Rebecca Shore has been making paintings for about thirty years, and some of her newest paintings are her largest yet. She usually paints on a panel that’s roughly the size of a sheet of paper, but a few of the new works are about a meter high. The change in scale allows for a greater density of visual information, which is what’s so satisfying about her new body of work—collections of objects and symbols, seen in shadow, and laid out as if on a blanket, the treasured possessions of a collector. As with any collection, the more that’s amassed brings a greater understanding of the whole.

Shore began painting what she calls these “irregular patterns” by noticing and photographing faux rock patterns on houses, which are handmade wall paintings of abstract shapes made to resemble stacked rocks. Her photographs are on view in the gallery, in a small case for reference, and in the show’s catalog. Shore is an incessant collector of imagery who documents signage, advertisements, and even oddball shapes taken from television screenshots.

Many of Shore’s older paintings look to decorative motifs, such as filigree flourishes and stylized floral designs, recalling sheets of wallpaper. The new work, however, brings the imagistic associations to the forefront, including butcher knives, alphanumerics, slippers and urns. Shore flattens these images, thereby abstracting them, turning them into both essentialized and ambiguous forms.
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It is appropriate that the first Chicago exhibition of Josef Strau’s work should take place at Rowley Kennerk, the small West Loop gallery steadily establishing itself as the go-to venue for viewing challenging artwork. Strau, a native of Vienna, has gained a devoted following abroad due to his ongoing efforts as writer, curator, artist and proponent of the “non-productive attitude,” an increasingly relevant conceit that recognizes the value of artistic ideas without requiring a physical (consumable) materialization of those ideas. Strau operated the Galerie Meerrettich, an avant-garde, anti-establishment project space, in Berlin from 2002 until 2006, when he closed it to focus on his own practice, a combination of writing, found-object sculpture, and painting/collage that seems at once humble and aristocratically aloof. The works on display here include several sculptures employing lamps (the mass-produced variety one might find at Target or IKEA); several collage-like works on canvas using, variously, strings of faux pearls, ink, acrylic paint and dust; and poster-sized inkjet prints of typewritten text in dense, ungainly columns that paper an entire wall and appear also on canvas and on sculpture. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s true that “Geoffrey Todd Smith is a Friend to Beauty,” as the latest installment of Chicago’s trendy stoner-art scene—his double-show at Western Exhibitions—is titled. Smith is also friends with people on Facebook, where he cutely snatched up his status updates to title the pieces for his current show, titles like “Geoffrey Todd Smith is Murdering the Rhythm like the RZA on Ritalin,” or “Geoffrey Todd Smith is Untitled.”

Smith’s pastel-primary-fluorescent paintings could pass for an acid-trip grandma’s precision-heavy quilt (if quilts were made of paper and gouache), or a petri-dish of magnified-pointillist bacteria (if bacteria were perfectly circular and extra psychedelic). Chicago magazine dubbed him an artist to watch that everyone should be collecting right this very minute, and it’s easy to see why. His double-show at Western Exhibitions provides two rooms of decorative-enough paintings. Sadly, the intensity and air of relentless patience and mechanical precision evident in each of his paintings must drag around decorativeness’ stigmatized baggage. His grids of circles are steeped in a broth of bedazzled zigzags and, upon close examination, the velvety qualities of what looks like solid dots and hoops from afar are really multiple layers of vibrato. Smith’s attention to detail is just as striking as the oddball colors he stretches over each circle he fills, but this does not mean he makes no mistakes. Where lines of jellybean plops collide with Spirographic circles, things are likely to get messy. (Natalie Edwards)

Through May 30 at Western Exhibitions, 119 N. Peoria

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In addition to being an acclaimed venue for public art, Millennium Park has a populist mandate, and the balance between popular appeal and artistic excellence is a difficult one. Chen Wenling’s “Valiant Struggle,” one of four new large-scale sculptures from China introduced into the park, is a critique of an increasingly capitalistic and consumerist Chinese society, but the funhouse aesthetic, especially in the park, reduces the sentiment.

