens backgrounds her subject matter with often-bright mosaics of color that somehow make these creepy crawlers seem cuddly, personable and a lot less creepy.

And finally, a note for regular readers: next week this column will take a one-week break while I put the finishing touches on the first Bridge Magazine Annual Fundraiser happening March 18 at the Zhou B. Center at 35th and Morgan Streets in Bridgeport. It's taking place at the future site of the Zhou B. Art Academy and kunsthalle, and an exciting opportunity to participate in the birth of a new art center in the city: I hope to see you there.

Leeah Joo shows at Andrew Bae Gallery, 300 West Superior Street, (312)335-8601. Through April 9. Michael X. Ryan shows at Gallery 312, 845 West Fulton Market, (312)850-1234. Through April 9. Ann Wiens shows at Byron Roche Gallery, 750 North Franklin Street, (312)654-0144. Through April 29.

(2005-03-15)

Also by Michael Workman

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It's a typical night in the Temple of Retribution
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Eye Exam
I loved "Tragic Beauty" at the West Loop's Open End Gallery
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Eye Exam
In "Schematic Patterns," a new collection of paintings with drawing elements, Julia Henderson tackles the visual representation of Chicago's historically segregated racial populations
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Tip of the Week
It's not difficult to read a little Leon Golub into the choppily painted faces of Friese Undine's portraits of world leaders, and the comparison may prove apt
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Tip of the Week
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Tourist Class
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Eye Exam
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Tip of the Week
(2005-01-25)

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