RECOMMENDED

Duncan Anderson’s newest exhibition at Kasia Kay Art Projects, a continuation of his miniature sculptural tableaus and fantastical figurines, is fascinating in its meticulous storytelling. Anderson toys with train-set men and dollhouse furniture, creating architectural-style models of strange worlds and fantasy narratives. The titles invoke mysterious stories of tiny, mundane heroes and heroines. An amputee octopus with little-girl legs clutches a harp on the first day of school. A policeman and his dog are locked in a face-off with another officer, trapped in a desolate landscape.

Resting on mismatched shelves, columns and pedestals, Anderson’s characters huddle together in the small gallery space like a forgotten back room of Grecian statuary. Yet, instead of marble, the common materials are cheap plastic and gift-shop souvenir porcelain. Working on such a miniature scale allows for a play between the charming and the strange, but the crushed velvet and tacky painted surfaces are slightly repulsive. The size, as it draws one closer, begs for a kind of craftsmanship that is lost beneath a plastic pallor.

Within the individual sculptures lie arresting juxtapositions of familiar and alien worlds. However, viewed as a whole, the exhibit is less coherent because the range in the sizes of the characters is wildly varied. Anderson’s experiment—and his problem—is scale.  (Julia V. Hendrickson)

Through March 20 at Kasia Kay Art Projects, 215 N. Aberdeen St.

Charles Van Gilder

RECOMMENDED

It’s a project that any creative art director might dream of: to contact all her favorite artists and ask them to make works related to the words of modern Irish writers: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and more. When all the paintings, drawings and sculpture came flowing in just two months later, it was a dream come true for Laura Coyle. The forty artists were invited to pick whatever they liked, and they responded with many remarkable works that may or may not have much to do with the lines that are quoted. To help make that assessment, thick notebooks of relevant text are available to each viewer—making the exhibition a literary as much as a visual event—showing not only a wide variety of manual skills, but also just what kind of writing this group of mostly middle-aged, Midwestern art professionals found the most intriguing, from C.S. Lewis to James T. Farrell. As one might expect in a literary project, many of these artists, like Coyle herself, are illustrators. Some are explicit illustrations, like Keith J. Taylor’s comic cartoon for “The Old Men Admiring themselves in the Water,” by William Butler Yeats. Others are more subtle, as when Anne Farley Gaines offers the portrait of a sweet, alert old woman standing on what appears to be a Chicago street in response to “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by Yeats again. There are several ambitious pieces of sculpture here as well, including carvings in stone and wood, and most ambitious of all, a wood/glass/metal/ceramic construction dedicated to Finnegan’s Wake by Charles Van Gilder. What better way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day—and like many of the artists involved, you don’t have to be Irish. (Chris Miller)

Through April 4 at the Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox Ave.

RECOMMENDED

Appropriating photographs of scenes of devastation from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and further afield that she finds on the internet; tweaking the images in the computer; and then painting elegant bits of “restorations” into them, Susanne Slavick presents yet another variant of the ubiquitous project of redeeming the ruins. Slavick’s most effective photo-works feature the gutted and twisted hulks of bomb-blasted cars that she has decorated with designs and figures from ancient civilizations. In “Hemorrhage,” Slavick serves up a hopeless wreck from a car bombing in Sri Lanka that she has surrounded and filled with sinuous patterns derived from an illustration in Firdawsi’s fourteenth-century Book of Kings. Although Slavick’s intent is to begin a “healing” process and to slam imperialism on the way, the effect of her images is to fix the viewer in contemplation of aestheticized brutality which arrests and satisfies the eye with its striking juxtapositions and self-sufficient beauty. (Michael Weinstein)

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

Ulysses Davis in front of his barber shop/Photo: Roland L. Freeman

By Monica Westin

Ulysses Davis is not an outsider artist.

The Savannah, Georgia-based barber, who died in 1990, very much saw himself as an artist, knowing the value of keeping his collection of sixty years’ worth of carvings together—most of which he created during his downtime at the Savannah Barbershop where he cut hair. The interest in hair shows in Davis’ figural busts, including his most famous grouping of every American president from George Washington to the first George Bush. Davis’ passion for history extends to Nigerian wood-carving traditions. And as clear as it is from Davis’ current retrospective at Intuit that the artist was self-taught, it was that self-awareness of his art that sets him apart from the artists often tagged as “outsiders.” In any case, the collection is worthy of showing at any museum (which it was, in 1980, at the Corcoran Gallery), leading Janet Petry, Intuit’s chair of Exhibits Committee, to point out that the work of Intuit, which champions “intuitive and outsider art,” is something of a catch-22; by trying to mainstream the work of self-taught artists, the institution undermines the very distinction on which it was founded.