More seriously, the work by Sui Jianguo and Shen Shaomin references international relations and tensions. Jianguo’s “Windy City Dinosaur” is a near-actual-size T-Rex with “Made In China” attached to its stomach that could allude to controversial Chinese toy exports or the many fossil excavations going on in China. Shaomin’s “Kowtow Pump” consists of several oil derricks covered in camouflage and are motorized at different speeds. Kowtow is the act of bowing in respect, and the piece references our continued oil dependence. Seeing it in action is integral but disappointingly it will only run once daily, during tours.

Zhan Wang’s “Jia Shan Shi No. 46” reaches back to tradition and connects to the contemporary without gimmicks. It is a stainless-steel copy of a Chinese scholar stone, which, in its original form, is used for meditation. Wang updates this tradition for twenty-first century China. However, most people seemed more inclined to give it a knock to see if it was hollow than to give it contemplation. Hopefully the artistic message of this and the other sculptures will not be lost on everyone. (Abraham Ritchie)

Through October 11 at Millennium Park, Monroe Street at Michigan Avenue.

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The current show at the Chicago Tourism Center brings back the familiar advertisements from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and places them with original advertisements from “the people,” whom, in this case, are visual artists hailing from Chicago to the UK. The show’s prevalent mediums are those most appropriate for disseminating information on a large scale; the majority of the works are prints, graphic designs, and animation. Curated by Ray Noland, Scott Thomas and Nathan Mason, the show successfully contrasts the similarities and differences between the campaign’s medium and message and that presented by individuals. The show’s “official” half, the campaign materials, simultaneously presents Obama as a larger-than-life character as well as a man of the people. (Not surprisingly, the campaign’s star is the iconic “Hope” print by Shepard Fairey, presented along with its lesser-known siblings.) The artists have more flexibility in presentation and message; they employ cereal mosaics and original drawings, depict Obama as Abraham Lincoln, an African-American history-maker and a b-ball player, to offer their own, often emotional, spin on the campaign’s sentiments. The show doesn’t attempt to elevate street art to a fine art status as the pieces are never implicitly removed from their original context. However, Obama-inspired art is beginning to blur the lines between the two; an Obama “Hope” portrait by Fairey, similar to those in “Officially Unofficial,” was installed at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington , D.C. this past January. Apparently the political canon will not be the only one challenged under Obama’s presidency. (Patrice Connely)

Through May 31 at the Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E. Randolph.

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The snares, lairs and restraint mechanisms that Judith Brotman’s new sculptures evoke are all of the illusory sort. Brotman has a masterful ability to procure emotionally provocative scenarios from very simple materials: strips and sheets of thick gray felt, metal springs and hooks, black plastic thread and chains of various lengths and sizes, all of which are wrapped, tied, folded or sutured together in a manner that suggests bondage games, law enforcement, or torture.

A group of small sculptures in the first room reside on the playful end of this spectrum. We see multiple wrist and ankle-sized cuffs made of grey felt, a phallic fabric tube wrapped in turquoise mesh and pink lace, and a “whip” formed from two thin rolls of paper bound together and affixed with a chain. Some sculptures have hairy black threads sewn into their surfaces, which spin the associations towards genitalia.

In the back room, the work feels tougher as connotations shift away from sex teases towards penal discipline. At the same time, we begin to realize that Brotman has stealthily lured us into a trap of our own making, where flaccid loops become handcuffs, spray-painted paper tubes become steel billy clubs, flayed felt arranged just so becomes a mask, a leash, a noose. Whether angling for love or sex or writ large in war, power, Brotman’s works suggest, is all a mind-game. The desire to keep playing is the trap we ultimately can’t escape; the apparatuses by which we play are just feints that allow us to continue. (Cluadine Isé)

