Also by Jason Foumberg
Eye Exam
“He’s dead, and he’s dead, and he’s dead…” says Lynn Kearney with a little laughing sigh of disbelief as she flips through artist files spanning the whole sixty-year history of the Contemporary Art Workshop. The Lincoln Park exhibition space and artist studios will close to the public January 23. Kearney’s meticulous files of show cards, exhibition reviews and documentary photographs will soon join the Chicago History Museum’s archives, a testament to the CAW’s long-standing and deeply-entrenched relationship with the city’s emerging artist scene
(2008-12-16)
Eye Exam
Our eyes, so careful to speak the mind’s intelligence, can easily regress to bestial instincts. They slim to a predatory shape, scan and hone. The café-set call it people-watching, but really it’s just a form of animal intelligence. When you walk down a busy sidewalk and set your eyes on another, then look away, then look again, away, and eyes brush past each other, it’s like dogs tracking fear, sex, competitors. The optic nerve stabs through the brain’s pearly pith, darting straight for the primitive core. Yes, it’s base, but even the most refined prepared meal satisfies the gurgling stomach. It’s with these eyes that I went looking for art with my teeth bared, and found Michael Wolf
(2008-11-18)
Eye Exam
The artist-team comprised of Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler, called New Catalogue, have dabbled in the field of creative nonfiction before, notably by creating a quasi-real photographic record of the nature trail where Hitler mused on his writings. Their latest project stylizes several historical events: the death of United Nations diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello is conflated with the annual Paris-Dakar motorcycle rally, except the artists have relocated the destination to Darfur
(2008-11-04)
Eye Exam
Halloween is the ultimate surrealist holiday, a witch’s vision come to fruition, where buried fears are unearthed and embraced—at least for one night. Since the first medievalist depicted the dance of death strutting upon life’s stage, artists have been holding up vanity’s mirror to the good and the pious. A world toppled by its underbelly and reigned by its opposite—what could be more truthful—and joyful to represent? Let’s not say that we deserve what we get, but a little black humor does come in handy
(2008-10-28)
Art Break
(2008-10-21)
Eye Exam
(2008-10-14)
After the Deluge
(2008-10-07)
Portrait of the Artist
(2008-10-07)
Portrait of the Artist
(2008-09-30)
Eye Exam
(2008-09-23)
Eye Exam
(2008-09-16)
Eastern Unorthodox
(2008-09-09)