Petry points out that “outsider” is no longer a stigma—to the point that both she and Cleo Wilson, executive director of Intuit, are starting to see trained artists of all backgrounds brand themselves as outsiders. Wilson remarks that she’s seen an increase in people calling themselves “outsider artists” trying to donate work to Intuit. “Interesting to see what comes,” she says, casting a wary eye at the prospect of the rising tide of self-proclaimers. But if outsiders cannot dub themselves as such, who does? When I ask Wilson about how new outsider artists are found, she tells me there will always be undiscovered garages somewhere, but she also warns that there are more imposters than before. Where ”outsiderness” was once a fantasy of its insider proponents, its invocation by those who want to be in—or out—is yet another sign of the death of the movement. What began as a sincere interest in promoting the art of under-represented artists has now become a locus for fetishization, and—perhaps more disturbingly—a promotional gimmick. Read the rest of this entry »

Chicago turns a spritely 173 this year, and to celebrate Casey Cortez and Anthony Spina are throwing a party. To help the celebration, the two paired a photographer and DJ from Wicker Park, Pilsen and Wrigleyville to document their own neighborhood. “I want people to walk into this event and discover things about the city and say, ‘Wow, this is my city,’” says Spina. The impetus of the party, it seems, is to shrink Chicago down; to help people understand how close we really are. “You have these dynamic themes going on in the city,” says Cortez, “and a lot of times they don’t interact with each other.” The birthday party is as much a call for collaboration as it is a celebration, and that’s exactly what the pairing of photographers and DJs show. Cortez and Spina talk of how people become comfortable in their neighborhood, and it’s a sentiment echoed by photographer and the party’s Pilsen representative, Kyle LeMere. “We [he and DJ Baby Magdalene] both live on sort of opposite ends of Pilsen, so it was great to show each other parts of our neighborhood we haven’t yet been exposed to.” And what’s a birthday without a cake? Bleeding Heart Bakery will provide, as Cortez puts it, “a 3-D, three-layer Willis Tower/Old Style-can cake.” The party starts at 7pm March 4 at 1837 South Halsted. (Peter Cavanaugh)

Frank Smith, "Banner for a New Black Nation"

“Black Men – We Need You – Preserve Our Race – Leave White Bitches Alone,” screams the angry text on a silk-screened poster from the early 1970s. Thank goodness Barack Obama Sr. didn’t heed that advice ten years earlier! This is but one of several historical issues that arise when contemplating the AfriCOBRA exhibition at Northwestern University’s Dittmar Gallery.

Why did the young women carry rifles? Why do the colorful graphic designs seem as psychedelic as they do African? And whatever happened to the Chicago-based AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists)? As it turned out, most of the commune artists began or continued careers in academia. Forty years later, all that anger and Afrocentric cultural activism seems gone, especially in the concurrent exhibition of “African American Contemporary Paintings” at the Murphy Hill Gallery in Garfield Park. The skills in graphic design seem gone, too, as Murphy Hill has assembled a hodgepodge of local artists, most of whom lack professional training, have any kind of ideological commitment, and some of whom aren’t even African American (similar to the “post-black” strategy used in “Black Is, Black Ain’t” at the Renaissance Society in 2008). Ethnic boundaries may not be drawn as sharply as they were back in 1970, and, as opposed to relentless ethnic idealism, there’s instead mugshots of relentless despair, as seen in attorney Tim Leeming’s paintings and drawings of young criminals.

Most of the AfriCOBRA people were competent graphic designers who could carry and sugarcoat a message as well as any commercial artist. Some are exceptional artists, like Murry Depillars (1938-2008), who managed a brilliant synthesis of narrative figuration with African-American folk-art quilting in his homage to the imaginary “Queen Candace.” Depillars eventually retired as Dean of the Visual Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Frank Smith (b. 1939) took that quilting back and forth with abstract expressionist painting in his “Banner for a New Black Nation,” and later became a professor at Howard University.

At Murphy Hill, Mary Qian’s recent drawings effectively record and celebrate the individual spirit of people she meets on streets and trains. It’s too bad that Murphy Hill could not pull in more good work on African-American themes, and even show local masters like Kerry James Marshall or Robert Guinan. Perhaps, though, only museums can mount that kind of comprehensive exhibition—but would they, and have they? (Chris Miller)

“AfriCOBRA and the Chicago Black Arts Movement” shows at Northwestern University’s Dittmar Memorial Gallery, 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston, though March 17. “Contemporary African American Painting” shows at Murphy Hill Gallery, 3333 W. Arthington, though April 3.

A sticker by Alvendia

“I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top,” wrote Claes Oldenburg, in 1961, in a non-traditional artist statement titled “I am for an art.” Brandon Alvendia would like to see more artists define their practices in light of Oldenberg’s spirited dictums. He reframes Oldenburg’s “everyday crap” into “everyday pragmatism.” It’s a phrase that guides his own work. “How do I make best use of this,” he continually asks himself.

Alvendia re-purposes things at every turn, from bargain-priced floppy discs (gutted, they make good CD cases) to out-of-print books that he photocopies and binds into paperback books for free distribution. Not everything that he re-purposes is an object, though. For example, exhibitions are readymade platforms for the creative presentation of other artists’ work. “Curating is my art practice,” says Alvendia. For the Miami art fairs in 2007, he exhibited the work of ten artists in his wallet, a fitting context for the moneyed affair but also an economic means of exposure for the ten artists.

Alvendia’s latest artistic-slash-curatorial mission is “Fair Use: Information Piracy and Creative Commons in Contemporary Art and Design,” which recently opened at Columbia College, where he teaches part-time. The exhibition features about a dozen artists who test the limits of copyright law. Image appropriation has been a hot topic since the 1980s, but the rules of the game keep changing. As the law adapts to deal with artistic interventions, artists keep pushing the envelope. Read the rest of this entry »

Václav Chochola, "Lamp," 1947

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From 1967 through 2002, Chicago’s Baruch Gallery played a unique role as the only space outside Czechoslovakia that specialized in showcasing that country’s rich photographic tradition. In putting images from the Baruch collection’s deep reserves on public display at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, curator Karen Irvine has performed a service by exposing the Czech modernist tradition’s variety, ranging from the grandmaster Jan Sudek’s emotive studies of cityscapes and intimate landscapes, through Jaroslav Rossler’s cubist abstractions, to Jan Saudek’s kinky and decadent surrealistic scenarios shot in his basement studio during the Communist era. Spanning the period between the first world war and the early post-Communist years, the images here by nine of the most important Czech photographers will convince the viewer of the pertinence of the widespread critical judgment that mid-twentieth century photography was dominated by France, Germany, the United States and Czechoslovakia. Look at Sudek’s deep and clouded study of a strand of trees in the mist and you will know why Anne Baruch embraced and loved the Czech tradition for its “poetic modernism.” (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 28 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan.

RECOMMENDED

Elizabeth Shreve, a former psychologist, mines the iconographic unconscious of our culture, tweaking the styles of grocery circulars and shoe-store catalogues. Female figures, birds and desserts predominate in paintings that are nothing if not overindulgent. Previously balancing buffets of glistening cold cuts with decapitated flowers and syrupy pancakes, Shreve mounted a full-frontal assault, turning desire into disgust. The current exhibition, “Fears and Desires Magnifique,” represents a new turn. In contrast to her previous top-heavy nauseating images, the new works offer, instead of indictment, a dreamy vision of bouquets and party hats, color wheels recapitulating Ferris wheels and all feeling playful, pleasurable.

“The pleasures of life were always at her fingertips and needed no explanation or judgment,” Shreve writes in one of the cartoons, “Jidjits,” collected alongside the new paintings, and it is a sentiment that speaks to the new tone in her work. The nude in “Four Birds” is defined by strength of stance and self-determining gaze. Populating a fantastic space brimming with food, flowers, cartoon bugs and a distant circus tent, her attention remains elsewhere. In the lower corner of the painting, at crotch level, a bee rises from a box, likewise undistracted by the chock-a-block visuals. As in its sister painting, “The Smile,” Shreve gives us the experience of pleasure in a world of boundless promise. Excess, after all, need not lead to gluttony. The cornucopias’ contents have been flung onto canvas, but the effect, rather than sickening or shameful, is exhilarating—perhaps best represented by the ever-present color wheels, exemplifications of the potentials of painting itself, the abundance of options to be fingered, tasted, and played with. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Whether it is wild spidery branches sprouting from trees in the forests, incredibly gnarled tree trunks, the criss-crossed steel supports of the State Farm building in Bloomington, Illinois, a snow-dusted rural road engraved with sinuous and undulating tire tracks, dilapidated ramshackle sheds or elegant spindly clumps of pine needles, Jon Balke is there with his camera to bring forth in black-and-white images the exquisite ragged geometries around us that defy the eye’s preference for symmetrical order. Balke’s vision hones in on the involvement of networks of lines that are usually anything but straight, revealing endless complications within conjunctures that serve as metaphors for the confused and disorderly lives that inexorably attend the human condition. Among the many stunning images here, Balke’s masterwork is a study from New Orleans of peeling paint that displays such a multi-textured dimensionality and mutual involvement of fissures that even the most gifted abstract-expressionist painter would be tempted to give up the brush for the lens. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 21 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington