The Franks, "I Heart Art Critics," 2008

By Jason Foumberg

Recently, in conversation with a painting and drawing professor, the subject of skill, and the long quiet hours required to refine those skills, arose. Woe to he who pursues art for monetary gain, said the professor with his usual dramatic flair; it’s rather like a monastic pursuit, he said, extending forefinger skyward for oratorical emphasis. Hoping to improve my own basic drawing skills, I turned to Betty Edwards’ classic manual, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” wherein she writes that learning to draw can help bring about “creative solutions to problems, whether personal or professional.” In this light, Edwards’ otherwise charming book could spawn a hundred dreary corporate professional development seminars. So which is it—is drawing, and hence the pursuit of creativity, a means of self-purity, as the monkish professor would have it, or is it a utility with social aspirations?

Let’s not be too idealistic. The practice of art is afforded by free time. If you don’t have any, then you make some by pinching from the corners of your life. In time, a space is made and a circle is drawn within which to be a little hermit. It’s in here that you make, consider, re-make, and reconsider something that may not move outside of your little hermitage until it reaches the art gallery—the hermit conference.

The question of artistic productivity is at the heart of this month’s installment of Twelve Galleries, the nomadic exhibition project slated to last for one year, and which takes place at a different space each month. The January Gallery strays from the traditional solo-show structure. Here, organizer Jamilee Polson created a situation where gallery-goers could collectively plan a year of activities. Large monthly calendars on the walls provided the blank squares for viewers to write both real and fictional events based on personal, political, whatever art world dreams and desires they cared to share (but the actual development of these activities is left to the individuals). The effort was an exercise in seeing the big picture, getting organized and mapping goals—presumably things that we need to practice.

“Are We There Yet?” is the name of an essay from the New Art Examiner, published in May, 1995. Critic Ann Wiens wrote that if the Chicago art world was to survive the mid-90s economic slump it must create “a vital artistic community” external to the needs of the commercial gallery system. “Nomadic galleries, temporary spaces, or shows in homes” (read: unencumbered by rent) must be embraced, Wiens wrote, as if presaging the Twelve Galleries project, which opens in art and non-art spaces alike and, as far as January was concerned, successfully raised no cash.

Jason Lazarus

“Chicago galleries still want a room of their own,” warned Wiens. Still, a space such as Lloyd Dobler Gallery, which hosted Twelve Galleries this month, is an apartment gallery that aspires to otherwise. The apartment’s front room—the gallery part—emulates the white cube model—an unfurnished room with clean walls and bright lights. For many, this is the most comfortable arrangement to view and discuss visual art.

Likewise, a new group exhibition at Dominican University, wittily titled “Untitled (Field Work),” features several artists who consider their role as Artist in light of The Art World. The “field” in the show’s un-title refers to the common field—the shared roles and rules—where artists work and play. Two photographs by Jason Lazarus, from the artist’s self-portrait series, propose contrasting artistic personae. A 2004 piece shows the artist spreading gasoline on the front steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art. This is the artist-as-revolutionary persona, which isn’t exactly revolutionary because Ed Ruscha did it in 1968, but presumably this is the joke: the production of originality is mired by the past. Lazarus’ other photo, from 2006, reveals an incandescent moon behind a cloudy sky at night. Titled “Standing under the same moon as Barack Obama,” it shows the artist as documentarian of the present, gifted with special insights to distill our collective myths (for without the title, it’s just an image of the moon). This is still a potent and viable position for an artist to inhabit, although no less constructed than the others.

Conrad Bakker

The playing field, according to Conrad Bakker, has problems. In the gallery he casually flags cracked, water-damaged and unpatched holes in the white cube patina. Bakker also made a replica of Artforum that sits on a replica of the iconic sleekly designed gallery bench alongside other gallery paraphernalia. Thus Bakker presents a cautionary tale of gallery realism: beware of your art’s context. It could get trapped in the everlasting circular relay where it exists only to prove that it exists. Eventually, only the white cube will remain, while the artist disappears like so many layers of dried white paint.

