"Open Spaces," 2008

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Susan Clinard is one of those sculptors who are strong on optical and weak on conceptual—which is to say that the emotional content of her figures is instantly recognizable, and her themes are so ancient, they predate literacy, much less the last 200 years of art theory and criticism. Especially now as she returns to Chicago with an exhibit of many pieces that relate to her life as a new mother, as well as her more youthful concerns with body awareness and stranger anxiety. So, regardless of virtuosity, her pieces will never be shown in the new ModernWing of the Art Institute, but they might belong a few miles south, in the “Ancient Americas” exhibit at the Field Museum, where she seems to pick up where the sculptors of Nayarit and Quimbaya left off. Though the ancient artists are a very tough act to follow, because the best examples have been gleaned from generations of sculptors working the same style, while a modern sculptor, like Clinard, must be a solo act, responsible for inventing as well as mastering and marketing her own work, which now involves wire, as well as terra cotta and wood. As ancient artists had to the right to say, “this is us,” contemporary artists (especially those found in the Zhou Brothers Art Center) can only say “this is me—me, me, me” (Chris Miller)

Through January 31 at the Chicago Art Matrix Gallery, Zhou B Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St.

Work by Nat Soti

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It’s opening night and the gallery goers at the Chicago Art Department are on their phones. Their iPhones, to be exact. Far from being bad etiquette, this reinforces the show’s argument that the iPhone is a valid artistic tool. Mike Nourse and a group of Chicago artists explore the artistic uses of their new technology, sharing apps and techniques with each other in a five-week class, culminating in an exhibition. Their dialogue grew to include Susan Murtaugh, an established iPhone artist from Wisconsin, as well as international iPhone artists. For many of the “iArtists,” this is their first exhibit in a gallery context. Translating their virtual work into a physical medium results in a variety of subjects and styles, from “fingerpainted” and photographic works printed on aluminum and paper to videos playing on multiple computer screens. Gallery placement and similar presentation methods maintains a sense of unity throughout the show. The sold stickers dotting pieces confirm the work can be considered “real” artwork, at least by commercial gallery standards. The show works well visually, and there’s some great tongue-in-cheek commentary, such as Nourse’s payphone photographs and Nathan Peck’s “iSick,” which incorporates videos of what would be hard-to-reach places with a larger camera; very appropriate when depicting Gingivitis. However, the artwork’s true magic is in the viewer’s knowledge that the pieces were originally created using the same phone in their pockets; easily accessible almost any time, anywhere, turning the everyday world into an artist’s studio. A viewer complimenting an artist expresses a wish to create his own iPhone artwork, but laments he bought a Blackberry two weeks ago. “Two words,” the artist says, “Return it.” (Patrice Connelly)

At Chicago Art Department, 1837 S. Halsted, (312)725-4223, through January 27 by appointment, with a open-to-the-public day on January 23 from 10am-5pm.

Photomicrograph, c. 1883-1931

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Snowflakes are inimitable, as we have always been told, and if we need proof, turn-of-the-twentieth-century photographer Wilson Bentley provides it in his exquisite black-and-white studies of the ephemeral crystals. Micro-photography of nature always reveals unsuspected alluring organized detail, yet snowflakes take the lead, just because their symmetric perfection stands against their inherent transiency. How did Bentley consummate his feat? He would shovel up some of a fresh Vermont snowfall, put it on a table, search for beautiful crystals, isolate them with a broom bristle, put them on glass plates and shoot them quick as a bunny through a photomicroscope. Without the offices of contemporary technology, Bentley’s passion and discipline give us visual evidence of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s dictum that the value of things is not dependent on their duration. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 30 at Carl Hammer Gallery, 740 N. Wells

By Jason Foumberg

I lost my notebook of ideas. They say that if a person truly had the supernatural power of mind-reading, then a stranger’s brain would appear as a jumble of perceptions and associations, the contexts of which are sensible to the thinker only. That’s a close description of what’s inside my notebook. My thoughts live weird, malformed lives there. Maybe the notebook is jammed beneath the seat of the rental car, or sunning on the side of a mountain where I went hiking. “In case of loss please return to____. As a reward $____.” I left those spaces blank.

But I may not have needed my notebook after all. Most of the art spaces in Los Angeles were closed for the balmy winter, and the few museums that I trekked to were disappointing at best. A massive photography show organized around the themes of landscape and portraiture suffered for being too general and vague. A Joseph Beuys retrospective proved unconvincing. His aura does not reside in his art objects.

