RECOMMENDED

The tagline for Phillip von Zweck’s new solo exhibition at Three Walls, “The First Anniversary of the Fortieth Anniversary of May ’68 (in September),” is: “This show is a happy return to a way of working, a way of being an artist shelved a long time ago.” For von Zweck, this means a return to painting, a medium abandoned by the artist fifteen years ago and one of the most melancholy in the history of art. The “death of painting,” announced and renounced throughout the twentieth century, certainly shares the dynamic of deferral that haunts the political and historical events of May 1968. Yet the title itself seems to underline the probable failure of this reactionary turn, its disavowals and its latent conservatism. Von Zweck’s paintings, some abstract, one of a seal in the snow, another of an older man, mix with a few didactic pieces, such as a board with the following scrawled inscription, “How movements fail / lost potential / Romance / lost loves,” that calls further attention to a pervasive attitude of disappointment. Rather than some triumphant return to a way of working that reinstates the primacy of both the art object and the artist, von Zweck’s new paintings function as a eulogy for another (more radical? more optimistic?) body of work. Meant as a “corrective” gesture to his earlier, more conceptual style, The First Anniversary’s collection of traditional artworks reveals the hesitancy of a vulnerable artist reconsidering the legacy of his past insubordinations.  (Rachel Furnari)

Through October 10 at Three Walls, 119 N. Peoria

Charmion Von Wiegand

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There was an optimistic, meditative spirituality in abstract painting when it emerged in early-twentieth-century Europe, and this exhibit presents three American abstract painters who kept going in that direction even after the postwar New York art world had turned more worldly, angst-ridden and expressive. Each has filled their work with references to various non-Western mystical traditions, but though they seem like repositories of ancient, esoteric knowledge, that knowledge remains strictly personal (i.e., nobody can figure it all out). Charmion von Wiegand (1896-1983) began as a devotee of Piet Mondrian, and it’s fascinating to see her change into a Himalayan Buddhist. You can actually see the Mondrian in her gradually fleeing the canvas. She is the one painter in this exhibit whose work belongs in a remote monastery (or, at least a fashionable spiritual retreat center). Alfred Jensen (1903-1981), though, with his thick paint, compulsive numerology, aggressive colors and rough edges, was apparently a much more earthbound, suffering soul. Simon Gouverneur (1934-1990) was more concerned with himself as a contemporary artist, producing well-crafted, apparently complex examples for Nelson Goodman’s  “The Languages of Art.”  The three make for a fascinating contrast, and transform the exhibition space into a temporary chapel of post-Christian spirituality and art posturing. (Chris Miller)

Through November 15 at the Loyola University Museum of Art, 820 N. Michiga.

RECOMMENDED

The proliferation of tattooing in American life has led to its seeming legitimization, as evidenced in the media through shows like “Miami Ink.” Or perhaps the appearance of tattoos in various cultural conduits—sports, cinema, etc.—has led to their mainstream adoption? Whichever the direction of this cause and effect, it would be difficult to find someone who hasn’t, at some point, wandered into a tattoo shop and flipped through books or perused display posters while contemplating that impromptu commitment to permanence. Read the rest of this entry »

detail from "Face Powder," 1923.

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In many ways, Ito Shinsui (1898-1972) carried traditional Japanese pictorial art into the twentieth century, as did his master, Kiyokata Kaburagi (1878-1972). They both continued the genre of bijin-ga, images of beautiful women, with its delicious lines, elegant postures, colorful patterns and especially bold designs that made Ukiyo-e so popular with late-nineteenth-century European artists and collectors. And while many other Japanese artists of their generation moved into a more personal, expressive kind of printmaking, Ito Shinsui continued the relationship with the craftsmen who cut his wood blocks and the publisher who produced them. Recognized as an exceptional talent when he was still a teenager, he was soon being published by Watanabe Shozaburu, a young entrepreneur who exported Japanese prints to European and American collectors (including, of course, one who lived in Chicago). But his work was not strictly retro—and that’s the fun of it. In one early piece, he does a variation on a Van Gogh landscape. His townscapes may feature telephone poles, and his beautiful young women are more like modern daughters and less like Ukiyo-e courtesans. They seem as puzzled by the modern world as the rest of us are. This exhibit covers forty years of his career, so it’s a good opportunity to see his women mature along with him—though, unfortunately, the last ones serve as models in commercial advertising of the 1950s. (Chris Miller)

