RECOMMENDED

Always possessed of a sensibility directed towards decay, disorder and ultimately death, Laura Letinsky has at last reached the limit in her latest series of tabletop color still-life photographs, which take the leap into the abyss of memento mori. Shot at dusk, when French folk wisdom has it that dogs transform into feral wolves, Letinsky’s shadowed images serve up surfaces scattered with the detritus of life, as when we are treated to an array that includes a gruesome dead bird, cigarette butts, a fragment of an orange peel, a plastic candy wrapper, and some black globules of uncertain origin—all placed on an oblong piece of sadly wrinkled paper. Proof that Letinsky has come a long way down the highway to hell hangs in the gallery’s back room, where an earlier study of a kitchen table counter, replete with a dirty beaker, soiled butter knives, a folded sponge, and a wilting plant was shot in the morning and still carries the promise of a return to neatness and intelligibility. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 13 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 2154 W. Division

RECOMMENDED

Justyna’a Adamczyk’s “New Paintings” is a taut, elegant show of eight roughly similar paintings from 2009. They are all the same size, 23.5 by 27.5 inches, and the same material, washed-out acrylic on linen. They all embrace white space and, at their best, simplicity. They also seem to represent a journey, taken clockwise around the gallery, of an artist discovering and developing her strength. “Sztukas” is the title of the first work, which is an apparently untranslatable Polish word meaning… “something untranslatable.” An opaque white cloud—noteworthy for the absence of opaque forms—rains down a tangle of vines that might festoon a ceramic tile or a teapot, engendering an initial fear that the work is too decorative, too crafty; a fear that is then gradually dismissed. By painting the final painting, “Seriously…,” any sign of the stiff knick-knackery is gone, replaced by two dark washes of varying opacity. A large blob reads as a torso. A second, thicker blob is an ominous, even brutal shape, like a bird pecking out the eyes of a dead man or thoughts forcibly escaping the brain and turning into a comic thought-bubble, mocking and cruel. In between these two extremes is the transition, with each work selectively adding and subtracting elements, searching for the best fit. Cutesy lipstick puckers and seashells are first allowed to exist alone, before being met with threats of violence. The tchotchkes then disappear altogether, but for the remnant bloody splash, and finally a vague remembrance. Adamczyk’s process hones the work to its finest point of expression, leaving me with hopes of the next works to come. (Erik Wennermark)

Through February 13 at EC Gallery, 215 N. Aberdeen

This Valentine’s Day, Chicago artist Aaron Delehanty has come up with an alternative way to celebrate: The Monster Movie Seminar. As part of his current residency at Ravenwood’s Lill Street Art Center, he and friend Matt Fagan of Brainstorm Comics (who Delehanty calls a “monster movie expert”) present this one-off event of all-things monster, from discussions to movie-clip-viewing to costumes. “It’s more campy than sort of scary,” Delehanty admits of the two-hour, BYOB event, which he calls “an alternative to doing anything traditional or romantic on Valentine’s Day.” Delehanty says with this event he’s trying to bring in an event that’s a little more unconventional than what the “conservative” Lill Street is used to. “In a way we’re bringing something bizarre that wouldn’t [normally] happen at an institute like Lill Street,” he says, “where, like, there are moms who come to classes and stuff.” As for the holiday itself, Delehanty doesn’t hold back. “Valentine’s Day is so fake, and people try to pretend it’s real,” he says. “Monster movies, they’re totally fake and people just enjoy it. So it’s a good alternative. I don’t know if this has made my wife very happy, though.” (Tom Lynch)

On December 17 of last year an electrical fire destroyed much of Kenneth Morrison’s artist-destination The Whale. No one was hurt, but most of all of Morrison’s possessions—and those of Michelle Faust and Nat Ward, who along with Morrison run the art society Ever-So-Secret Order of the Lamprey—were destroyed. In an effort to rebuild, Bridgeport’s Co-Prosperity Sphere will be home to a benefit event February 5, featuring musical performances by Black Nag, Thin Man, Son of Cops and more. Tickets are ten bucks, and the evening doubles as a release party for the 114th issue of Lumpen. “In 2007 I came to a Lamprey meeting, and they were all kind of unfailingly generous and welcoming,” says Mairead Case, one of the event’s organizers. “[Morrison] sometimes says he’s met most of the people in the neighborhood in his kitchen.” (Tom Lynch)

A work in the exhibition

By Chris Miller

Warning! The current exhibition at DePaul University Art Museum contains some laughably bad-ugly paintings. On wall labels alongside each work, director and curator Louise Lincoln explains exactly why each and every piece in this show of rejected art is as worthless as they might appear. Unlike the words written on the walls of the Modern Wing, where the best contemporary art is sometimes validated by the most unpredictable explanations, the labels here give reason for the museum to discard each work.

