Lowell Thompson

By Jason Foumberg

A panel discussion was assembled this past Thursday, March 26, to address a perception that artists on Chicago’s South Side are under-known and undervalued or, at worst, intentionally ignored. As a nod to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel “Invisible Man,” the multi-part event, which included the discussion, was titled “Invisible Artist: Creators from Chicago’s Southside,” underscoring a divide that is not merely geographic but also—and mostly—racial.

The “South Side problem” is a micro-argument of the “Chicago-problem,” or second city syndrome, an old topic recently dusted off once again at the University of Chicago for the roundtable “Chicago Artist? Is there such a thing anymore?” in January. In both cases there’s the acknowledgement of a healthy and active art scene followed by its perceived dismissal by a large and vaguely defined power-granting establishment. Unfortunately this can be distilled to the question, Why haven’t “They” made me famous yet? This is unfortunate because it assumes a passive, backseat role to one’s career, which has not been the enduring feeling of the many do-it-yourself art scenes on the South Side and in Chicago alike. In both cases artists have pushed through the various stereotypes (the South Side is violent; Chicago is provincial) to create their own artistic home.
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RECOMMENDED

Marvin Newman and Yasuhiro Ishimoto became friends while studying at Chicago’s fabled Institute of Design, and brought the late-Modernist aesthetic that they were taught there to its street-photographic limits. In this comprehensive show–with works mainly from the 1950s–featuring fifty-one of Newman’s gritty film noirish Chicago shots and forty-three of Ishimoto’s brighter and wittier efforts, along with some of his later formal Zen-like studies, we are drawn back to a time in which fashion and cultural criticism were less important to photographers than telling expressive gestures. From the same root of a keen trained eye for significant detail grow Ishimoto’s amusing studies of the backsides of bathers standing at the refreshment shacks on the lake shore, and Newman’s take of the shoes of men milling around on a wood floor littered with trading slips. (Michael Weinstein)

Through April 25 at Stephen Daiter Gallery, 311 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

After finishing high school in Alabama, Roger Brown enrolled in Bible school, intending to become a preacher. Instead, a figure-drawing class strengthened his interest in art and redirected his course to Chicago. He arrived just in time to help form the group of artists that would come to be known as the Chicago Imagists. The pieces included in “Roger Brown: Early Work” date from 1968—when Brown began his MFA studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—until 1980, when his critical acclaim was beginning to grow thanks to exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center, Phyllis Kind Gallery, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, among other venues. Read the rest of this entry »

Randy Moore, "Smokers (set 1)," 2007, Watercolor on paper

Works on paper have experienced a tremendous resurgence over the past decade or so. For numerous reasons, paper doesn’t carry the same baggage as canvas, so many artists feel freer to have at it with abandon. One might expect “Vaguely Paperly,” a group show curated by Chris Johanson, to provide a detour-filled road map to some of the most interesting examples of the medium right now, by emerging artists anyway. Johanson has done as much to reveal paper’s cutting edge as anyone. In other contexts, Johanson and those he’s selected for this show (particularly artist/musician Brendan Fowler and Max  Schumann) have shown that artists making portable works in more-or-less traditional media can still participate in the larger field of relational aesthetics by foregrounding the social contexts of art-making over the production of salable objects. Unfortunately, that aspect doesn’t really come through in this show, despite the live performances at the opening reception. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Although it is loaded with conceptual explanation concerning tradition, globalization, imperialism, and cultural hybridism and interchange, Sheba Chhachhi’s installation of light boxes, in which images of Buddhist pilgrim monks proceed across brightly colored photographic landscapes and birds soar above them on moving spools of film, is best enjoyed as an array of intriguing scenes that are geared to captivate the child in us and put a sweet and mirthful smile on our faces. The monks in their thick traveling robes are the most entrancing of all, because Chhachhi cannot make them stride and is left with having them appear to be on a moving walkway as they journey through the desert. In sharp contrast to “Winged Pilgrims and Other Creatures,” “Silver Sap” is a series of unsparing straight black-and-white studies of older women’s bodies in fine detail that are meant to “recuperate the female body from dominant market and mediatic representations”—a return to hardcore feminism that has become familiar this season. (Michael Weinstein)

Through April 25 at Walsh Gallery, 118 N. Peoria

RECOMMENDED

For Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg’s first exhibition with Shane Campbell Gallery, he brought his paintings to the United States in his luggage, reminding me of the “Suitcase Paintings” exhibition at the Loyola Museum of Art last year, which featured small-scale Abstract Expressionist work that was (or could be) likewise transported via luggage.

In both cases, attention to scale is very important. Van der Ploeg composes his hard-edge geometric abstractions so that even though they are physically small, they have a large presence due to the sense that their organization could extend beyond the edges of the canvas.