Through December at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

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A father watches his daughters play in front of a large cloth vagina complete with Velcro-on organs. “Okay, that’s enough,” he says as one girl hits the other with a sparkly pink fallopian tube. This is one of the many interactive pieces in “Everybody!” and the secret to the show’s success. By inviting viewers to pose in front of an oversized vagina, examine plastic speculums and color in pictures of female genitalia, a potentially uncomfortable subject is demystified through education and interaction. Most of the imagery in the show treats the female anatomy, but the health issues presented do affect women, men and transgendered people. The issues, including reproductive rights and rape, are still as serious now as they were fifty years ago when the Women’s Health Movement (WHM) first started. However, a sense of urgency, created by the current national healthcare debate, is implicit in the show. The artwork ranges from 1960s WHM posters to contemporary painting, installation and performance pieces. Though historically minded, the exhibition doesn’t present a linear chronological narrative. Instead, one subject relates to another, and one response influences another understanding. Ideas are reworked and reinterpreted. Tank tops with red-spotted crotches and the text “I had an abortion” serve as modern Scarlet Letters, while an adult with a fetal-filled text bubble lectures to young girls holding caviar-like egg sacs, reminiscent of school-mandated health class. Just as in health class, the girls appear simultaneously amused, intrigued and disgusted by the information. (Patrice Connelly)

Through October 10 at I Space, 230 W. Superior, Suite 230

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Louis Fernando Uribe steps up again, linking themes of eroticism, magic and realism to provide dreamy and exotic glimpses in his “theatre of symbol.” In his current exhibition at the Aldo Castillo Gallery, the artist applies his surrealist leanings toward use of shadow and texture in a show that is constantly clever. His use of medium is eerily stunning and requires a unique relationship between artist and observer.

Blues and black spell out sports themes in Uribe’s “Sport Dance” series. In ten works, athletic figures of various sporting events fly upon darkened backgrounds, dancing. Using a flat lithographic ink base on newsprint, the appearance of oils emerges. “Difficult times make people more creative,” holds gallery owner Castillo, referring to the medium. Read the rest of this entry »

Benjamin Wilson

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Featuring eight gifted straight photographers and photo-artists practicing in a variety of genres and techniques and experimenting with them intensely, this “spectrum show”‘s most powerfully emotive work is Benjamin Wilson’s series of “Interior Spaces,” in which ordinary empty rooms are transformed into surreal sites that smack of ominous antiseptic modernist labyrinthine torture chambers, through the quiet offices of a simple pinhole camera fashioned from a paint can. A second dose of the twilight zone is provided by Meike Zuiderweg’s small hazy color shots–taken with a primitive plastic Holga camera–of details of the figurative commercial statuary adorning the roofs of stores; shot from below, these icons of kitsch take overpowering command over us poor mortal consumers. For the opposite effect of the finest intricate precision in endlessly involved and layered black-and-white abstractions of tomato cages, fencing and sheeting, look at what Paul Clark does with a plastic Isolyi camera, which he calls “a higher-line Holga.” All power to the primitive. (Michael Weinstein)

Through September 30 at Las Manos Gallery, 5220 N. Clark

By Jason Foumberg

I’ve long romanticized the role of Old Man. Retired and happily pensioned, my time is my own. The long days return with childlike buoyancy, I drink bourbon for sport, and maybe write a memoir because, hell, I’ve seen it all. But old age is a destination, and like any long road trip there’s bound to be moments when the best mix tape gets monotonous. The journey is dotted with weird smells that creep in through the closed windows, rest-stop romances, cliché detours and midlife-crisis sports cars speeding fast toward metastasized tumor bumps in the road. If we reach the bald, wintry peak on all three legs (cane included), wise but weathered, we may find not keys to the kingdom but a death panel reaching for the plug.

