RECOMMENDED

Titled “Pavilion 7,” Sebastian Craig’s instantly intriguing architectural installation confronts viewers with what looks like a dance-floor light show or a lair of crisscrossed light beams. As a techno-ish soundtrack composed and performed by the artist blasts from a large sound system at the back of the room, hot-pink rays appear to bounce off the walls, inviting viewers to dance through them or play secret agent. Closer inspection shows the lines to be a single strand of cord stretched tautly across two facing walls and secured at different heights and angles so as to spell the word DERMA. DERMA is also the title of a video at the back of the room that can be reached only by walking through the installation. Stepping over and under lines of cord, visitors unwittingly “dance” to Craig’s beat. The video—a series of bucolic images displayed on a tiny Sony Walkman screen—is sort of like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, driving us forward through a tangled web for the sole purpose of getting to the big reveal. One wonders if the video’s banality is intentional, meant to revert our attention back to the physical act of getting there or to point out that the real significance of a space lies in the idiosyncratic associations it has for individual users. Regardless, Craig’s pavilion neatly illustrates the ways in which architecture lies close to the skin, sculpting the body’s movements and living on in cellular memory long after we’ve exited the building. (Claudine Isé)

Through March 15 at Old Gold, 2022 N. Humboldt Blvd., basement entrance

RECOMMENDED

The exhibition “Tank Traps and Hijackings” presents the sculptures and photographic collages of Kendrick Shackleford on the offensive. What appear to be two distinct sets of work are tied together superficially in their materials and essentially in their posture. Drawn from news and advertising imagery, the photographic collages are an attempt to hijack the meaning of the culturally pervasive and generic imagery found in the media at large. Flattened through digital process, the end result of Shackleford’s collages is a muddled portrait of everyday life. Far from banal, however, the marks made before rendered photographically show the hand of the artist and the reaction of the individual to the indifferent yet manipulative face of the image. The surroundings of this wood-paneled basement gallery only bring out what already lies beneath the surface of Shackleford’s images, and ultimately beneath the ulterior motives of his source material. In one example taken from an advertisement for Orbit gum, “Little Stinker” reads as both a child’s portrait and a still life, revealing the bizarre conformity imposed on domestic and consumer living.

The space is overtaken with the large wood and spray enamel sculptures that become the “tank traps” of the show’s title. What first reads as formal and quite traditional sculptural objects take on a similarly aggressive stance when considered under this moniker, but one wishes it did not take such a linguistic directive to notice how they function as disruptions to the space. (Tim Ridlen)

Through February 8 at Old Gold, 2022 N. Humboldt Blvd, basement entrance

RECOMMENDED

Selina Trepp is keenly interested in presence, from our presence in the vast world around us to how we are present with art and the viewing experience before us; from awareness of the moment art is made to the fleeting moment in which it exists to each of us individually. Trepp’s fractured, wondrous and borderless visions have been seen from Switzerland to Chicago, and are currently on exhibit at Old Gold in “Private Dancer,” a collaboration with intuitive dancer Ayako Kato, in which Kato is filmed interpreting the once-popular Tina Turner song of the same name. The filmed dance is then projected against a disco ball, reflected and deconstructed into tiny pieces of light thrown about the room in a slow-turning and broken dance of their own, glimpses of body parts touching every surface of the room, defying gravity in ways that dancers can only dream. The hypnotic performance puts us in mind of where we are and how we fit in that space, as spectator or as part of the performance, dancers ourselves, pirouetting in time with the projected images of Kato as we follow them from floor to ceiling to wall and back again. Trepp’s immersive kaleidoscope allows you to lose yourself in sound and movement, possibly even forgetting that you are in a specific place seeing a specific show at all. Simply existing within the moment, with upsurging self-awareness, becomes the art itself. (Damien James)

Selina Trepp shows at Old Gold, 2022 N. Humboldt Blvd., (773)653-9956, though December 21.

The art of Mindy Rose Schwartz helps me understand the city where I live: a landscape of endless avenues and rows of mid-century bungalow homes, bricks bracing for the chill, and corner bars touting an old style—a style not updated in decades but drunk down with pride. As radiators creak on for the first time this season, and the scent of winter’s onset hits the air, the mind is tugged back through some retrograde memories. But that smell isn’t mom’s cooking; it’s just a years’ worth of collected dust burning on the open radiator grill. Sometimes Chicago feels like a city-sized family room.

Macramé is a major component of Mindy Rose Schwartz’s sculptures. Just as knitting had its popular resurgence recently and crossed gender and generational lines, macramé was in full force in the 1960s and 70s. Knotters of the thin white rope proclaimed their medium’s potential to not only decorate a hanging plant, but also wore it as an emblem of the female movement. That is, where the first feminists decried crafts including macramé as pigeonholing femininity, the second wave found pride in so-called women’s work. That so much knotted rope can be tossed between ideologies and interior decoration delights Schwartz, but her work does not take a stance either way. To Schwartz, these forces animate macramé, along with other objects of personal value, and that is a good thing.

“I love to make things,” says Schwartz. She created and teaches a course for art students called Extreme Craft that explores the boundaries of the handmade. Her current exhibition of new sculpture features objects both literally and figuratively transported from her suburban Skokie childhood home. Many flaunt macramé, and some are without. The whole series is on view at Old Gold, an exhibition space in the wood-paneled basement of a Humboldt Park home.

Because Schwartz’s sculptures frequently conjure a suburban, middle-class experience, their presentation in Old Gold’s setting is like a fated love affair. One macramé web occurs on and around a fireplace. Mantles are common exhibition venues (perhaps the domestic curiosity cabinet), and here Schwartz delivers a hulking tangle of material that packs all the personality of Diane Arbus’ photograph of an oversize Christmas tree. Schwartz also creates her own credenza-type display shelves to host an assortment of ghost-like figurines, flowery ornamentation in metal, and mini Constructivist-esque wood assemblages. For Old Gold, she created some intentional pieces of décor such as ceramic owls for the basement’s built-in bar nook.

I asked Schwartz about the state of rawness or roughness—or even intentional ugliness—in her art. “It’s a real part of the world,” she says. “Prettiness and nausea”—they coexist. (Jason Foumberg)

Mindy Rose Schwartz shows at Old Gold, 2022 North Humboldt, basement entrance, through October 19.

RECOMMENDED

In Devening Project’s Off Space gallery, Aline Cautis employs an intuitive language of gesture, mark-making and abstract forms to create paintings and works on paper that are at once fluidly psychedelic and tightly controlled. The works’ tight rendering recall Sarah Morris’ grid paintings, but there is an element of abstract expressionism’s wild child via the obsessive gestural mark-making and layering. The lines and marks engage in a dance along the surfaces of the works but also deep into the flat surface’s depth of field, causing kaleidoscopic shifting for the viewer. Cautis describes her works as “interior language pressing against the surface of the painting in an attempt at fractured communication through chaotic language.” Though the viewer would have to work hard to arrive at that statement, Cautis’ paintings are easy on the eye with their rich color choices, dramatic confluence of lines and puzzling layers. (Sze Lin Pang)

Through October 8 at Devening Projects + Editions, 3039 W. Carroll

RECOMMENDED

Jin Lee’s exhibition “Floating World” is a collection of modestly sized digital color prints of the Chicago landscape. Far from the usual urban experience, Lee’s photos chronicle an investigation into the seemingly natural spaces of the human-inflected environment. Lee invites comparison between the elements in each series by hanging several images side-by-side. Her subjects are usually singular and isolated: lone leafless trees against a uniform foggy sky, piles of road salt and snowy lake hillsides. The repetition of similar motifs gives rise to an awareness of the structure or rhythms underlying her subjects. In the most compelling series, simply titled “Water,” a lone wave undulates on a lake, causing a brief shift in the shade of the otherwise uniform murky blue. The wave morphs into a second shape and finally in the third image, as it is about to break, becomes translucent allowing a perfect view of the lakebed normally obscured by the water’s windswept surface. That brief glimpse through the suddenly clear water is a small portion of the otherwise non-descript landscape and is at the heart of Lee’s simple project: to catch a glimpse of the normalcy of the natural, the rote and forgotten workings of time and space. (Dan Gunn)

Through October 8 at Devening Projects + Editions, 3039 W. Carroll

RECOMMENDED

The tragedy of Katrina continues to serve as a political bludgeon even as the media’s prediction of a disastrous Gustav did not live up to the hype. It is within this climate that Heather Mekkelson creates her scenes of devastation. “Limited Entry” at Old Gold blends seamlessly with the wood-paneled basement that serves as the gallery space. A flood scene, the high-water mark rings the space jumping from curtains, to mirrors, to paintings, as it circles the room. In the closets the top half of the clothes are pristine and the other crusted with silt. Dimly lit by a lone halogen lamp the room had some signs of cleanup like rubber gloves, fans and buckets. Muddy trinkets litter the floor. These knick-knacks are not really people’s mementos; rather, they are a picture of what people’s mementos might look like after a flood. A little like a movie set, the scene was convincing but ultimately not real. The effect could serve as a catharsis for media-driven paranoia, or a form of adventure tourism for the storm-chaser type. Mekkelson’s objects are taken from the same footage and headlines that create the natural-disaster spectacle, but somehow seeing a picture of the spoilt life in person makes one think of the other people for whom it is not a picture. (Dan Gunn)

Through September 21 at Old Gold, 2022 N. Humboldt Blvd, basement entrance, (773)653-9956

RECOMMENDED

Christopher Ilth drives a fantasy daydream of collage in “Directory of Silence” at Reversible Eye. He lifts hundreds of tiny pieces of paper into glossy, raised textures for the wandering mind. Ilth has an undeniable dark, political and sometimes historic core unique to surrealist or Dada artists. Although the driving force may be a good ride, the unknown destination makes the journey even more attractive. The artist’s hard and dark layers of symbolism build a depth of dreamworks with muscle. Calculated thick mounting further outlines bold messages in already suggestive textures. The works are a well-calculated balancing act between steel and natural subjects that provoke wonderment in an end or beginning of the world context. Common earthly color schemes with a punch of an unordinary subject hue allude to a dark fairy tale. Or for the gamer, the images are also reminiscent of a fantasy video game that leaves you wondering if sparkles are used or if your eyes are playing tricks on you. There is no doubt, this promising artist may suit up well in a commercial arena or continue to inspire the fantasy daydreamers, minus the wild-flower dwellers, in all of us. (Stacie Boudros)

Through May 30 at Reversible Eye, 1103 N. California.

By Jason Foumberg

Let’s face it; the Happiness Industry just isn’t cutting it. Sure, we’re relaxed and content floating in a soup of our own syrupy blood sugar, teeth lightly humming, eyelids heavy. Artist Alex Jovanovich recognizes the cold efficiency of this happiness model, and he seeks to gently nudge us awake. His method of do-it-yourself emotionalism is a potion for enchantment, a tonic for cynicism. It seems everything Jovanovich does comes with a Valentine’s Day card, and every word begins a love letter. He asks others to join him. “It’s just about being open,” he says of his art, which is also a statement about living, for the two—art and life—can be interchangeable. For Alex, it’s not about going to the studio and spending hours perfecting shapes on a canvas. Rather, for him, art is life’s garnish. It doesn’t have to be the main attraction, but it can stimulate interactions that were otherwise lacking in color.

