Jason Foumberg

There’s nothing hokey about Jason Hackenworth’s balloon sculptures. The large-scale works (over seven feet) consist of balloons woven and tied into an array of strange forms, from the sexually suggestive to overgrown parasites. The monster from the recent Korean film "The Host" comes to mind, a mutant of the sea with an appetite for people. Hackenworth uses brightly colored balloons as if to stun and lure unsuspecting viewers into the realm of dangerous beauty. Hackenworth’s recent forays into wearable balloon fashion, environmental interventions, and as backdrops on the art fair circuit allow the sculptures to take on a new meaning at each location. On a pair of long legs the balloons make the body both ridiculous and monstrous; on a pristine beach it reminds us of our current ecological woes; at a party it is the perfect prop for hedonistic mayhem. Here, in the art gallery, the balloon sculpture becomes sanitized as if it were an ephemeral relic of a mad scientist’s lapse in morality, ready for dissection and rendering viewers into necrotic gnats of beauty, satiated in seduction.

Jason Hackenworth shows at NavtaSchulz Gallery, 1039 West Lake, (312)421-5506, through Feb 16. (2008-01-15)

Also by Jason Foumberg

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There’s something roughly pornographic about Samia Mirza’s new sculpture at Koscielak Gallery. It’s a beastly thing engaged in a pose like the yogic upward-facing dog, yet also reminiscent of a woman halfway between birthing and orgasm. Her infant swims nearby, a smiley-faced tadpole. All the while, she’s lost her head; it rests by her neck. Her anus, pushed up in the air, exhibits a frightfully screaming face composed of gouged holes. The whole scene is reflected in a mirror beneath the figure, like a prostitute’s ceiling, so that all angles are exposed in all writhing perspectives
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Abstract painting made by young, academically trained artists is finding solid ground to run on in Chicago. Although it sometimes seems relegated to the realm of the decorative, doomed by its own prettiness and scorned by witty tricksters still feeding from the Warholian trough of dry humor, abstract painting finds hope on the brushes of a few young artists and rises (again)
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Eye Exam
Some things are best enjoyed while sitting down. Reading a book, making a drawing, people watching and perhaps even giving a work of art a prolonged stare are activities that indolence rewards. The proliferation of video and filmic art in galleries and museums seems inversely proportional to the number of comfy places to sit. Video and other time-based media seeks a sedentary viewer, and to be in repose is to participate. Chicago’s NAB Gallery is working to solve that dilemma
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