David Mark Wise

Some might think the term “Chicago Imagism” describes a sensibility that is typically Chicago, but the artists in this show are so diverse, one wonders what could possibly unite them under one name. Jim Nutt’s monstrous bodies, Ed Paschke’s cool neons and Karl Wirsum’s cartoon hieroglyphics have defined what Chicago Imagism is for many people, but it is the other artists who show what a surge of creativity and experimentation it really was. Margaret Wharton took a wooden chair, cut it up in little cubes, stitched it back together with wire, hung it up on a wall and called it “Martyr,” a dark, emotional work that is more than feminist. Barbara Rossi’s “Lady Waiting for Dinner” borrows turn-of-the-century design elements (think Chris Ware) and created an obscure surrealist fable in acrylic on masonite. A collage work by Ray Yoshida is refined and restrained, almost classical; he takes unnoticed details of newspaper cartoons and uses them as structural elements in a tense but coherent composition…but then a tiny cutout “AAAIIEE EEAAH!” is thrown in that makes the whole work scream. The works in this show make one appreciate that this was not so much a movement as a time of invention, experiment and indulgence in things that the post-minimalist New York scene just wasn’t interested in—enjoyment, grotesquerie, bodies.

“Chicago Imagism: 1965-1985” shows at Russell Bowman Art Advisory, 311 West Superior, (312) 751-9500, through August 16. (2008-05-27)

Also by David Mark Wise

Tip of the Week
Tony Fitzpatrick once said that Studs Terkel was his biggest influence as an artist. This is worth bearing in mind when you see his works, which are full of the collaged detritus of the everyday life of times past in Chicago: matchbook covers, tramcar tickets, comic books, postcards, notes and chords cut out of old sheet music. This technique is put to brilliant and moving effect in works like “Music of White Flowers,” three strange compositions whose story you know but find hard to put into words
(2008-05-20)

Tip of the Week
Chris Dorland has been painting utopian architecture for several years now, creating pictures that indulge in gorgeously threatening baroque colorations, and that have a strange Piranesi-like splendor
(2008-05-06)

Eye Exam
Kirsten Leenaars’ "Travelogue of a Stationary Dreamer" is a fragile and vulnerable video installation now showing at the Contemporary Art Workshop (CAW), a space that always seems about to be swallowed up, even though the CAW has been around for decades. It is the first video installation CAW has mounted in its fifty-eight-year history, and the space is well-suited to the demanding—and rewarding—act of meditation that Leenaars’ work demands
(2008-04-15)

Tip of the Week
Ed Paschke once described his work as "translation"—appropriating photos and other imagery from popular culture, and transforming them into his own idiom. His work is marked everywhere by an engagement with the world of photomechanically reproduced images, like those of photography, movies and television
(2008-04-08)

Tip of the Week
(2008-03-25)

Tip of the Week
(2008-03-18)

Tip of the Week
(2008-03-05)

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