Michael Workman

This week's column requires a little back-story in the spirit of full disclosure. While wearing my other hat as art promoter and event organizer, I've occasionally crossed paths with Ed Marszewski, who dabbles in many of the same things that I do. As the director of a not-for-profit, I publish Bridge magazine; Marszewski publishes Lumpen magazine. I put on the Nova Art Fair; he puts on NFO/EXPO, Version and the Select Media Festival. We both have huge egos, and it occasionally leads to a little sparring: a few months back, I got cornered for something I wrote that he didn't like. Which was okay--I don't particularly buy into everything he does, either (but I'm far more meek). I'm an art guy, Marszewski's a socio-cultural warrior with an honor ethic rooted in class and articulated through bold statements of (bad) taste. We share a friendly rivalry, indulged for kicks.

And so, get down to Bridgeport for the latest experiment by Marszewski and his merry band of Lumpenites, the Select Media Festival: Secret Histories and Imagined Futures (more info, including neighborhood maps, available online at www.selectmediafestival.org). Let's set aside for a moment how little of this has to do with visual art and consider the utopian elements as background to the art show at the core of this year's fest. So, how well do they prove their premise? This week, we're narrowing the focus to the New Chicagoans/Secret Histories Museum show at Iron Studios. It's a show that Marszewski selected the art for, and the main event of this year's fest: on balance, I liked about sixty percent of it. Quite a few familiar names, and several pieces I've seen before. But there were pleasant surprises: You Are Beautiful (www.you-are-beautiful.com) recruited several different artists to spell their name, including Chris Uphues and Juan Chavez, who all have individual pieces in the show. ElisaHarkins' "Eskimo Hut" is a four-wall room along the back of the space, a white room decorated with her Eskimos floating on clouds, sleeping on the backs of reindeer and kissing. Inside, the room's filled with little pink pillows of her kissing Eskimo faces in profile. It's a padded playroom of sorts, cutesy and comfy. Across from Harkins' room on a section of wall are two of Ryan Davies' wood cutouts "Buck" and "Doe," beautiful and simple. These two artists' work can commonly be seen hanging on the boarded façade of the building at the intersection of Grand, Halsted and Damen streets, where they install them illegally. "They purge the building every few months," Harkins explains. "But Ryan's work never gets taken down because he uses liquid nails."

Michael Genovese has one of the free-standing walls in the center of the space, "'Just now falling-Willie Nelson 2905," that he has filled with poetic wall text such as "I made believe/I never really loved you/Pretended that I didn't/Care at all..." Melancholy and brazen in its scale, the text reverberates with the power of song. Juan Chavez has a playful installation of several white globe lamps that he's painted to look like cartoon-character eyes, one with a black pupil, another crossed with an "x," as if punched or dead. They stare out at the viewer, disembodied and unblinking.

Some of my favorite works are difficult to find: Joe Compean's stereoscopic slideshow, tucked away behind the walls (visitors must discover Compean's installation by walking down a long, unlit "hall") transforms mundane, everyday scenes into images that literally leap from their two dimensions out into the viewer's perspective. Melinda Fries (of ausgang.com) and Andrew Wilson have an installation in a back corner of the second floor, a room within a room the length of which at eye level they have hung snapshots of what look like a walking tour of the neighborhood. Three miniature liquid crystals screens broadcast spots from the tour, frozen in surveillance: the dock of an industrial building, a dog scrambling back and forth behind a chain-link fence. Three CD players mounted to the wall broadcast the recordings of air gusting as traffic rushes past.

It's this diversity that Marszewski clearly hopes to harness. Bridgeport, a place gone wild with White Sox mania, feels more vital at the moment and this adds energy to the effort. Buildings scattered throughout the 'hood have been temporarily transformed into nodes in the Experimental Culture Zone (there's a separate website for this at www.lumpen.com/communityofthefuture/experiment.html). Myopic and Quimby's bookstores have set up shop in storefront spaces Marszewski offered them free of charge. And it all works, somehow. It's almost believable, with all the clamor surrounding the World Series, that this could somehow represent the "community of the future" as seen with the fresh perspective of these Chicago artists, a place that represents a chance to succeed at realizing their dreams.

The New Chicagoans/The Secret Histories Museum shows at Iron Studios, 3636 South Iron Street, (773)837-0145, through November 13.

(2005-10-25)

Also by Michael Workman

The Collectors
There aren't enough collectors in Chicago to sustain a world-class art scene
(2005-10-18)

Eye Exam
If there's an art-world power that rivals the gallery system in Chicago, it's the studio system
(2005-10-18)

Chicago Artist
Before co-founding Pilsen's Vespine Gallery, artist Shawn Sheehy was searching for his voice
(2005-10-11)

Eye Exam
In the midst of Chicago Artist's Month, it's worth turning away from the artist for a moment in order to train our attention on those who constitute art's system of critical reception. Specifically, those who write the first draft of an artwork's history
(2005-10-04)

Chicago Artist
(2005-10-04)

Chicago Artist
(2005-09-27)

Eye Exam
(2005-09-20)

Eye Exam
(2005-09-13)

Is River North Dead?
(2005-09-06)

Eye Exam
(2005-09-06)

Fall Forward: Art and Museums
(2005-08-31)

Tip of the Week
(2005-08-30)

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