By Nate Lee

It has been forty years since the murder of Fred Hampton, and the 2300 block of West Monroe Street has since become as insignificant as any other on Chicago’s West Side. The two shots that ended the life of the Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party punctuated just one episode in a much larger saga of turmoil, short-lived triumph and eventual tragedy surrounding this notorious group of political activists.

The more insolent and hostile of the Panther’s activities, like their public brandishing of automatic firearms, have been burned into our collective memory, while their grassroots efforts to internally organize black communities for the benefit of said communities—which was, as everyone remembers, one of the main bullet points on Obama’s resume during his run to the White House—are astonishing given the success of their efforts in areas where government had, by the 1960s and seventies, simply resigned itself to failure. That the Panther’s self-organized “free breakfast” programs were more successful at feeding poverty-stricken school children than the entire State of California poses an alarming paradox to anyone seeking to simply eschew radicalism for its unconstructive violence. Now, as time places us at a safe distance from the threat—of both violent destruction and substantial change—associated with the Party’s platform, the tenders of our cultural legacies have begun to revisit the forty-year-old Panther phenomenon. Read the rest of this entry »

Rendering of Cloud Gate

RECOMMENDED

If you want to eat the sausage, don’t visit the sausage factory, so the old adage goes. The same might apply to viewing this exhibit of color construction photos that show the building of the admittedly alluring postmodern structures that dot Millennium Park. The show is dominated by the raising of the seamless, sheer and shiny bean-shaped Cloud Gate to which the magnetized multitudes flock to shoot photos that capture their subjects and their reflections, with the added bonus of the photographer’s reflection—meta-photography for the masses or simply a mirror for the cameraless. When we see the guts of the Gate take shape, we are confronted with huge masses of support beams that are anything but sparkling, and intimidate rather than invite. This is not to demean the Gate or its skeleton or the photos, but just to say that only when we go beneath the surface do we see the whole picture, which is something that is not surprising when we think of what is under our own skins. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 17 at Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State.

Autumn Ramsey, 2009, oil on found photo

RECOMMENDED

For a show ostensibly dealing with portraiture, there is a decided absence of actual faces in the work on view at Lloyd Dobler Gallery’s current exhibition, titled “To Face.” Better to think of the show as presenting contemporary portraiture’s two faces—one side proposing that subjects can be fleshed out by rendering people, and the other purporting to get at the subject through a more oblique, abstract approach. For this show, Alice Tippit and Andrew Holmquist take up the latter’s mantle with rewarding, nonrepresentational paintings. While Holmquist’s small paintings are wholly engaging on their own terms, they do not achieve the sense of subjective psychology that Tippit’s analytical compositions possess (though this may be in part due to her witty titles that solidify the seemingly random lines into a clear narrative). And while I can appreciate this way of making portraits, the works in the show that present the human form are more satisfying overall. For example, Autumn Ramsey’s untitled oil painting on a found framed photograph has a variety of layers and surface finishes, in addition to being a really spectacular double portrait in a garden setting. And Ben Fain produces some engagingly strange figurative-assemblage sculptures. Unfortunately, they are yoked to a nearly unbearable video documenting a recent performance at a suburban homecoming parade. The video’s premise, a coroner conducting an autopsy of a rival player atop the float and occasionally tasting the bloody innards, has promise but the execution is too slow and does not linger long enough on the really fantastic sculptures created as stage sets. The work that most succinctly and successfully sums up all the various strategies on view are Ian Hokin’s peculiar paintings on paper. Lurid and lush in their implementation, they reveal an alien taking a shower or the artist ingesting a line of cocaine through his eye socket. The images and accompanying expository text are humorous and trippy, evidently because the artist conjures the ideas in sensory deprivation tanks and immediately translates the experience into paint. (J. Thomas Pallas)

Through January 30 at Lloyd Dobler Gallery, 1545 W. Division, 2nd floor.

Doug Stapleton

RECOMMENDED

The stark contrast between photographic postmodernism and modernism could not be demonstrated better than in Doug Stapleton’s photo-collages—rife with exuberant cultural play—and Paul Clark’s straight abstractions of tomato cages and fencing that captivate with their complex and dynamic forms disturbed by disorder. Postmodern globalized mélange reaches its limits in Stapleton’s “The International Style,” which is a collage of statuary heads from various civilizations cut out from appropriated photos and arranged in a jumble that juxtaposes Jesus and a fakir, along with other improbable combinations. Turn to Clark and you will find an old-school photographic fundamentalist whose black-and-white images are exquisitely balanced in terms of the values of light, tone and composition; and result from a meditative and concentrated practice at the antipodes from Stapleton’s unbridled romp through history. Yet Clark’s stills are alive with the dance of rebellion against rational order, as the tomato cages twist in the snow and the fences buckle, warp and split. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 28 at Las Manos Gallery, 5220 N. Clark

Top 5 Museum Shows
Olafur Eliasson, Museum of Contemporary Art
Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H.C. Westermann Study Collection, Smart Museum
Paul Chan, Renaissance Society
Mary Lou Zelazny, Hyde Park Art Center
James Castle: A Retrospective, Art Institute of Chicago
—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Gallery Shows
Rob Carter, Ebersmoore Gallery
Big Youth, Corbett vs. Dempsey
Sarah Krepp, Roy Boyd Gallery
Everybody! Visual resistance in feminist health movements, 1969-2009, I Space
Ali Bailey, Golden Gallery
—Jason Foumberg Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

