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)

RECOMMENDED

In 1922, Jose Vasconcelos,  Secretary of Public Education for the popular presidency of Alvaro Obregon, hero of the Mexican Revolution, initiated a program to develop a new, Americanista culture and educate the masses through public art—a program that would eventually be picked up by Roosevelt’s WPA and is still transforming concrete walls into vivid murals around  Chicago. This exhibition traces that path that began so gloriously and explosively with los tres grandes: Diego  Rivera (1886-1957), Jose Orozco (1883-1949) and David Siqueiros (1896-1974). Perhaps because those three had lived through the chaos, idealism and disappointment of the revolutionary period, their work continues to stand out from those who followed. And unlike the social realist painters of Soviet Union, they led careers as artists that were independent of any regime or even nationality, as they moved freely between Mexico and the United States. Probably the most influential of all was Orozco, whose powerful spirit, evident in the Christian mural as well as the simple charcoal figure sketches that are included in this show, seems to run through the entire tradition like a high-voltage electrical current. Being propaganda, there’s a lot that’s simple-minded here: the evil, vicious forces of repression versus the good, innocent common folk. But this exhibition shows how that strong spirit lived on even after the politics was over, in the post-political career of Sequeiros and in Jackson Pollock, who was never politically minded at all, but who followed and even adapted the work of Orozco to express his own kind of anger and personal despair. Mostly, the exhibition focuses on the two decades from 1930-1950, and among the Americans shown, special emphasis is given to those from Chicago. (Chris Miller)

Through August 1 at the National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 West 19th Street

The Pilsen art walk used to be the only annual studio crawl where artists flung open their doors, gave spectators cheap, free wine and general revelry was had in secret annexed gardens you couldn’t see from the street. The novelty of the art walk is its yearliness, but now it happens every month on Second Fridays.

This particular February night, the Skylark is too packed to sit, so it is a curmudgeon’s refuge to walk into the Chicago Art Department for respite and feel actual unexpected delight. Read the rest of this entry »

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)

Work by Nat Soti

RECOMMENDED

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.

Casey McGonagle

RECOMMENDED

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

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

A devotee of road trips through the hinterlands, Michael Wayne shoots digital photos of the landscape—earth, trees and sky—as he speeds along; applies beeswax and acrylic varnishes to his straight prints with the aid of his collaborator Marco Logsdon; and produces an effect that freezes his subjects in dense entangled forms drenched in seductive colors that bleed into one another. Although he claims that he is documenting “passing,” Wayne has, instead, transmuted motion into integral and lively compositions with an impressionist surface that concentrates our gaze. It is the materials that Wayne has applied that do the trick by removing the sense of indefinition and forward thrust from his images while leaving a vibrant yet static blur. Wayne’s small cyano-toned set of five studies of strands of ink-blue trees takes us away from nature and delivers us to a distinctive, compelling and decidedly aesthetic sensibility—almost art for art’s sake. (Michael Weinstein)

Through September 5 at Logsdon 1909, 1909 S. Halsted

Garage installation. Photo by Cole Pierce.

When artists run out of things to make art about—that’s the day I’ll no longer have a job writing about art. The moment of mutually assured destruction came close to fruition last Saturday evening in a collaborative exhibition by Chelsea Culp and Ben Foch. The venue was Vega Estates, literally a garage and a basement serving as temporary sites for art. The freestanding two-car garage contained a perfectly flat white wall ringing its interior. Perhaps two or three feet in height, the wall reached neither the floor nor the ceiling, but floated around the perimeter like an elegant Minimal sculpture. The unfinished basement, moldering and dark, featured a museum-quality vitrine, or display case, ominously lit in a corner. The case contained several faux-primitive voodoo doll-like items. Read the rest of this entry »

Mind Map detail, by Robin Cameron

By Jason Foumberg

It was a night where anything was possible. The warm sky and the short-shorts were new, but the crowd seemed familiar. Like islands of misadventure where castaways crawl up to cough crumpled air were the paintings and sculptures amid a sea of drunks. Someone threw up on a painting of their own making, which was entirely scripted, but it got me thinking that if art is a forced excrescence of the soul (or the mind, whatever), then whither the laxative? A tantrum? A philosophy? No, the best lubricant is a laugh. This being the art crowd, though, we smirk and blow air through our noses because the stuff isn’t really hilarious; it’s just cutesy or cynical—fun but not funny.

The press image for the group show “Now That’s What I Call Painting” was designed to mimic the “Now That’s What I Call Music” pop compilation (the 72nd volume was just released on CD), which is an excellent design tactic because the paintings on view are catchy, blasted on repeat until the hook that gets you every time becomes worn to a nub, here today and maybe gone tomorrow. One painting looked like a Funfetti sheet cake. Unlike its peers, the cake painting leaned against a wall for no other reason than it could, looking great because that’s what we do these days. Feeling similarly dispassionate, I toasted my plastic cup of beer to it. Someone (name withheld) said that “fun is the Chicago style” (or maybe they said “esthetic”), and I couldn’t help agreeing that, although some of the paintings in “Now That’s What I Call Painting” may have been made with serious or painterly or artistic intentions in mind, here among the crowd they just came to party, hot messes among hot messes.
Read the rest of this entry »