Jacob Livchitz

RECOMMENDED

Exhibitions of successive generations of artists from the same family unavoidably document the change of fashion, but the three generations of artists from the Livchitz family also straddles two different cultures, Soviet and American. As a member of the Soviet Artist’s Union, the grandfather, Chaim (1912–1994), did what most professional artists have done throughout history: glorify the ideology of rulers and priests. Though we might disparage that as propaganda, it’s hard to find a society, including our own, that has survived without it, and Chaim convincingly, if predictably, imagines men of action as strong, intelligent and reliable. His work reminds us that such positive images have been unpopular from the mainstream American art world for several generations. His American-born grandson, Jacob, is predictably ironic as he creates monumental, pseudo-propaganda for that monster of the Cambodian killing fields, Pol Pot. Read the rest of this entry »

John A. Kurtz

RECOMMENDED

Meet three wild and crazy Chicago guys from the generation that grew up in the 1950s and sixties, back when the language of art had not yet been deconstructed and the Beatles had not yet met the Maharishi. Although John Kurtz, Paul Lamantia and Bruce Thorn are introspective, their artworks are hardly private, and rather than inviting you into their own pictorial world, the energy of each picture is always pushing into the world of the viewer.  Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

After three decades producing contemplative oil paintings and sumi-e ink studies, Terri Zupanc’s latest source of meditation is the land around his family’s cottage on Paint Lake in Upper Peninsula Michigan. The artist’s first exhibition at Jean Albano Gallery, “Paint Lake” contains wood bark and occasional animal shells categorized as “found objects” alongside misty, black-and-white photographs of nudes frolicking through the forest. Zupanc found and chose the curving and twisting bark to place in the gallery as biological readymades, and these sculptures indeed draw the viewer to reflect on the wood’s beauty and natural patterning. Read the rest of this entry »

“Chained Soul”

RECOMMENDED

Right up front about using photography to express her ever-incomplete journey of self-discovery, Jodi Swanson (Alempijevic) does not specialize, deploying whatever technique and genre depicts the mood that she wants to represent to herself and communicate to viewers. Whether she is shooting in black-and-white or color; going straight or venturing into digital manipulation; posing models in formal studies or turning the camera on herself; or capturing slices of life on the streets, meditating on natural forms, or flirting with surrealism, Swanson is always intensely passionate—she is addicted to feeling and she is a consummate pusher who knows how to break through our emotional resistance. Read the rest of this entry »

Mary Rafferty

RECOMMENDED

Of the eleven gifted veteran Chicago art photographers whose work is on display here, running the gamut of genres, techniques and sensibilities, Mary Rafferty’s in-your-face color punk portraits against white backgrounds of roller derby queens, Jane Alt’s wild color shots of swirling smoky controlled (you wouldn’t know it) forest burns, and Susan Annable’s edgy mysterious atmospheric black-and-white studies of indistinct subjects deserve special mention; but Jessica Tampas outpaces the pack with her large-format color, close-up head shots of cracked, scarred and broken one-hundred-year-old dolls that stare at you as though they were animated, beseeching you to connect with them. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Contemporary symbolist painting is a hard sell in Chicago. It doesn’t revel in bright, sunny landscapes, gritty urban realism, or echoes of popular culture. As developed in the late-nineteenth century, it cultivates spirituality in a dark inner world accessible only to the artist/genius and those able to follow. As the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren once put it, “It is not our faith and our beliefs that we put forward; on the contrary, it is our doubts, our fears, our boredoms, our vices, our despair and probably our agony.”

Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

At the heart of Elsa Muñoz’s exhibition of recent seascapes, landscapes, still-lifes and portraits seems to be a coming-of-age drama with recent or impending tragedies that may or may not be autobiographical. The sun never penetrates a humid atmosphere of sadness that hangs over these dark images, even when the artist steps outside to share a daylight view of Ireland or Mexico. All the paintings are so quiet!—as quiet as Vermeer. The interior views feature the slender figure of a young woman, alone, never facing the viewer, and always in front of a door or window. In one version she is opening a door for a presumed visitor, but she is so cautious, and the lock on the door is so large, heavy and prominent. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Kaoru Arima likes to straddle the lines between control and surrender, formal and casual, revelatory and obscure, mindless and calculating, and, of course, art and non-art. What better place to show the results than in this tiny second-floor apartment gallery in Pilsen. It’s as randomly located as Arima’s own gallery in Inuyama, Japan (curiously named the Art Drug Center). The gallery’s white walls feel like the small areas of white paint splashed onto Japanese newspapers on which Kaoru executed the twenty-eight cartoonish line drawings in the collection of the Walker Art Center. Read the rest of this entry »

“And Then…” by Pamela Hobbs

RECOMMENDED

An emblematic representative of the most sophisticated contemporary photo-art, Pamela Hobbs combines a multitude of postmodern tactics (use of vintage photographic processes, embedded conceptual import, use of text, coloring her images) with surrealism, sentimentality and a decidedly serious feminist-modernist reflection on mortality. As improbable as the mixture might seem to be, Hobbs’ sepia and toned black-and-white prints of curio cases filled with the leavings of expired life—figurines, pictures, dolls, and Read the rest of this entry »

Kara Walker, “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!” (detail), 2013

If brand identity is crucial to the success of the contemporary artist, few have got one as strong as the MacArthur Fellowship recipient Kara Walker. But, nearly two decades on, Walker’s trademark silhouettes and antebellum grotesqueries are showing their age, and the artist, undoubtedly aware she has cut herself into a stylistic corner, has been making strides to broaden her approach to installation.

In her latest work “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race” commissioned specifically for the Art Institute, Walker anchors the show with several mural-scale drawings and a plethora of small, variously framed studies. The signature silhouettes are still present, though play less large a role in this homage to imaginary race war. Read the rest of this entry »