Gregory Battcock archive

By Jason Foumberg

There’s a common grievance that Chicago is a desert of contemporary art collecting, but I’ve always been skeptical of that perspective, as it’s a little too simplistic and predictable to constantly pine over, and be disappointed by, the lack of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am class of dealers and buyers here. An alternative exists. Private collecting is not always about purchasing major paintings for mansion walls. Smaller stuff, like handmade books and drawings, are easier to collect, and not-so-obvious items, such as correspondence, snapshots, clippings and scrapbooks—what is usually termed “ephemera”—when combined provide a thrillingly unique approach to an artist’s life. Imagine that after you die your shoeboxes full of letters, your sketchbooks and junk drawers are preserved in total, as an archive, to better understand how you lived, worked and related to your community. Your souvenirs would be evidence of your life. No one wants to simply disappear.

Two current exhibitions reveal why archives matter. At Rowley Kennerk Gallery, artist Joseph Grigely shows in six vitrines the residue of critic and artist Gregory Battcock’s life (1937-80), and at the newly opened Public Collectors Study Center, artist Marc Fischer shows eleven artist books by Don Celender (1931-2005). Although both Battcock and Celender had a presence in the New York art scene, and both sought to have lasting importance on the cultural life of American art (each earned a PhD and published regularly), their legacies are scattered and buried, just waiting for the right person to pick up the pieces. Read the rest of this entry »

Dutes Miller could pass for a young AA Bronson. If you’ve met either, you know I’m not just talking about their beards—although at face value their look-alike beards, cascading and unfettered, bespeak a similar naturalness and charm. Bronson helped found General Idea but disbanded the group after its two other members died of AIDS fifteen years ago. During its run, General Idea gave a public face to the then-taboo gay lifestyle. Now, forty years after Stonewall, and after increased assimilation, what is the most beneficial image for the gay art movement?

The beard, worn like a badge, persists. Yes, it may be just a fashion, but it also signifies solidarity and self-made freedom. Ever image-conscious, gays who sport a beard of a certain length knowingly join a rank. A beard seems to say: my body is unconstrained, and my inhibitions are not secret. For his first solo exhibition in Chicago, Dutes Miller presents forthright and honest images of the body—the gay man’s body—from beard to balls. Miller’s husband and sometimes collaborator Stan Shellabarger (they had an exhibition together in 2007) also makes body-centric art, often in ritualistic endurance performances. Together, they make dual-portrait keepsakes, and in Basel they dug two graves joined by an underground tunnel through which they held hands. Such bittersweet gestures straightforwardly engage Bronson’s art practice—the way he tempers things with preemptive morning, his flair for banal male nudity, often combining political and emotional pitches. In fact, Bronson had an exhibition of his late work in 2001 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Chicago, just as Miller and Shellabarger were settling into their new home in the city.

Miller’s solo exhibition is a bit different than the collaborative efforts with his husband. For one thing, he uses paint (Shellabarger doesn’t), and his themes are hardcore gay rather than domestic. Miller admits there’s a good amount of “decorum” in his collaborative art, but the current show is laced with glossy porn, shit smears, a meat hook—dangerous sort of imagery, but real. “Sex is messy,” says Dutes. This is more Bruce LaBruce than AA Bronson, although if it weren’t for either trailblazer, would Miller be as candid as he is in this show? The images are celebratory: a cock is the body of a muscled wrestler, arms pumping in triumph; paint flows expressively like an ejaculation; there’s a pulpit in the middle of the gallery; one picture, titled “Smell It,” features a bouquet of anal flowers.

Thirty-six collages made from porn are hung in a grid on one gallery wall. The cut-up technique, like a good Picasso nude from his surrealist phase, over-saturates the bodies with sex. Assholes, like flying discs, populate one scene. Another compounds flesh on flesh, hair on hair, cocks on faces. One guy is remade to sport four dicks, but Miller also deforms his face, giving the fantasy a dark twist. Appropriating porn into one’s art may just be a way of prolonging masturbation. Miller’s gay scrap-booking technique is shared by another Western Exhibitions gallery artist, John Parot. Both ask viewers to see desire as distinct from shame. (Jason Foumberg)

Dutes Miller shows at Western Exhibitions, 119 N. Peoria, through August 1.

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.
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Dieter Roth

RECOMMENDED

Flying just under the radar, the exhibition at the Art Institute’s Ryerson Library, “Multiples, Parts and Pieces,” brings to attention the work of the most pivotal artists surrounding the artist’s book form. From the famed forefather, Dieter Roth, whose book of designs earned recognition as one the first artist books, to Ed Ruscha’s sardonic paperback picture novels, and the entrance of the Fluxus sensibility in the 1960s, the exhibition covers the major moves in the twentieth-century book from the library’s collection.

On display is William Copley’s publication S.M.S. (Shit Must Stop), wherein artists such as John Cage, Marcel Broodthaers and Marcel Duchamp made regular contributions. (Cage’s assemblage box is on display along with Broodthaers’ box of interviews and posters.) The work of legendary feminist activists the Guerilla Girls is presented in a selection of posters on the topic of saving the environment, and the guide to female stereotypes, “Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers.”