“La Trini” by Jose Puyet (1922-2004) “has not transcended its probably intended context of a bar or restaurant catering to men.” Another, titled “Awakening Dawn” by Gary Grotely (b. 1945), “appeals to a niche commercial market; it does not fall within collecting guidelines” of the museum. “Toledo (Moving Earth ),” by Gerald Hartley, is “reminiscent of the work of the Abstract Expressionists,” but “is hampered by its small scale and the overall quality of kitsch.” Read the rest of this entry »

A work by Tony Tasset, who will be interviewed as part of the CAA conference

Two years ago they stampeded into Dallas with lectures, essays and business cards in hand. Last year they descended upon Los Angeles, discussing medieval manuscripts at the Getty while networking. This year, the College Art Association’s (CAA) annual conference is coming to Chicago, and professionals and students in the visual-arts field will be roaming the streets, hitting the galleries and referring to Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” by its proper name (that’s “the bean,” in Chicago vernacular). For those not familiar with the CAA, the long-established organization (founded in 1911) fosters career development and advancement in the visual arts field through networking opportunities and promoting excellence in scholarship and the exchange of ideas. Its members include artists, students and visual-arts professionals, as well as museum professionals. The conference kicks off Wednesday night with the opening convocation given by photographer Dawoud Bey, followed by a gala reception at the Art Institute’s Modern Wing. Conference-goers get down to business the next morning, and they don’t stop until Sunday evening. Here are some of the conference’s highlights.

The daily sessions have something for all. Art-history lovers will have their choice of topics ranging from specific interests (Innovation, Agency History: Centering the Italian Fourteenth Century) to more broad concerns (The future of Art Criticism). Sessions geared toward artists include subjects such as grant-writing and marketing, and beginning professors can learn to structure syllabi and get onto the tenure track. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Showing work that lacks even a hint of anger or disgust, this is a painter who does not especially belong in Chicago, and so, indeed, this youthful retrospective marks the end of Angel Otero’s stay in the city where he has spent the last six years as a student at the Art Institute. He’s a very old-school kind of painter—all about nostalgia and beauty and evident craftsmanship. His still-lifes belong in the seventeenth-century, except that he uses materials in such unlikely ways, and his sense of despair feels less cosmic/eternal and more personal/fragile.  Even when his still-life escapes the painted surface and pours out onto an actual table, it’s still composed with great care and beauty, although these installations do seem unbearably, even morbidly vulnerable to cobwebs and dust. Like other masters of the Spanish school, he can turn black into a rich, delicious color. “With paint, I want to give a sense of abundance, unbalance, ambition, courage and persistence within form, color and texture in every painting,” he says. Perhaps he’ll end up back in Puerto Rico, like the painter who first inspired him to become an artist, Arnoldo Roche Rabell, who graduated from the Art Institute thirty years ago. But hopefully, this will not be the last time he has a major show in Chicago. From the Union League Club to Kavi Gupta Gallery to the Cultural Center, he certainly has gotten a lot of support here in a short amount of time. (Chris Miller)

Through March 28 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Randolph

RECOMMENDED

Ever writhing in his ever-expanding tortured dance around the finalities of the human condition—vulnerability and death—globalized Guatemalan photo-artist Luis Gonzalez Palma has now reached the point at which our beautiful weakness confronts our need for protection, which always carries with it devastating costs. The centerpiece of this show is Gonzalez Palma’s suite of miniature framed photographs of “Bodyguards”—severe men in ruffs who project ruthlessness with more than a hint of brutality. Who are they protecting? We get an idea when we see five miniatures of bucolic scenes with children at ease, empty chairs and empty tables, all in streams, that are shielded from the horrors that the world doles out, yet are still cut with apprehension, isolation and vacancy. When will Gonzalez Palma accept and admit fully his root insight that life is a losing proposition? If he ever does, his work will be at an end. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 28 AT Schneider Gallery, 230 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

Why would anyone spend thirty-five years teaching art at Wheaton College? It’s an Evangelical institution that, until recently, forbade drinking, dancing, extra-marital sex, the teaching of evolutionary biology, and all such sinful behavior. Throughout those thirty-five years, Joel Sheesley has continued to develop his painting, with one theme following another, every five years or so. His current theme is puddles, and this seems to be his most transcendent series of all. Gone are the well-dressed but painfully tense suburbanites who populated his earlier work, and all that’s left are puddles of water on the city pavement, the blue sky they reflect, and an old, wooden ladder that might connect the one to the other, echoing the words of an old Negro spiritual. Everything in Sheesley’s  paintings is done so well: the textures of the pavement, the luminosity of the sky, the dramatic design of the whole, and the occasional foot or reflected silhouette of a human figure who still seems a bit uncomfortable in the majesty of God’s creation. But that’s Protestant Christianity, isn’t it? And please note: Sheesley is not making hokey illustrations for Sunday School textbooks or religious tracts. Outside a place like Wheaton College, where else could this kind of spiritual art be developed?  (Chris Miller)

Through April 4 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Randolph

RECOMMENDED

Dedicated fashionista Helen Maurene Cooper has turned her considerable talents with the camera to shooting lush and vibrant flashing color studies of the “Chicago-centered trends in synthetic nail design.” Cooper’s compositions, despite her description of her subject, are at the antipodes of the photographic fare of the style magazine; going up close, her images are stunning nearly abstract visions of exquisitely involved multi-colored patterns extending from real fingers and placed on glowing settings of flowers and jewels. The Chicago school of nail adornment stresses interlocking swirls and curves that flare into wildness, yet remain disciplined by an underlying design. Indirect references to fauna and flora heighten the overall sense of vitality and dynamism. Cooper here is an art photographer, creating a total visual construction in her images in which the nails are only a component, albeit an essential one. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 26 at Harold Washington College President’s Gallery, 30 E. Lake, room 1105.