Growing old is the topic of The Glue Factory, a new project initiated by the Museum of Contemporary Phenomena. When Helen Slade, Mike Newman and Rashmi Ramaswamy first collaborated under the banner of the Museum of Contemporary Phenomena they presented House of Fear. It was around Halloween, 2006, and they surveyed visitors at the Ravenswood Art Walk, asking, “What do you fear?” The national threat level was orange, unconvincing like a fake tan, and unreflected in the survey’s collected data, which was surprisingly terrorist-free. Respondents admitted fears of spiders, rats, strange dogs and heights. They expressed fears of rape and homelessness. Mostly, though, the majority feared growing old in America, with its attendant problems: obsolescence, loneliness, failure, loss of mental and physical health, “memories of youthful indiscretions,” poverty and, simply, the fear “that life is too short.” It’s a list long enough to prompt an existential binge. Read the rest of this entry »

My drink leaves a moisture ring on Schubas wood floor. It’s Sunday night, and the cream of Chicago’s creative crop mingle around me. Boys with glasses far exceed those without; the beard-to-clean-shaven ratio is equally disproportionate. It’s a packed house, populated with the sort of people who burst into laughter when guest Davey Sommers of ColourLovers.com makes a joke about Rotoscoping and Roto-“tilling.”

It is the “The Show ‘n Tell Show,” a late-night-style talk show featuring the city’s most dynamic illustrators, designers, cartoonists, poster-makers and photographers. Co-host Michael Renaud says it is an exciting time to be a graphic designer in Chicago; there’s a centralized creative community of studios doing mind-blowing work… a fact most non-designers are unaware of. The “Show” hopes to bridge that gap and bring design work to the masses. Read the rest of this entry »

McMahon covering the McGovern Convention

By Jeffery McNary

Illustration is one of the last great art forms to be recognized by the art establishment. Perhaps because it exists in service to reportage, illustration has yet to ‘come up,’ as it were. It is, however, a well-developed style with major players. At 88 years old, Franklin McMahon looms large, his legacy bundled with some of Chicago’s biggest news stories. McMahon’s realist art captures, on an epic scale, many of the significant events and figures of the past sixty years. It’s a symphony of extensive notes. In graphite, charcoal and acrylic the illustrator substantiates history, providing crisp insight into a moment’s look and feel: politicos, popes, campaigns, cardinals, courtrooms and conventions.

A selection of the artist’s drawings and paintings are currently on exhibition at the Loyola University Museum of Art, with a focus on his religious and civic contributions. Jonathan Canning, the Martin D’Arcy Curator of Art, says of McMahon’s works, “This is a lost art he’s called to. The camera is so ubiquitous we forget that such persons did such work for so very long.” McMahon has written, “The artist who draws directly on the site can see around corners, adding dimension to viewpoint, getting ideas, heightening reality.” He captures bishops in white miters entering St. Peter’s Basilica, the magnificent Baroque dome, impressive marble pillars and statues of saints about the rooftop share a harmony, as if the artist is lifted mid-way up the obelisk and the piazza’s center for a privileged glimpse of it all.

A native Chicagoan, McMahon spent a portion of his childhood in California, and there began drawing posters for school plays. Returning home, he completed studies at Fenwick Catholic High School where he began drawing cartoons, selling one to Collier’s Weekly a week before graduation. Entering the Army Air Corps during WWII, McMahon was shot down over Germany and spent four months as a POW. War’s end found him in evening studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while continuing to draw freelance. There’s small wonder that sensitive mix of church and politics placed its brand upon his psyche and his creative passions. His love of the city comes through in his engaging book of drawings and paintings, “Chicago Impressions.” “My work has been half assignment, half self-initiated,” says the artist-reporter. “It’s helped that my wife is a travel writer.” Read the rest of this entry »