A charming addition to the show is a selection from Wallace Berman’s series, “L.A. Lover,” collage selections of printed poems that made sharing art via the post into a very personal exchange. These pieces need to be looked at, opened, reveled in and handled whenever possible. (Beatrice Smigasieicz)

Through May 18 at the Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan.

RECOMMENDED

With the advent of information-sharing technology, perhaps the book’s greatest enduring strengths is its tactile form. Nothing quite replicates the sensuousness of delicate pages, glossy ink illustrations on paper and coarse bindings. “Anatomy of a Book” brings together three artists who understand this strength and play with the idea about what really constitutes a book’s anatomy.

Chicago-based artist Pat Swanson collects and arranges parts of books, including fabric bindings, stained pages and wood covers. Her compositions vary between static organizations and seemingly natural groupings, as if once-complete books had been reduced to bits and lovingly recollected. Jennifer Koshbin’s altered books are not destroyed to Swanson’s point of no return, but instead subjected to experimental inclusion and mutilation. Concentric circles cut through layers of pages allow the viewer to skip through the body of a novel to focus on a single word. Some pieces pair this maimed text with original sketches by the artist. Koshbin’s musical books, in which music box movements are inserted into books, not only provide commentary on books’ content, but also ask viewers to interact with books in a non-conventional manner. Picking up “Don Pedro and The Devil,” the viewer continuously cranks a small lever to listen to “Amazing Grace.” The play on words continues with Suzanna Scott’s “Doll Houses,” reclaimed wood sculptures in the familiar shape of the Western-style domicile, complete with small chimneys. Her Frankensteinian creations take on a life of their own with the addition of doll arms and legs and antique anatomical prints. (Patrice Connelly)

Through May 1 at 360 See Gallery, 1924 N. Damen Ave

detail of Untitled (Walking Book 14, 2201 S. Union, 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL), 2008

RECOMMENDED

Stan Shellabarger is an artist who walks or, rather, he is a walking artist—that is, walking is his art. He records his walking activities not with pen and map nor strewn breadcrumbs, but by attaching graphite or sandpaper to his soles and making contact with paper laid down in his path. He follows a planned route, albeit a brief one: a staircase, or a stretch of sidewalk. Back-and-forth repetition is key. The resulting paper reveals either a smeary frottage of silvery graphite or a patterned tread of holes, depending on which implement Shellabarger wears on his feet. The paper is proof of contact with the world.

“The passage of a life should show; it should abrade,” writes poet Kay Ryan, who imagines a fictive world wherein the things we touch daily reduce in matter from persistent friction, and paths commonly taken are susceptible to wear from their walkers. The resolution of the poem is, discerningly, “things shouldn’t be so hard.” In Ryan’s tender words, life is too resistant for flesh already so yielding. But the opposite is true; we do grind down our environment. That Ryan wistfully imagines respite from so much exterior gnawing reveals a hypersensitive temperament, one both empathic and self-effacing. Is this the perception—or sensation—of the artist? That life imprints its marks on our bodies? That it would be a relief to push back? This is what historian Stephan Bann calls an “existential trace,” where life is measured by aftereffects, marks, and residues—say, a stain or a footprint. (Jason Foumberg)

Through October 11 at Western Exhibitions, 119 N. Peoria, (312)480-8390.

By Jason Foumberg

Great stories, from the comic to the tragic, are born from conflict. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl; Man versus Nature; Man versus himself: these are the recurring dramatic archetypes that reel through Lora Fosberg’s drawings. Using primarily ink and gouache on found paper—old ledgers, diaries and prescription pads—Fosberg renders the small struggles of daily existence. Each page, browned with age, features a single scenario, a distilled symbol or a glimpse through a small frame of the mind that Fosberg has captured. The pages are then pasted side-by-side on large canvases, four-by-five feet, like a jumbled storyboard. It is fitting, then, that Fosberg has collected ten years’ worth of drawings and canvases in a book, a format that underscores the narrative aspect of her work.

A motif in Fosberg’s drawings concerns man’s place in nature. Fosberg doesn’t rely on personal anecdotes to relate this conflict. Instead, she culls the stock from her iconography, as she calls it, to represent the constant push and pull between civilized discipline and wild freedom: Man versus Nature. Voices float through the drawings: Why do I keep doing it to myself; Here is where it’s gonna count; Don’t smoke Don’t drink Don’t think; Now Never What? When? The stream of banter keeps us inhibited, and in check. On the opposite shore, so to speak, of Fosberg’s iconography, rowboats are constantly stuck in choppy waters and one-man airplanes seem to always be landing on deserted islands. No Thanks, someone has spelled out with tree trunks on the beach where the plane has crashed. No Really… I’m Fine is spelled out below an island with all the implements for survival spread around a woman relaxing on a tree stump. Seen retrospectively in the book, the symbols and icons of Fosberg’s past ten years of art-making follow this consistent and contained narrative of self-sufficiency, its failures and successes.