Jovanovich works toward a goal of loveliness­—to spread it, to make more of it, and to revel in it. For about one year he selected random individuals from the phone book, one per state, and mailed each a pink paper heart. No return address or explanation was given—just a little valentine small enough to fit in an envelope but large enough to open the mind to the manifold wonders of the world. Surely Jovanovich isn’t in love with the names he plucked from the phone book (although it’s difficult not to become enamored by names like Stephen Kiss or Bobby Love, two of the fifty names displayed in a slide documentation of the project), and real love doesn’t need a pink paper heart to prove itself. Rather, the randomly mailed hearts were an experiment in mysterious generosity. The pink paper hearts are nicely made, with perfectly symmetrical scalloped edges. They’re not art objects per se, but like art objects, they exist to communicate a message. Stephen Kiss will never know why he received a valentine years ago; it must remain that that is just what happened. Jovanovich seeks to re-energize our willingness to be open to such moments and to allow them to quietly exist.

Where so much contemporary art seeks a yelling-fire!-in-a-crowd type of reaction, Jovanovich would rather plant the seed of sincerity. The result may be a mystery, but he welcomes leaving things to fate, and to faith. Much of his art bears no resemblance to traditional art objects, and so they require the viewers’ willingness to believe—it’s not a willful suspension of disbelief—but a trust that anything is possible. One product of his pursuits is a love letter written one word per day for 365 days. The year-long love letter isn’t addressed to anyone in particular and is simply signed by “Me.” One line reads, “I can see so clearly the magic that exists in everything around me, bit by exquisite bit.” Aside from being in one of the most perfect, if not generic, love letters around, this specific line speaks to Jovanovich’s whole perspective. It’s as if we need not have anything surreal or spectacular around us in order to experience magic. What is magic for Jovanivich? It’s connection and interaction with people. If you’re attuned to it, he says, then you’re enchanted.

Other works on view get more personal, such as a love letter he wrote to his mother. Imitating his mother in a wonderfully charming faux-Serbian accent, Jovanovich explained to me that he and his mother often suffer from miscommunication. He asked his mother to transcribe the letter he sent to her, and on view are his words in her handwriting, all upper-case and slightly shaky. Not even knowing his mother can leave one heartbroken: “I’m amazed that such love can exist,” he writes, that “I feel ashamed and confused.” Reading this letter felt like a gift of entry into the private world of Alex and his mother. It was an astonishingly rare and truthful moment.

On two small pedestals are works on paper, “Pink Scribble” and “Blue Scribble.” Here, Jovanovich quickly marked a piece of paper in a back-and-forth motion. Then, he cut out the continuous line in a delicate way. He remarked that it took him one month to cut out a line that took five minutes to draw. The lace-like papers, one in blue and the other pink, illustrate a more abstract concept than the straightforwardly personal valentines. Often in life we intensely concentrate and obsess over an action that took mere minutes to perform. The tedium and stress of getting it right in our memory so that it sits well within us is a task. These works point out the importance of the pause—something Jovanovich learned from loving poetry. They also speak to a quality of life that privileges slowness and lightness if we allow it.

Alex Jovanovich shows at Old Gold, 2022 North Humboldt, garden entrance, through April 13. A slideshow of the recently completed project “Weekly Anonymous Letters” will be presented on April 13 at 2pm.

RECOMMENDED

However casual, Tyler Britt’s “July” is a metaphysical cosmology, “good, ethical work” seeking to explore the limitless field of cultural interaction. Here, crises over mechanical reproduction and the readymade find a contemporary home. “I get so emotional, baby…(lot no. 120163792322)” consists of a “quasi-celestial” constellation of earrings, acquired by the artist on eBay; “A Reader” takes the now familiar form of the copyshop academic reader, yet is a facsimile of an issue of Forbes magazine. But none of the works in the show are that single intelligible object representing Britt’s universe. The exhibition itself, the texts related, even (or especially?) the video press release of the artist dancing the Soulja Boy alongside his gallerist, are additional yet integral works within this presentation. “July” is the exploration of the allegorical cloth of culture; fingering the warp and the weft of the formal and critical, the vague fringes of cynicism and post-modern contradiction, and the immaterial open spaces of potential framed by every woven intersection. (Lisa Larson-Walker)

Through January 31 at Vonzweck, 1626 N. Humboldt.