After three mixed drinks nothing was firing and I realized the bartender must’ve been pouring water instead of vodka, so I switched to unadulterated beer in bottles, which made for frequent trips to the toilet. It was there, in line for the restroom at an all-male strip bar called Lucky Horseshoe, that I made niceties with my queue-mate. “It’s quite an art form, isn’t it?” she said to me, jagging her thumb in the direction of a dancing sack of muscles. “An art form?” I smirked questioningly. “Oh yeah,” she explained, “It commands such attention.” My instinct was to scoff—stripping is no modern dance—but I remembered I was there with three artists, and if stripping wasn’t an art form, then it was surely an inspiration, so I kept an open mind, but what the hell was this lady doing in a gay strip joint, anyway?

Among the usual clientele of touchy-feely, bearded gentlemen and the half-naked hustlers, there were gaggles of women here, all giddy and grabby while shaved-chest, jock-strapped young lads humped their legs. Easy money. We sank back into the darkness and watched the show. The strip at this club consists of two layers of underwear. It’s not much of a tease and, as far as art forms go, it’s pretty easy to enjoy, accessible all the way down the line. A bulge in the shorts isn’t a complex metaphor, but insiders find their own points of connection. My friend nodded toward the guy wearing a silver chain collar. “That means he’s a power bottom.” The ass-up gymnastics could have given it away, but like the handkerchief codes of yore, there’s a deeper layer of communication for the initiated. You don’t have to go to art school to understand it; one is just born into it. These secrets build complicity, without which there would be no community. What about the guy with the cowboy boots, what does that mean? Oh, that’s just machismo, totally hot. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Light is everything to Adam Ekberg; it must illuminate, it must glare, it must show us that nothing is ever resolved, even when it is unsparingly revealed in vivid color—we are always “in the between.” Ekberg’s banner shot shows a severely delineated hand—extended toward a mirror—that is formed in the beginnings of the sign of a Hindu symbol of devotion to success; yet the fingers do not touch and, of course the hand and its reflection never meet, symbolizing ultimate disconnection. In Ekberg’s other images, dots of light sparkle in forests or flashes punctuate tavern aesthetics, as when we see decorative miniature parasols succumb to the flame of a butane lighter placed on a table. Simulations of laser beams are essential elements of Ekberg’s stock in trade, yet they never achieve the efficacy necessary to consummate the transformation of a humble scene into a power fantasy. Ekberg shows us that the most blatant effects that we can muster never overcome fundamental isolation. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 6 at Thomas Robertello Gallery, 939 W. Randolph

RECOMMENDED

Bending slightly forward and photographed in profile with her face and half of her torso silhouetted in shadows, John Opera’s nubile nude subject sits in bed with her arm crooked as she raises a glass of water to her lips meditatively. Opera has shot this dusky color image three times with almost identical poses, inviting viewers to look for the nearly imperceptible differences among them after having taken in the scene. Enlightenment is achieved when we look at the water in the half-filled glass; in one shot, the liquid has not yet reached the woman’s lips; in the next, it has connected and is dappled with spots of light; and in the last, the lit water has formed a black and gray cone. One must strain to dredge or squeeze meaning out of Opera’s scenes that like water are not flavored. What difference does difference make? (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 16 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington

Edra Soto, "Light Within The Dark," 2009.

RECOMMENDED

Brian McNearny and Edra Soto’s two-person show, “Forever Vegetal,” treats the themes of birth and death with mythological import. On the birth side, McNearny’s “Bog” is the place where life begins—in a thick, heavily textured oil painting. The primordial Dagobah sends forth the figure of “Glob,” the vaguely mutant form surfaced from oil paint on a found desert-camo-looking banner, giving the work a vaguely sci-fi militaristic tinge.

Edra Soto’s explorations are more geared toward the end than the beginning, though “forever” could probably nest in either camp. Stuffed animals covered in shit-like sod occupy the floor of a too-dark gallery, parked around an illuminated square—think Billie Jean. The light is certainly transcendent, and the animals are appropriately reverent, despite their recent unearthing. The question remains which way the light will take whatever beleaguered soul decides to step on, up or down? In the same corner lives “Light Within the Dark,” where baby Jesus rests upon a charcoal mountain range like Christ the Redeemer surveys a sinning Rio. Tucked behind the miniature range are a string of Christmas lights, the light most directly behind the Jesus figure blinking like a beckoning landing beacon. Crash ye planes unto me, the tot says, in the ultimate come-to-Jesus moment. Merry Christmas. (Erik Wennermark)

Through January 16 at Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, 1034 North Milwaukee Avenue

This year the Art Institute is celebrating the 125th birthday of one of its most beloved paintings, Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884.” The museum’s new promotion allows anyone to adopt dots on the painting. “We were brainstorming on how to engage members and stir visitors,” says Amy Radick, Director of Annual Giving at the Art Institute. “It’s such an iconic painting here at the museum.” Adoption fees, which are accompanied by a commemorative button in one of six colors, are $10 for one dot, $25 for three dots and $50 for all six. “It’s a great way to raise money in a year when museums are becoming more innovative with their fundraising,” says Radick. “So far we’ve had a really good response. This is a fun stocking stuffer at an affordable price to help the museum’s conservation efforts.” Dots are available for purchase in person at the museum.