The call of the wild, as it were, beckoned Fosberg to the forests of Michigan where she bought a summer cottage several years ago. “I’m a nature buff,” says Fosberg. Leaving Chicago on the weekends provided respite and inspiration for her drawings, most of which were created in her 3,500 square-foot, light-filled Bucktown studio. The story of Man versus Man, or Artist versus Gentrification, came to a climax one year ago when the landlord of the building on Damen Avenue, who for many years made it affordable for artists to live and work in such a glorious location, sold the space to commercial developers. Now, Fosberg’s former studio, which can be seen in several black-and-white photographs in the book, has been replaced by the Marc Jacobs store. Fosberg has since taken up residence in her Michigan forest cottage, where the idea of creating a book came into play. Since so much of the work is based on her personal experiences dividing time between city and forest, the interruption provided a moment to reflect on a ten-year body of work. The book is aptly titled “The End of the Beginning.”

“I always knew I wanted to be an artist,” says Fosberg, whose mother owned a print shop, so a supply of paper was always readily available and appealing for a kid “who grew up with a pen in the hand.” Fosberg is the type of person who will pick up any scrap of paper with writing on it found in the street or sidewalk, a dried leaf plucked by the wind off the tree of someone’s life. Peering into a small section of a life, and dreaming up banalities and desires, is an evocative practice living in a city of strangers—perhaps all we need is the confirmation that others are prone to self-doubt, boredom, heartbreak and resiliency.

The End of the Beginning is printed in an edition of 1,000 and available at Quimby’s, Linda Warren Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art and lorafosberg.com, $40.

By Jason Foumberg

A cabinetmaker’s dumpster is often a good source for the thin wood planes that Cody Hudson likes to use in his street-art installations. He paints the boards cyan or hot orange, and leaves others with the wood exposed, rounds their edges and stacks them in the gritty alleyways of Chicago, Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio.

As both an artist and a graphic designer, Hudson plays with the public presentation of an underground style. Roughly hewn and jagged-edged paper cut-outs often jostle with public-domain clip art—made catchy like a dub bass line in Hudson’s hand—and careful dabs of spray-paint, laid out in an orchestrated disorder. Hudson’s stage is the public sphere. Under the moniker Struggle Inc. his illustrations grace snowboards and LP covers, and his sculptural installations are often built from materials found on the street. An upcoming exhibit at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles marks the occasion for the release of “Save My Life,” a book spanning the past two years of Hudson’s various artistic enterprises.

In the recent past Hudson’s DIY street-beautification team included Juan Angel Chavez and Michael Genovese, Chicago artists who continue to mine the street aesthetic. The allure and anonymity of street art seems like a youthful indiscretion—just ask Barry McGee or Banksy; sooner or later the itch to go commercial sounds less like selling out and more like reaching a larger audience. These days, Hudson realizes most of his installations in art galleries, although he still does use found wood and other detritus objects such as pots and pans fashioned into a spinning chandelier.

Hudson’s Logan Square studio is an airy white space with an area designated for painting on one end and his Mac on the other. He can flow seamlessly from painting to design, one informing the other, the painting an outlet for his independent visions and the design an opportunity to hear his creative voice resound publicly. In between his painting studio and his design table, pieces of inspiration are taped to the wall: a bootleg Nirvana poster, some examples of package design and a spray-painted upside-down cross (more on that in a minute). The tight composition recalls a similar installation in his 12×12 solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in November, 2007. There, Hudson transposed a corner of his studio into the gallery where a painting casually butted up with found-object sculptures, a chair and television set. The piece looked like a 3D sketch, and was an insight into Hudson’s great sense of playful and intuitive composition that is reiterated in many of his cut-paper collages.

Much of the work, the fine art and design alike, are based on abstractions. How can anyone dislike a circle, Hudson asks rhetorically. The strength of a shape such as a circle, continues Hudson, is its many associations and interpretations; its meaning is not limited to its form. Harnessing the boldness of simple shapes, and their attendant accessibility, may have helped propel Hudson to a point of popularity. It’s only recently that the shapes have started coming together into quasi-figurative faces and bodies that, in their quirky simplicity, stand up next to a Miro collage or a Dada-period Picabia line drawing.

The cross or crucifix also features prominently in Hudson’s pieces, although when questioned about it as a recurring motif, Hudson finds little relation between the symbol and any personal religious affiliation. Perhaps like the circle, a cross can be randomly grabbed from the universe of symbols, and its graphic identity can be unfixed and tweaked. Perhaps it has potential as a design element rather than a loaded refrain. In this light Hudson experimented with a series of drawings involving hot-air-balloon-like contraptions that often sport small crosses. The structures float in the middle of pages torn from old books, their edges browning with age. To divine the imagery Hudson imagined that it wasn’t he who drew them, but that they were relics from a manual from a bygone Christian cult. The contraptions, therefore, are machines for spiritual ascension.

The fictional removal of the artist from this series of experimental drawings reflects Hudson’s daily practice of a seemingly authorless graphic-design process. Often the design of, say, a book or a record cover posits a particular style and identity, but its maker sits in the background, almost anonymous to the viewer. The same is true with the street-art installations, as the unsigned works simply live in the city like an elegant but nameless passerby.

Cody Hudson’s book “Save My Life” is available locally at Quimby’s and Penelope’s, $20.