Going beyond the edges is something that van der Ploeg has in mind. In addition to the five paintings on view, van der Ploeg has also created a wall painting specifically for the gallery space. Including relations to specific architecture in his work by rhyming with forms like the gallery’s light tracks and vents, van der Ploeg says that the wall painting is similar to monumental paintings on canvas, and certainly both strive to command space.  The wall paintings have linked this artist with graffiti, but he seems more at home in the gallery than the street.

Van der Ploeg describes his painting as being like a street sign rather than a “window,” a sentiment I have heard echoed by Chicago artists also working in hard edge geometric abstraction. It would seem that this reinvigoration of the genre is an international phenomenon. (Abraham Ritchie)

Through May 9 at Shane Campbell Gallery, 1431 W. Chicago.

Dieter Roth

RECOMMENDED

Flying just under the radar, the exhibition at the Art Institute’s Ryerson Library, “Multiples, Parts and Pieces,” brings to attention the work of the most pivotal artists surrounding the artist’s book form. From the famed forefather, Dieter Roth, whose book of designs earned recognition as one the first artist books, to Ed Ruscha’s sardonic paperback picture novels, and the entrance of the Fluxus sensibility in the 1960s, the exhibition covers the major moves in the twentieth-century book from the library’s collection.

On display is William Copley’s publication S.M.S. (Shit Must Stop), wherein artists such as John Cage, Marcel Broodthaers and Marcel Duchamp made regular contributions. (Cage’s assemblage box is on display along with Broodthaers’ box of interviews and posters.) The work of legendary feminist activists the Guerilla Girls is presented in a selection of posters on the topic of saving the environment, and the guide to female stereotypes, “Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers.”

A charming addition to the show is a selection from Wallace Berman’s series, “L.A. Lover,” collage selections of printed poems that made sharing art via the post into a very personal exchange. These pieces need to be looked at, opened, reveled in and handled whenever possible. (Beatrice Smigasieicz)

Through May 18 at the Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan.

RECOMMENDED

Gravity is responsible for nearly all of the accidents involving falling objects, wrote Dave Barry—and so it would seem that the suspension of gravity is the best buffer against a potential disaster. “Gravity Buffs,” a thematic group exhibition, offers a sweetly sardonic alternative to the most binding of the natural forces. From video to photography, collage and drawing, the work alludes to the childlike innocence of the desire to be weightless.

Lilly McElroy’s “drawing of me kicking a dog” is reminiscent of Henry Darger’s sensibilities in marrying cruelty and innocence, in a simple straightforward pencil drawing of a young girl sending a dog flying though the air. Also suspended in mid-air is the delicate bubble floating in the interior of Adam Ekberg’s untitled photograph. A heavily lacquered moth is preserved, clasped in a wooden case, and a humorously elating crutch, papier-mâchéd in cutouts of smiles, is probably the best cure for a broken leg.

But it’s Amy Cutler’s “Arrangement” that turns to the most effective metaphor. On a masterfully executed fairytale illustration of a mount made of chairs, bed, desk and other domestic furniture, a young girl climbs to the very top of the picture frame to escape a pair of alligators. Saved or not by the escape route of domestic furniture, the high altitude makes us all feel a little lightheaded. (Beatrice Smigasiewicz)

Through April 11 at Thomas Robertello Gallery, 939 W. Randolph St.

RECOMMENDED

“Without You I am Nothing” features print work from both Chicago and Rhode Island artists. The viewers’ interaction with the artwork and with other visitors is integral to all the interactive pieces on display, so the exhibition is also an exercise in “relational aesthetics,” a fancy term for the radical idea that it’s okay to talk to someone else about art.

The tone of the work on view ranges from playful to serious: there’s an art-inflected game as well as a screen-printed chart for the only Vatican-approved birth control, the complicated and unreliable Natural Rhythm Method. “And We Built a City Together” (2009), by Meg Turner and Andrew Oesch, requires the viewer to participate in constructing the actual work itself. You are presented with a bag of stickers of buildings and other urban accoutrement like trees that you then place onto a gallery wall that has the bare outlines of streets on it. Think “The Sims” or “SimCity.” I found this a little facile at first, but how a citizen constructs their world is vitally important. This was clinched when I noticed that on one of the sticker graveyards someone had penciled in “CPS” which could either indicate the schoolchildren killed this year (another shameful record), or the state of the school system itself.

Those who believe that Art is only oil-on-canvas-and-frames will most likely be disappointed, but as the exhibition text states, “satisfaction need not be guaranteed each viewer.” (Abraham Ritchie)

Through April 25 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee.

Carol Wax, "Writer's Blocks," mezzotint

By Steven Wirth

If you happen to be curious about the current state of affairs in the wide world of printmaking then look no further than the forthcoming Southern Graphics Council’s annual conference hosted by Columbia College and Anchor Graphics from March 25–29. Established in 1972, the Southern Graphics Council, or SGC as it is commonly called, is the largest print organization in North America, and each year its annual conference is the largest celebration of printmaking of its kind.

The conference itself means many different things to many different people: Read the rest of this entry »