RECOMMENDED

Seamlessly merging single color images into panoramic “constructed landscapes,” Kevin Malella comes up with compelling scenes that could be taken as straight shots featuring brilliant juxtapositions. Sheer beauty is Malella’s strong suit, as when he offers up a study in which railroad tracks dusted with a fresh carpet of snow foreground a tract of suburban duplexes abutting the towers of Chicago rising in the distance on a soft partly sunny day. Guillermo Srodek-Hart moves inside and shoots cluttered old shops in rural Argentina, delivering rich and subtly lit color photos that combine complex composition with densely overflowing content, as in his study of shelving in a general store on which cases full of gaucho knives vie for attention with crates of vegetables, spools of twine, bags of dog food and fertilizer, and a stuffed wildcat and falcon, not to mention most of the rest of the stock. Evincing perfect complementarity, Malella and Srodek-Hart, each in their own ways, achieve rare marriages of form and fact. (Michael Weinstein)

Through May 8 at Schneider Gallery, 230 W. Superior

Helen Maurene Cooper, "Tuskegee," 2008

RECOMMENDED

As hip as they come, Helen Maurene Cooper and Michael Ratulowski are postmodern to the core, deploying their cameras to make ambiguous cultural statements in color. Seizing upon the conceit of commemorating the anniversaries of rappers’ deaths, Ratulowski would buy a 40 and proceed to shoot himself pouring out its contents in alleys and on stoops and sidewalks, without any discernible reverence and somewhat off-handedly, as though he was performing an assignment; yet he has encased his photos in ornate old-timey frames. Is it irony or camp? Cooper, who is blazing along with her third show of 2010, had previously exhibited images that played mercifully with fashion. Here she takes a walk on the wild side with scenario shots that place her subjects—mainly herself—among urban rubble or verdant glens where their passions are brought forth, although, of course, in provocative fashion poses. Bent over with her hands on her thighs, her dress riding up, her legs spread apart and her hair tousled over her face, Cooper stands in an orange-brown haze amidst construction trash as a forest looms in the background. Is it high concept or burlesque? (Michael Weinstein)

Through April 10 at David Weinberg Gallery, 300 W. Superior

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 »

Óscar Fernando Gómez

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Expertly curated by Claudi Carreras, this show, which brings together ten contemporary Latin American photographers from Argentina, Mexico and Peru, is more proof that the cutting edges of camera work have migrated definitively to the non-Western world. Whereas unbridled postmodern experimentation dominates in East Asia and Iran, mordant and revealing social criticism takes the lead south of the Rio Grande. Livia Corona takes top honors for her color series documenting the results of former Mexican president Vicente Fox’s program of building more than two million low-income houses, implemented with public funds by private investors who proceeded to raise up vast swathes of identical ticky-tacky dwellings across the land, often without providing basic utilities. Corona’s panoramic view of an enormous tract and her intimate family portraits leave the viewer with ambivalence—certainly the living conditions of the inhabitants have improved, but are projects the path to progress? The other nine contributors are also intelligent and sensitive, each in their own ways. Chicago has been fortunate over the past year to be treated to rich offerings of global photography; this show is another must-see. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 31 at Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio

RECOMMENDED

British photographer Martin Parr has translated his passion for popular leisure culture into projects that document in color the tourist attractions and kitschy resorts and their accoutrements that beckon their denizens for a taste of a life fit for the ordinary king and queen consumer. Make no mistake; these are not dignified images. Parr shoots his subjects with cynical tongue firmly in cheek, rendering them in a less-than-flattering manner as they cavort among ancient ruins, set their own cameras to record moments to remember, and engage in such antics as miming attempts to straighten out the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The effect is like eating a presumptuous Jello mold that has a few razor blades inside—a bit blubbery but cutting as hell at the core. That Parr has a kinder and gentler side is shown in the small selection of his early black-and-white studies of street and beach scenes where his subjects are similar, but his approach is more restrained and conventionally aesthetic. We may speculate—as one photographer attending the opening did—that Parr lost his earlier distance from sleaze, got sucked into it, and hated himself for it. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 27 at Stephen Daiter Gallery, 230 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

