|
|
chicago home
events calendar
bars & clubs restaurants specials best of chicago 
art
film and video food and drink music and clubs stage style words sports features |
|
|
 Eye Exam Comfort zones
As summer once again descends on the city in all the torpidity of its
heat and humidity, art has managed to bloom in nooks and crannies across
our burgh. This week we offer a broad selection of exhibitions, from
conceptual art to painting to video and installation. Hit the pavement
to one or two of these and you'll have found a season's worth of the
highest-octane eye candy available. Start with the current show at the
West Loop's Donald Young Gallery.
Out of all the city's galleries, it's at Young that visitors will
most directly confront the perception, carefully cultivated for the
benefit of sales, that their collectors belong to an aristocracy. It's
thus unusually difficult to wade through the air of resentment that
having an open door means in terms of the gallery personnel's requisite
servitude to us, the unwashed masses. But just have fun with it; snicker
and point your finger as often as possible, then settle in for the show.
Up now is perhaps the brightest star in Young's stable of what once
served as an emerging-artists program, a highly tenacious prospect
doomed to teeter on the edge of bruising the gallery's blue-chip glow.
Helen Mirra returns with "laws of clash, 247," her second solo.
In this new body of work, Mirra has finally given into her closet
obsession with language and the pragmatisms of William James, one of the
pioneers of this only American philosophy and founding father of the
depth psychology movement. She borrowed lines from an index in one of
James' many collections of essays and "typed text on hand painted 16mm
cotton bands of various lengths." These run the circumference of the
room according to size. She chose a line of text to represent every
letter in the alphabet. It's rather difficult to care for these bands,
actually, unless you have a soft spot for James and his turns of
language. I was hooked after his "Varieties of Religious Experience," a
book that helped the founders of AA come up with a treatment that's
saved countless people's lives. But the test of art hangs in the
balance: how much joy can you find in staring at a note card from a card
catalog? Thought bubbles
Down the street at Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery, it's a slightly
different scene. Here gallery director Tony Wight provides all the
comforts of home (he lives there) while maintaining all the pretense of
a Young operation. Truth be told, however, B&S was the place I bought my
first piece of art in Chicago, a dollar bill by Oli Watt that'd been run
over by a train (as opposed to a penny--must account for inflation). But
you'll never get bowled over with a sense of gallery phobia here, just
that you're meant to spend your time looking then, please, move on. A
compelling reason to visit is a solo of Mark Booth's audio works and
drawings made while living for a year in Copenhagen. Booth's works
evince an interest in language tangential to Mirra's, yet more
voracious, putative and visually integrated than hers, situating text in
biomorphic forms that expand and around the shape of the letters. He
obviously has fun with them: after all, the title of the show is "Panda
Bear Insemination Team Picnic and Other Thought Formations." Imagine
that. Pedestrian parades
Once you've had your fill of traditional galleries, options for three
quality down-home shows remain. First there's Die Kase Hause in River
West's Foundation Gallery. Tucked into a dreary little basement space
hang the works of six friends who met while undergraduates at the
Columbus School of Art and Design in Ohio; they occasionally reunite to
show work together. Especially likeable are the sugary sweet
Japano-culture dreamscapes of Jeremiah Ketner, who's lately started to
receive widespread attention. If he can get past the "seen one, seen `em
all" inherent to his work, he should do quite well. Yet another group
showing now are the trio of Chris Silva, Mike Genovese and Sayre Gomez
at Pilsen's Parts Unknown Gallery. All three are street artists who
borrow from urban graffiti styles and often use found materials to
construct complex indoor junk environments (check out www.graffiti.org
for visuals). It'll be tough to provide a follow-up with as high a
profile as their successful "Tragic Beauty" show this past spring at
Open End Gallery, where wunderkind Cody Hudson made a cameo, but they're
worth keeping an eye on.
And finally, wrap up your art weekend Sunday night with a visit to
The Guest Room Project on Lawndale. It's a brand spanking new
appointment-only art space organized by Andy Young and former Pond
collective curator Howard Fonda who had a yen to take "A Measure of
Taste." Chicago mainstays such as Rodney Carswell and Joe Baldwin have
thrown work into the mix, apparently with the purpose of interrogating
the reliability of taste as a marker for quality in our culture. Where
exactly does private taste taper off into public consensus? Maybe
there's no accounting for it, but you're sure to have a good time at the
show. Helen Mirra shows at Donald Young Gallery, 933 West Washington,
(312)455-0100, through July 16. Mark Booth shows at Bodybuilder &
Sportsman Gallery, 119 North Peoria, (773)235-7297, through July 16. Die
Kase Haus shows at Foundation Gallery, 700 North Carpenter,
(312)860-0740, through June 26. Chris Silva, Mike Genovese & Sayre Gomez
show at Parts Unknown Gallery, 645 West 18th Street, (312)492-9058,
through July 2. "A Measure of Taste" shows at The Guest Room Project,
2714 North Lawndale, (773)612-9121, through July 3.
Also by Michael Workman Eye Exam
Tip of the Week
Eye Exam
Eye Exam
Eye Exam
Eye Exam
Tip of the Week
Tip of the Week
Eye Exam
Eye Exam
Eye Exam
Games People Play
|
|
about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment |
