Michael Workman

Pulling into a parking spot outside the Skestos Gabriele Gallery Friday night, I find myself comparing the nearby Lake Street nightclub throngs with the crowd in front of the gallery chatting into mobile phones and puffing on cigarettes. Stephanie Skestos Gabriele, a former Art Institute curator, launched her gallery this past summer and "Family First?" represents her fifth exhibit to date. Geographically, her space joins notables such as Schopf, Flatfile and Linda Warren Galleries. As more galleries open in the area centered loosely between Lake Street and Fulton Corridor, it adds pull to the dense center of gravity across the tracks from the main gallery hive at Peoria and Randolph.

Curated by Jennifer Jankauskas, this show finds its signature images in the aluminum-mounted, large-scale chromogenic color prints by Stockholm-based artist Annee Olofsson. Each of the three images are of a woman with long blonde hair, shot from behind, with a pair of boney hands clasping her head, shoulders and waist. It's unclear whether these hands are male or female, since the female figure faces straight into darkness, leaving the hands disembodied in appearance, as if an outgrowth of her body. They're eerie, slightly demonic images that hint at the act of possession hidden in every loving embrace. Equally fascinating are Karen Skloss's digital videos, especially her 2:12 DVD "The Family." In it, a husband, wife and daughter, decked out in all their Sunday finery, pose as they would for any K-Mart family portrait. Attentive viewers will notice their slight movement in the frame: the wife's earrings jiggle, the husband sways in his posture. At first it looks like the video's playing in slow motion, but in fact it's a live-action portrait that recalls the work of Fiona Tan and Warhol, and frames the family as a study in ever-changing emotional inertia.

Two blocks south on Peoria, a crowd has crushed into the doorway at Monique Meloche for a peek at the first in a series of four performances by youngling Chicago artist Justin Cooper, "Middle Management." It's a treat to get performance art that's not another droning rock band in this neighborhood, though any performance art's a welcome departure for a town that generally doesn't welcome it. "Middle Management," originally performed at Gallery 2, is broken into four sections--"The Party," "The Appointment," "The Board Meeting" and "The Merger"--the show opened with "The Party," as performed by Cooper, Reed Barrow, Benjamin Bellas and Clinton King. While perhaps two-thirds longer than necessary, the show manages a payoff or two. For much of the performance, Cooper attempts to speak reason to a depressed mute in a fur suit sitting in a lawn chair. My favorite moments come when, in frustration, he wields a scary-looking, polished steel-bladed axe to a drum and cymbal barrage played by a black-cloaked death figure. And, since the four Orville Redenbacher hot-air corn poppers mounted to the track lights above are clearly visible the entire time, it comes as a strange form of relief when he finally plugs them in and the popcorn falls in a brief, anti-cathartic shower of dry snow.

The next night, several westward blocks back down Lake Street, the three-woman show "John Van Wmson" opened at Butcher Shop/Dogmatic Gallery. That's "John" for Stacie Johnson, "Van" for Kristen Vanderventer and "Wmson" for Lisa Williamson. While clever, it's probably better not to draw too many conclusions as to why they used parts of their own to form a man's name, aside from a need to signal the show's post-feminist concerns. These are most evident in Williamson's "Purification Videos," a series of four single-channel video shorts titled "Mulling over Devastation," "Women Unite or I Want Him Back," "Aggressive Beats," and "Experience Plants." Johnson's series of four oils, "Four Corners of My Apartment," are modest concept one-liners, and Vandeventer's "Sandy Sea Hook Sea Wall Masturbation" held my interest for a few minutes. But it was Williamson's videos that were my favorite, especially "Experience Plants," in which, after drenching the forest of healthy-looking foliage in her living room for a full four minutes, she raises to her lips and chugs the bottle. Have to love a woman who knows how to drink.

"Family First?" shows at Skestos Gabriele Gallery, 212 North Peoria, (312)243-1112, through February 4. Middle Management shows at Monique Meloche Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)455-0299, through February 4, with performances every Saturday at 5pm. "John Van Wmson" shows at Butcher Shop/Dogmatic Gallery, 1319 West Lake Street, (312)375-7757, through February 4.

(2006-01-10)

Also by Michael Workman

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The Collectors
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