Michael Workman

On Carpenter Street in River West, a small crowd is gathered outside the doors of the basement the Foundation Gallery calls home. A young girl sits on the hood of a car while a wine-drunk West Loop gallerist mumbles incoherently--it's a hipster crowd. A few art collectors huddle and commiserate. Inside: the second part of the "You Are/I Am" show that opened last week, with a few of the artists against the wall, looking lost. They'd rather be making art. Flash-forward to a similar scene later that evening in the town of Highwood: It's the suburbs, and the crowd here's older. Trying to communicate sophistication, they're out in their Sunday best dresses and suits. Ties, even. Hanging on the walls are mostly paintings, some assemblages, screen prints. Cameras flash. It's opening night.

An old German proverb says something like "the work praises the master," which we may apply to art-making in the sense that, once mastered, the true skills (or lack thereof) of its maker are revealed. Similarly, galleries afford their keepers some degree of compliment, depending on the effort put into its presentation. But there are dangers to overcome: it's perfectly understandable how, after a modicum of success, it may start to feel boring, hollow. In fact, there are number of uninspired spaces in town that, never having demonstrated a reliable eye, should have closed long ago. By the same token, it's difficult to witness art spaces open and close in this city without feeling affected by the haste at which our art culture moves. Ask those who've opened a new space what their goals are and more often than not they will tell you it's to get recognized by "Artforum," or to show at Art Basel, Miami or in New York. Pitiful. Not to mention stupid.

Caught in the dream of art-world consensus, they forget how to dream on their own. While it's fine to believe the work you're showing is the best, it's only a few steps from there to exactly that hubris which blinds one's eye. How and why does it happen? It's too often all a fast-lane narcissistic pursuit of fame, or ill-considered eagerness for cash that drives them. Flannery O'Connor used to say that creative-writing programs didn't do a good enough job crushing the hopes of bad writers, and art schools seem to suffer similar shortcomings. It's feast or famine in the Midwest: we gorge on garish blockbuster museum shows at one end and anemic apartment shows at the other, with a few earnest curators and gallerists trying to hold the middle. It's enough to make you long for the guild system.

A few gallerists throwing in the towel were having their final opening-night receptions this past week, and I felt compelled to ask them why. At Foundation Gallery, co-director Michael Coleman explained that they'd reached a point where the Chicago audience would no longer sustain growth for the kind of artists they show. They're headed to Los Angeles, where they hope the generally street-culture art in their stable, the work of savvy designers and graffiti stylists, will fare much better. Their final show hints at a new, perhaps bolder direction: "You Are/I Am" consists of the books reviewed in last week's column and the returns on more than 5,000 postcards sent out. They're arranged in grids that cover the walls, a barrage of hand-drawn responses to the "You Are" at one end and the "I Am" at the other: one such response reads "You are going to die a horrible death if you keep smoking so many damn cigarettes," and: "I am the little blue fish waiting in the plants planning my attack to counter corruption ...in the bowl." Clearly, this one's written by a stoner, but they're all similarly amusing. None of the work's for sale--you get the feeling that the gallery's purpose was perhaps always more socio-cultural than commercial.

Not so at Street Level Gallery, always soundly a commercial venture. "Three Squared" includes a survey of the artists accumulated over the gallery's run. Co-owner Joe Davis has some darkly comic paint-by-number combat scenes and Jen Yorke's three-panel inkjet print on crepe de chine, "Have More (Blonde)?" depict in mesmerizing detail the mane of a woman's hair. The show stealer is Karin Patzke, whose Asian-influenced silk-screens depict fairytale scenes of bloodied animals, lurid and perverse in their grotesquerie. I liked them so much that I bought one. According to Joe and his wife Wendy, their reason for closing is relatively simple: it's mission accomplished. In 2002, they opened with a goal to "bring dynamic contemporary art to the population of the north suburbs of Chicago." Having done so, they felt it time to cut the cord. Fair enough, but the closing comes just as the street where the gallery sits has begun to fill with nightlife and restaurants, jammed to the gills with people hungry for options. It's unfortunate that Street Level won't be a part of Highwood's newly invigorated cultural interest.

"You Are/I Am" shows at Foundation Gallery, 700 North Carpenter, (312)860-0740, through August 21. "Three Squared" shows at Street Level Gallery, 9 Highwood Avenue, (847)432-8340, through September 15.

(2005-08-09)

Also by Michael Workman

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More than a single series of vinyl letters, "You Are Beautiful" is the name of "an anonymous collective based in Chicago."
(2005-08-02)

Eye Exam
In Von Kommanivanh's imagined world, darkness rules
(2005-07-26)

My Crack-Whore Stalker
In the last week alone, I've received more than 100 text messages on my cell phone, three different Hallmark cards and four post-midnight (often at 2 or 4am) voicemail messages. I don't have to guess who it is. I know who it is. It's my crack-whore stalker
(2005-07-26)

Eye Exam
If there's any single art form constantly in jeopardy of not having enough practitioners, it's sculpture
(2005-07-21)

Eye Exam
(2005-07-19)

Eye Exam
(2005-07-05)

Eye Exam
(2005-06-28)

Eye Exam
(2005-06-24)

Eye Exam
(2005-06-15)

Tip of the Week
(2005-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2005-06-09)

Eye Exam
(2005-05-24)

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