January Gallery shows through February at Lloyd Dobler Gallery, 1545 W. Division, second floor. “Untitled (Field Work)” shows through February 28 at The O’Connor Art Gallery, Dominican University, 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest

The imagery in Sergio Gomez’s new mixed-media works—figures both concentrated and expanded in form—mirrors the artist’s own multifaceted roles. He’s a graphic designer, faculty at South Suburban College, and gallery administrator at 33 Collective Gallery, part of the 80,000 square-foot Zhou B. Art Center.

2009 is the fifth anniversary of 33 Collective. Could you describe the collective’s inception and your initial involvement?

Javier Chavira, Carla Carr, Kimberly Harmon and I met in college. Our desire to collaborate resulted in the creation of 33 Collective, originally a studio and gallery space. We became familiar with the Zhou B. Art Center in Bridgeport and were among its first tenants.

Have your goals changed since then?

Our goal has remained the same since our humble beginnings: to display and promote emerging artists and organize group exhibitions. In March, 2008, we expanded our membership to other artists. Our members are very “hands-on”—they help organize and promote exhibitions, install shows and help with the financial costs of running the gallery.

You’re also the director of VisualArtToday.com, a Web site that provides “the opportunity for curatorial international exchange and collaboration.” What happens on the site?

This is a new venture for me (as if I had nothing else to do, right?). I get upset when I’m bombarded by ads when browsing online art shows. I wanted to build an online exhibition space that would be simple, reliable, ad-free and permanent. That’s all.

Why create permanent online exhibitions?

By permanently displaying the exhibitions I maximize the visibility of the page. My goal is to create opportunities for contemporary artists and curators around the globe to share and collaborate through online exhibitions. The Web site opened last fall with an exhibition by Elmhurst-based artist Lynn Hill, and there are two more Chicago artist exhibitions coming up in the next few weeks. There’s no cost to artists or curators, as I support the site with my own funding.

You create art and support it through your many roles. Do you feel you’re first and foremost an artist, or that all your positions equally define you?

A very good question. I’m a creative individual; that’s my primary role. My creativity translates into all the things I choose to be involved with. I feel that my art-making process is enriched by all my roles—one thing I’ve learned is to manage my time in order to keep producing quality work! (Patrice Connelly)

Sergio Gomez shows at 33 Collective, Zhou B. Center, Suite 101, 1029 W. 35th St., through February 13.

RECOMMENDED

They are beaded, embroidered and artfully hung on a gallery wall, but the fact remains: they are panty liners. In the newest exhibition of the Anatomy in the Gallery series, the International Museum of Surgical Science features Laurel Roth’s “Hope Chest,” a potpourri of sanitary napkins bedecked in thread and outlined in plastic beads.

Laughable as it all sounds, Roth’s unexpected medium of choice encourages a look at the commercialization and marketing of female fertility. Her “Birth Control Series,” featuring napkins adorned with the pastel-colored names of the chemicals that make up hormonal contraceptives, is jarringly evocative of the tender Home Sweet Home samplers decking the walls of so many country homemakers. Roth heightens the effect with a “PMS Quilt” of four-letter-words boldly scripted onto her napkins, then crocheted together in blazing red yarn.

The juxtaposition of tender woman-craft and comparably shocking vulgarity is not a new theme—greeting cards with “Happy F—ing Birthday!” can be found on Etsy for as little as four dollars a pop. But Roth’s use of alternative media truly is a surprise, and her wry incorporation of the chemicals women so willingly pump into their bodies imparts an air of concerned warning, leaving women to wonder just how their supposedly delicate bodies can handle what they themselves have subjected them to. (Jaime Calder)

Through April 17 at the International Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 North Lake Shore, (312)642-6502

George C. Clark, "Winter Afternoon, Cocoa Beach, Florida," acrylic on panel

RECOMMENDED

Exhibits at the spacious Murphy Hill Gallery are assembled more by chance than by design, but that doesn’t mean that a trip out to the recycled Sears & Roebuck factory on Chicago’s West Side isn’t worth the short drive from the Loop. The masterly George Clark is the artist who stands out in this exhibit, showing works that span several decades of his life as a painter. Like Edward Hopper, he takes us to streets where the mysterious meets the ordinary, and his attention to detail will keep those streets alive long after he has stopped walking them. The large-scale photographs of John Sagami have a similar, mysterious feeling,  but they are black-and-white, as in film noir, and invite the viewer walk down the back streets of his dark, urban dream-world that feels so much like a novel set in Shanghai. Then Pat Rose takes us back into the sunlight and lets us pretend that even the neglected margins of urbanity are only there to please the eye. Indeed, each of these artists has struck out in a different direction, and since they are all showing some skill,  it’s usually enjoyable to follow them. (Chris Miller)

Through February 28 at Murphy Hill Gallery, 3333 W. Arthington St.

