Michael Workman

Much of what occurs in our minds never reaches conscious awareness. We go about our daily lives with priority concerns overriding smaller wheels that turn in cogitation, slowly rolling over in the depths of our minds. Then, inevitably, we experience moments when the subconscious sum of our thoughts and feelings seem suddenly to reveal themselves to us. Usually these revelatory moments are connected to critical life changes: childbirth, breakups, the death of a loved one. In the case of Chicago artist Joe Conlon, it was the knowledge of his own imminent death. While art about the experience of surviving HIV has in recent years fallen out of mode, Conlon lived with the disease for twenty years, a long time for revelation. During the last five years of his life he made the work that appears in "101 Talismans for a Happy Death," an exhibition of video and photography up now at the West Loop's Aron Packer Gallery. Conlon's video reminds me of the work of UIC grad team Death By Design, whose art co-opts horror films, and Conlon's images also keep one foot squarely planted in high camp. But there's an added weight here, a use of these images as meditations on a single, intensely real mantra for their maker. Death rears up in a display of the full range of dramaturgy, from comedy to tragedy and everything in between. Corpses litter his imagery, thin lines of blood dripping from mouths, head wounds. They're suicides, murders, bodies fallen in odd poses, clean-looking and with saturated colors that seem to poke fun at their final rest. While there's still enough gore and eerie atmospherics to compete with even the most garish noir, his work keeps its sense of humor, reveling in the play of death. It's all a kind of gallows humor, an attempt to alleviate the sting of mortality by facing it with a grin, a smirk, and a reluctant acceptance of what must come. Conlon manages it admirably.

In the same building as Aron Packer at the Walsh Gallery is Indonesian artist Heri Doni's "Civilization Oddness." The artist's first solo in the States, curated by Jim Supangkat, makes for an interesting counterpoint to Conlon's work through its use of cartoons as a substantive inspirational subject, with Supangkat pointing out how "cartoon characters, although crushed to smithereens, never die." Doni fuses the logic of cartoons with the traditions of Javanese puppet-making to create depictions of imagined realities that invite absurdity, a strategy the artist employs to spur "complicit laughter to realize art as a vehicle of social critique." Facing the social ills of the modern world requires a sense of humor for us all.

Across the street in the 119 North Peoria building this week opens a group show at the Wendy Cooper Gallery curated by Lindsey Delahanty and Chicago recent 12 x 12 debutante photographer Jason Lazarus. It's with curiosity that I noticed this show had been realized: originally, Lazarus and Delahanty proposed it for the Network of Visual Art space and studios that I run on Washington. It didn't work out, but the curators were clear that they wished to present a bold alternative to artistic trends they dislike. What are those trends? Press materials disdainfully characterize it as a single movement, henceforth officially known as the "Neo-Psychadelia movement, a genre favoring highly stylized adolescent drawings, goth/rock and roll signifiers, and the hippie/skate culture aesthetics." Which makes complete sense as a curatorial premise because, you know, those dudes suck. In any case, there are some good artists in the show, including Greg Stimac and Sabrina Raaf, the latter one of my longtime faves. Ignore the flaccid attempt at statement-making and enjoy the art.

Joe Conlon, "101 Talismans For a Happy Death," shows at Aron Packer Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)226-8984, through August 19. Heri Doni, "Civilization Oddness," shows at Walsh Gallery, 118 North Peoria, (312)829-3312, through September 1.

(2006-07-18)

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