Burt Michaels

For his twentieth anniversary Aron Packer is characteristically exhibiting work that is in no way academic—no "empty conceptualism" in this gallery. His main space is featuring finely wrought, small-scale, but hugely muscular and troubling black-and-white works by Friese Undine, a self-taught but hardly folk ex-Chicagoan now based in New York. Undine’s subjects seem caught in Orwellian nightmares, engulfed in some monstrous socio-techno machinery—surreal, often funny little drawings, ranging from a methamphetamine molecule to cavemen praying like contemporary evangelicals. They’re hand-etched on aluminum, then shaded with spray paint—well-suited to George Bush’s America but surprisingly affordable even for non-plutocrats.

In his lower level Packer revisits Lucy Ruth Wright Rivers, the first contemporary artist he ever exhibited, in a show aptly titled "The Same, Only Different." Packer met Rivers at her SAIC MFA show; she’s since migrated to a working farm in California and traveled to this opening via Burning Man. Her tapestries of old beaded accessories painstakingly laced together with tiny wire loops are both elegant and fanciful.

The anniversary show, which runs through October 13, also includes single works by many of the twenty or so core artists Packer represents—some emerging, others now mid-career. There’s a hilarious big pastel self-portrait by Otto Lange South as Flash Gordon brandishing a Wonder Bread instead of a ray gun. Renee McGinnis surreally places a London power plant amid luscious topiary. The sculpture "Shark Girl" by Casey Reardon Millard, which reared her ludicrous head at Art Chicago, is back, along with a smattering of folk pieces reminiscent of Packer’s beginnings twenty years ago.

Though their style and media vary, all the works are well-crafted and fast, accessible, evoking visceral reactions without academic mediation. "I never went to art school," Packer explains. He took a degree in psychology at UIC, but "hanging with Cindy Sherman and Julian Schnabel in the East Village made art seem like fun, so I took up painting and photography," waiting tables for a living. His parents ran a folk art gallery, and Packer worked county fairs before opening an apartment gallery in Edgewater. Over the years he relocated to Wicker Park, River North and then the West Loop. In 2004 he opened a satellite gallery in Three Oaks, MI, and last year moved to his current space. "It’s a destination by itself now," he says, "so the audiences are more selective." Fortunately for them, the art is not.

Aron Packer, 942 West Lake, (312)226-8984.

(2007-09-11)

Also by Burt Michaels

Portrait of the Gallerist
Like Athena springing full-grown and battle-ready from Zeus' head, Alfedena Gallery burst on the Chicago art scene in January with a roster of nineteen well-established Midwestern artists, immediately fielded three widely and favorably reviewed exhibitions and exploited its state-of-the-art commercial kitchen to host several corporate team-building retreats where guests work with area chefs to create meals that befit the sleek, art-adorned, tri-level space
(2007-05-15)

Portrait of the Gallerist
In 1963, with his family's businesses tottering and three kids to support, Gray opened a gallery "because I needed a job." He'd taken a high-school art class, studied architecture for two years, dabbled at painting and, through his in-laws, knew some local collectors
(2007-04-24)

Art Break
You might not expect to find Rhona Hoffman, whose venerated-but-hip gallery is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, cheering at a Mite-level hockey game (her grandson's), enjoying Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" or reading cosmology, but this stanchion of contemporary art is replete with contradictions--most notably her predilection for art that is abstract, that strives for art-historic breakthroughs and museum status, yet sends a progressive socio-political message
(2007-03-20)

Eye Exam
As a fine-art photographer, Brian Ulrich traffics in youth-oriented pop culture, but this time, in the series "Copia" (which means "abundance"), he takes us on a romp where we've all been: through the malls and big-box stores of middle America
(2006-12-05)

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