RECOMMENDED

Riffing on the Museum’s and Court Theater’s production of a new translation of Henrik Ibsen’s brutally poignant tragic drama recounting the failed pretensions of deluded idealism, “The Wild Duck,” Christopher Hiltz was seized with the conceit of taking black-and-white snapshots of members of the audience right outside the performance space. Intended by the playwright to disturb the middle-class complacency of more than a century ago, Hiltz is grimly aware that today’s theater-going burghers are no more visibly introspective and just as self-satisfied as their counterparts were in Ibsen’s Norway, having accurately titled his series, “Pleasant Enough all the Same.” Hiltz’s all-too-human takes show us normal and likable enough middle-age and older Chicagoans with a taste for culture, and a sprinkling of the vivacious young. Art aimed at inciting self-criticism has always fought an uphill battle; its failure is implicit in its quest. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 15 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave.

RECOMMENDED

Afro-Cuban, with a bit of Chinese mixed in, and living in the United States, consummate performance photographer Maria Magdalena Campos Pons is the epitome of globalized multiple identity. Armed with her jet-black cornrows and white face paint, Campos Pons struts her multicultural stuff in her series of seven color photos, “Prayer to Obama I,” in which the two images at each end show her with her tresses hanging over her face as she grasps overflowing bunches of flowers; and the three middle images have her facing us clasping a painted figurine bust of our new president who sports a rigid grin and whose eyes are wide open, while she adopts subtle dreamy and nearly sad expressions. Campos Pons is clearly the power figure here, exuding maternal domination, albeit in prayerful rapture; the voodoo is decidedly feminist and the viewer is left to fathom the intent. In Campos Pons’s live and self-proclaimed “democratic” performance at the show’s opening, she put the audience through its paces, directing them to affirm the many splendored “gifts” of life from doubt to joy, adding that they have the “string attached” of our having to be grateful for them. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 6 at Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash

RECOMMENDED

When looking at Matthew Dennison’s paintings, a viewer may get the feeling that something is slightly awry. The narrative scenes, depicting people in daily, normal routines both indoors and outdoors, do not outright defy reality, but skirt about its edges. The angles of the houses are just a bit off, the figures disproportioned with exaggerated characteristics, comprising a kind of surrealistic Americana—Norman Rockwell meets Eric Fischl. Dennison’s paintings, in both title and content, remain purposely ambiguous, refusing to commit to a specific time period or event. The exception is “Electric Car,” which depicts a happy-looking couple with a bright-yellow car in the foreground, while simplified wind turbines turn behind them. While the car and wind turbines refer to contemporary issues—especially of a serious nature—the generic, Caucasian couple looks as if they’re leaving their 1950s Levittown community to embark upon a picnic. This manufactured aspect carries through to Dennison’s other pieces with the addition of a layer of industrial-strength enamel paint. The result is a glossy, flat surface that Dennison manipulates to allow certain areas of the oil painting to show through. Look carefully and you’ll see most figures’ faces lack the enamel and glow from the oil painting underneath, an indication that not everything on the surface is all right. (Patrice Connelly)

Through February 27 at Melanee Cooper Gallery, 740 N. Franklin

Opening February 13 at Heaven Gallery, Harold Arts presents “Psst-Shhh,” an exhibition curated by Joan of Arc singer Tim Kinsella. “Psst-Shhh,” a multimedia group show showcasing the talents of twelve local artists—including Chris Uphues, Melina Ausikaitis and Jeremy Boyle—features mediums from painting and sculpture to video and photography. “I was invited to curate a group show at Heaven around a particular theme, but the theme wasn’t particularly engaging to me, so I instead checked in with a bunch of different people I know that make work I feel some resonance with,” Kinsella says. “Together this is a pretty strange group, but I used to get really excited about making the strangest mixtapes that flowed song by song so one never knew exactly how they ended up so far from where they began. I guess my ambition for the show would be a sort of spacial analogy to that.” (Micah McCrary)