Through May 8 at ThreeWalls, 119 N. Peoria

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Playful postmodern performance photography can show up anywhere, as is amply evidenced by commercial fisherman Corey Arnold’s color shots of hijinks on the high seas of the forbidding roiling Bering Straits. The romantic myths of the Great White North assiduously cultivated by such fabulists as Jack London get a big-time tweak when we contemplate scenes in which Arnold lies blissfully in the hold of his boat cuddling a bleeding dead fish that looks like it is about to kiss him on the lips; or when we see a shipmate from behind on the deck swinging an iron bar gamely at a piñata that he contrived as a birthday gift for himself, as monstrous waves swell around him, threatening to swamp the celebration. Even when nature fills the picture, Arnold goes overboard; in a stunningly beautiful image of chaotic motion, a dense flock of gulls flies and splashes every which way in compelling anarchy. (Michael Weinstein)

Through May 9 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington

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Brian Dettmer is a biblio-sculptor and literary coroner. His book sculptures condense delicate leaves of a tired lexicon into jaw-dropping, articulate worlds.

Dettmer’s ability to salvage the outmoded and abandoned has achieved a level of meticulous sublimation at his recent show at Packer Schopf Gallery, “Adaptations,” a collection composed mostly of gutted and revived books. The fun, life-sized melted audio-cassette skeleton that greets you at the door is a harbinger of things to come: the books inside have been the victims of an autopsy, cavities gutted, save the most vital organs. A junky old set of encyclopedias is ravaged and reincarnated as handsome pictorial Cliff’s Notes, each picture’s wake carved out smooth as pearls. His scrupulous hand responds to images and texts worth remembering by boiling down subjects, like the aggregate scientist and his cloud of terms in “World Science,” or exposing a once-useful compendium of knowledge in a complex glossary of images, as in the boundless “Full Set of Funk,” a 9 1/2 foot long set of dissected encyclopedias.

Dettmer’s video installation, which animates his process with over 10,000 photos, is hindered only by the technology that makes the viewing possible. When the projector showing the video cut out on a Saturday afternoon, guests rushed to press the button that made it work. Even the modern technology that Dettmer’s work resists cannot dissuade the viewer’s curiosity. (Natalie Edwards)

Through May 9 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake.

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Shooting Chicago’s skyscrapers and landmarks reflected in glass, Paul Kowalow comes up with color images that could be frames in a disaster flick—“Meltdown.” All things solid shimmer and sag as they undulate precariously after what might have been a heat storm. Even Millennium Park turns into a swirling cavernous purple-orange hellish blob, but for the tiny antlike silhouetted pedestrians who appear to be oblivious to the pit into which they have been cast. Kowalow assures us that we could see these deconstructive wonders with our naked eyes if we were simply observant; his studies are straight digital photos with only a few computerized tweaks of color and contrast. For Kowalow, the extravagant possibilities of ordinary perception are one of the main chances of life; he consummates admirably street photography’s life-enhancing vocation of bringing to our attention the amazing sights that we overlook by dint of our self-preoccupation, and inviting us to imagine. (Michael Weinstein)

Through May 9 at EC Gallery, 215 N. Aberdeen

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Marc Swanson’s first solo show at Richard Gray Gallery isn’t a turning point or departure for the artist, but a natural continuation of his familiar body of work. Swanson unashamedly plays upon people’s natural attraction to shiny and reflective objects, drawing in viewers with shimmering embellishments of metallic chains, glitter and the apparent overuse of a Bedazzler. His inspiration is varied and the show hints at some of his recurring themes without broadcasting a specific message. Included is his latest work in his recognizable rhinestone-covered animal head and antler sculpture series. The excessive addition of the gems elevates the objects to a cult/fetish status, possibly recalling the story of the Golden Calf and alluding to mystical symbolism. At the same time, the extravagance exudes absurdity. The obvious allusion is materialism and consumption; however, the piece must also be considered in its implied context. Such bestial trophies predominantly have an established context in the male heterosexual realm, and a traditional symbol of masculine prowess seemingly becomes subverted by its sparkly, delicate exterior. Then again, as Swanson might point out, the two don’t necessarily need be so contradictory. (Patrice Connelly).

Through May 23 at Richard Gray Gallery, John Hancock Center, 875 N. Michigan, Suite 2503