Despite its advanced age of 115 years, the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art didn’t seriously get into the teaching business until about twenty years ago, when traditional art schools realized they could not survive without granting an academic degree (so young BFAs could get a salaried job somewhere). That put a lot of art teachers, as well as students, out on the street. Now this aging mansion on the Gold Coast offers a nice warm place for them to get together, and the annual faculty show, like a speed-dating party, provides an opportunity for un-institutionalized teachers and students to find each other. No degree, no curriculum, just classes teaching whatever style that enough students want to learn. What’s  exceptional about this year’s show is the inclusion of a few bi-coastal artists who come to Chicago to teach for a week or so. Especially noteworthy is the appearance of three paintings by David Leffel from New York, who is at the forefront of the revival of Baroque painting. Can Leffel paint like Rembrandt, or at least like a very eccentric follower? Also noteworthy in this exhibit are the traditional Chinese brush paintings by Andy Chan, as well as a full-size portrait of him by Zhiwei Tu, whose hometown (Shaoguan, which is larger than Chicago) gave him his own museum. Indeed, more than a third of the artists shown in this exhibit were born in China, Korea, or the Philippines. Consider this a showcase for the wide world of styles that are more visually enjoyable than intellectually challenging, which is why they don’t especially fit into modern academia, but still are collected by people who enjoy looking at paintings. (Chris Miller)

Through February 24 at Palette and Chisel, 1012 N. Dearborn.

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

"Form with Suggested Content"

RECOMMENDED

In the exhibition “Object Lesson,” John Fraser treats his own oeuvre, spanning twenty-something years, like a series of found objects from which to assemble a collage, offering a palimpsest of his career, revisiting past trends and former concerns in linen, mosaic and book-binding fragments. There is a haunting quality to many pieces—puttied-over traces of pulled staples, mottled glue along an eviscerated book spine)—but the show centers around “Form with Suggested Content,” a framed collage featuring a closed envelope. Here we have the unspoken enticement of narrative inherent in a found object, the jarring balance of collage, the shades of bottomless neutral washing from monochrome into subtle color play and, of course, the inlaid envelope itself, waiting for our response.

Fraser’s pieces sometimes pull optical tricks, oscillating positive and negative space. The inner edges of otherwise blank pages float to the foreground in “Westport Island Memory” while in “Composition with Similar Forms I” the sense of the immediately physical fades, leaving work more akin to landscape painting than collage. “(In The) Absense of Rhetoric,” a diptych of aligned canvas panels, achieves tricks through the stitching and asymmetry of affixed pieces of fabric. But this piece, with its weeping pigment and ghostly squares, striped in slate-blue, transfixes also because it is so elusively allusive. Is this a reference to the uniforms of the death camps or swatches of aprons from a lost childhood? The absence, here, of “sense,” of anything like “rhetoric” casts a heavy presence. A quiet painting, it whispers insistently.

“Object Lesson,” as a whole, tantalizes, like an unexpected letter of such promise, such possibility, that one keeps it sealed as long as possible, just to increase the anticipation. (Spencer Dew)

Through March 2 at Roy Boyd Gallery, 739 N. Wells.

"Water Castle, Valparaiso, Chile"

RECOMMENDED

If you need your vision lifted in an orgy of magnificent architectural gestures, then Michael Parker will fill the bill with his black-and-white shots of soaring edifices, from inside and out, that would dwarf us were they not presented in the most accessible medium-format ultra-lucid prints. By shooting majestic skyscrapers, monumental public art, ornate ceilings and geyser-like fountains—always forcing our eyes to be raised—and then downsizing them in the prints, Parker allows us to play with the sublime and reduce it to the beautiful, yet still powerful, twists and turns and details. Only once does Parker break with his program; in his misty yet clearly delineated study, “Water Castle, Valparaiso, Chile,” he  gives us an inviting view of the fairy-tale structure that exudes pictorialist beauty and shows us where we must suspect that his heart lies. (Michael Weinstein)

Through February 20 at David Weinberg Gallery, 300 W. Superior

"Yellow Pile," oil on panel, 2009

“Why doesn’t anyone want to talk to me about Jesus?!” shouted a man at the crowded opening for Gregory Jacobsen’s last solo show at Zg Gallery, in 2007. Gallery co-owner Meg Sheehy reports that no such Jesus freaks have yet haunted the artist’s current show, his fifth at the gallery, although such righteous proselytizing provides good counterpoint to Jacobsen’s indulgent, hyper-sexed and ultra-violent paintings. Indeed, the works would find pride of place in any Satanist’s home, above the taxidermied goat’s head sofa or in a rapist’s rumpus room, and yet it’s not surprising that only religious extremists take issue with Jacobsen’s immoral fantasy paintings. The art world is well-prepared to handle the artist’s vision of filth and moral disorder, locating historical precedents in Dutch still-life, the paintings of Bosch, Gericault and Francis Bacon, and local talents such as Ivan Albright and the Imagists, with many critics and observers calling Jacobsen’s depictions of rot and decay “beautiful,” even “pretty,” and delighting in the wealth of adjectives that the paintings provoke. Perhaps, for the art world, shock isn’t offensive or shocking—it’s not that we’re jaded, but that we’ve come to enjoy it. Read the rest of this entry »