Architectural folly at MOCA

At LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s off-site location, at the design center, I experienced an architectural folly built for show, a non-functional, ornamental structure that presided over the small exhibition space. Viewers ascending the spiral ziggurat to a small outlook were afforded a faux view of Los Angeles, via collaged photographs, including orange panels signifying smog. Read the rest of this entry »

Casey McGonagle

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A sense of distance pervades the images of the three young photographers here who are either current students at the School of the Art Institute or recent graduates. Casey McGonagle adds a creepy note in his black-and-white pigment print, “Deadman’s Park,” in which we see the subject sitting stiffly on a bench next to a trash can in the shadows of night, dressed in black and completely hooded in monstrous headgear that sports a hideous long snout. Robin Juan takes the opposite tack in her color portrait of a young woman, in which we see the subject fade into darkness with only the faintest trace of  her face—Caravaggio with only the dimmest illumination, which reveals the woman’s hauntingly beautiful features only on close inspection. Sam Sieger’s highly pixilated digital print, “Splash,” renders the water play in such an attenuated fashion that it threatens to become an abstraction of motion. This slice of the up-and-coming generation shows a decided turn towards alienation, which is only appropriate for our times. As Sieger puts it, “I am skeptical, but I don’t want to be cynical.” (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 9 at Pentagon Gallery, 961 W. 19th Street

The way one tells a story often rivals the story itself. Such is the case with Angel Otero’s first solo exhibition, in which textured paintings and assemblages combine to form a loose visual autobiography with an emphasis on process. While any relationship between process-based art and living autobiography should seem obvious, Otero’s storytelling isn’t nearly so direct. Mostly evident in select large-scale paintings composed upon black backgrounds, the past isn’t remembered so much as it is memorialized. This somber nostalgia, in addition to the presence of flora and vases, recalls the commemorative paintings of Ross Bleckner from the 1980s. The indeterminacy of memory versus memorial is furthered by Otero’s repeated imagery of objects represented by silicone skeletons. Tables and staircases are alluded to with layers of piped silicone, resisting any commitment to structural solidity. While these paintings comprise the minority of Otero’s first solo show, they are nonetheless his strongest, exemplifying autobiography as a construction of memory. (Justin Natale)

Through January 30 at Kavi Gupta Gallery, 835 W. Washington Ave.

RECOMMENDED

I like Lauren Gregory’s art, and you may wonder what the point of reading any further could possibly be; I’ll tell you. It’s different. Not different, like bad, like what we think people say when they have nothing more intelligible to offer, but this may actually be something different, something you’ve never seen before. There’s something striking about seeing thickly finger-painted oils on a canvass of faux fur, maybe even be primal. My first impression of “Man,” an oil on fur, was that it was a cave painting, made just after we started traveling, perhaps on our way to becoming nomads; we strung up canvasses of freshly skinned whatever-it-was we were eating for dinner back then, and painted on it.

But that was just my first impression. Gregory’s work makes you think. It’s possible that you may never want to have “Mother” on your wall, but you’d have no problem engaging in suddenly frequent trips to your friend’s house to see it on theirs. It’s almost nightmarish, some of what she creates, but those so-compelling nightmares we continue to visit fondly, if only because sharing stories can be so entertaining. Read the rest of this entry »

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Curated by Susan Aurinko, this third show of the season celebrating Barbara Crane in Chicago genially and revealingly pairs photographs from her 1966 thesis project at IIT and later images from her long and continuing career. The jewels of the exhibit are Crane’s black-and-white thesis studies, which experiment with showing the sheer beauty of the human form through a variety of abstract strategies ranging from attenuating the shapes of body parts to their peripheral lines against white backgrounds, to deploying the gray scale to print rich and involved takes of body parts shadowed in darkness. In all cases, the images hover between natural and sculptural, and representational and abstract modes of presenting the nude; and they are at least as sensitive and technically perfected as Crane’s later multifarious ventures. All of Crane’s sensibility is already here—the drive to balance and fuse form and content, and to evoke thereby a moment of zen concentration. The minimalist prints of shapely curves are the treats of the treats; they resemble exquisite line drawings, yet are vibrant with life. The later images show that Crane turned to different subjects and techniques while preserving her core vision. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 1 at the Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology

If your New Year’s resolution is to quit grazing on free booze at art openings, then the MillerCoors corporation is glad to help. The purveyors of Grolsch beer announced in mid-December they would no longer distribute the tasty lager to the art crowd, ending a three-year party, beginning this January 1. The fifteen-ounce bottles were distributed at commercial gallery openings, smaller alternative spaces, and the fairs Next and Art Chicago, in the Merchandise Mart, where somebody (presumably an artist) constructed the green glass bottles into sculptures and party props.

“A new marketing approach will be developed for the brand, which will focus less and less on the art community,” writes the brand’s representative. Grolsch rightly assumed that artists like to drink—that’s where they get their inspiration—but the promotion never successfully displaced Old Style as the Chicago artist’s beer of choice. However, Grolsch’s graciousness came at an opportune time, as artists were thrust head first into the economic recession. One West Side nonprofit space served their free supply of Grolsch to patrons by donation, maximizing the revenue factor. Read the rest of this entry »