RECOMMENDED

Philip Vanderhyden’s seven monochrome paintings in his solo exhibition, “Outside Group,” at Andrew Rafacz Gallery are primarily about materiality. Like silt in a stream, the paint in shades of gray washes down the canvas. Vanderhyden creates this effect by applying oil paint with rollers to burlap and creating textures in the wet surface by lying down and lifting up sheets of plastic wrap. Yet, matter is quickly transformed into matrix in these works. When viewed from a distance, the dense materiality of the paintings disappears and they seem as immaterial as the static on an old TV. This fluctuation between presence and absent is relative to changes in the viewer’s position within the gallery: as one steps closer, the materiality of the paint asserts itself and the “static” vanishes. In this shifting terrain, one can search for signs and patterns in the ebb and flow of the gray paint. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Scott Wolniak, with concurrent shows at 65Grand and Andrew Rafacz Gallery, says his work is “an investigation into how art-making can be a template for examining everyday occurrences and experiences.” It’s about elevating the everyday to aesthetic significance.

For “You Can Lose Your Balance” at 65Grand, Wolniak contorts, tears and twists canvases painted all white. He slices canvas and hangs a brick in a tear to create a ‘balanced’ composition. He punctures the rippling, white surface of a Little River in acrylic using a twig. The paintings, he explains, consist of “dumb acts of wrestling and sabotage” that “occur in lieu of anything remotely resembling technique.” So he splinters the canvases’ wooden frames. He has you believe that the paintings in this show leave more to chance than to the artist’s touch. In the words of Argentine canvas-slasher Lucio Fontana, punctured canvases like Wolniak’s reveal “a dimension beyond the painting” that illustrates “the freedom to conceive art through any means.” But Wolniak takes this a step further when, in ”Flash Art (Circles and Rectangles),” the image of a lightbulb going on and off paired with the switch click, click, clicking on and off becomes mesmeric. The sound takes on a meditative repetition like listening to tap-dancing, typewriting, rain falling on a tin roof and a stream of flighty, illuminating, then extinguished ideas enter and exit the viewer’s mind. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Bending slightly forward and photographed in profile with her face and half of her torso silhouetted in shadows, John Opera’s nubile nude subject sits in bed with her arm crooked as she raises a glass of water to her lips meditatively. Opera has shot this dusky color image three times with almost identical poses, inviting viewers to look for the nearly imperceptible differences among them after having taken in the scene. Enlightenment is achieved when we look at the water in the half-filled glass; in one shot, the liquid has not yet reached the woman’s lips; in the next, it has connected and is dappled with spots of light; and in the last, the lit water has formed a black and gray cone. One must strain to dredge or squeeze meaning out of Opera’s scenes that like water are not flavored. What difference does difference make? (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 16 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington

RECOMMENDED

“Public Works,” a collaboration between four renowned graphic artists with roots in Chicago’s independent art and music scenes—Chris Eichenseer, Justin Fines, Cody Hudson and Andy Mueller—combines fine and commercial art in ways experienced in the artists’ careers.

At the show’s core, a dense collage of the artists’ commercial work (largely musical in nature) serves as a collective retrospective, making relative the new works that surround it. There is a notable difference between works old and new, however. Unlike the concentrated wall of past designs, the new works, freed from meeting commercial ends, carry more critical weight.

Perhaps stemming from the show’s title alone, aspects of this inaugural show of “Public Works” evoke an association with social art from the early to mid-twentieth century.  With current economic-political crises-responses what they are, the work that came out of the WPA (an artistic program initiated by the New Deal) comes to mind. Works Progress, Public Works…there’s something there, whether linguistic or otherwise. Considering the overlapping influences of commercial and fine art, it is fitting that social content pervades in varying degrees. When dichotomies of fine/commercial art collapse, so do public/private and communal/individual, enabling design to become didactic. From Andy Mueller’s playful screen prints to Cody Hudson’s Constructivist-recalling designs, the works combine to illustrate the possibilities for art to literally design our communal perspective.

“Public Works,” self-described as a series of shows and events based on enriching communities through creative occupations is as clear as its mantra: “When art makes work and work makes art, everyone benefits.” With graphic design—among today’s most socially profound and prolific mediums—at the heart of “Public Works,” this exhibition holds true to its intent. Moreover, like the artists it showcases, the show simply works. (Justin Natale)

Through August 29 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington

RECOMMENDED

Playful postmodern performance photography can show up anywhere, as is amply evidenced by commercial fisherman Corey Arnold’s color shots of hijinks on the high seas of the forbidding roiling Bering Straits. The romantic myths of the Great White North assiduously cultivated by such fabulists as Jack London get a big-time tweak when we contemplate scenes in which Arnold lies blissfully in the hold of his boat cuddling a bleeding dead fish that looks like it is about to kiss him on the lips; or when we see a shipmate from behind on the deck swinging an iron bar gamely at a piñata that he contrived as a birthday gift for himself, as monstrous waves swell around him, threatening to swamp the celebration. Even when nature fills the picture, Arnold goes overboard; in a stunningly beautiful image of chaotic motion, a dense flock of gulls flies and splashes every which way in compelling anarchy. (Michael Weinstein)

Through May 9 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington

RECOMMENDED

The three photographers in this early and welcome effort to position art in an age of political and economic crisis deploy postmodern moves to shift our response from superficial realism to a deeper and more nuanced awareness of distress—an inward realism. Greg Stimac appropriates shots of seedy foreclosed houses from real estate flyers, prints them as grainy as can be to make them look even more forlorn, places them in a grid, and then puts a symbolic red diamond in the middle of his composition to suggest or maybe to scoff at a possible conspiracy behind the boulevard of broken dreams. Curtis Mann appropriates photos of conflict zones, fragments them and fills in the gaps with fiery reds and yellows to produce compositions that communicate the desolating excitement and searing beauty of violent antagonism. Lazarus went down to the banks of the river on a late, leafless autumn day, lay down and wrapped himself like a mummy in a tiger blanket, and shot the scene of ultimate abject camouflage. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 24 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington, (312)404-9188.

By Alicia Eler

Art Fairing in a new economy, Chicago blows through the 2008 Miami art fairs

The Western Exhibitions booth

Overall murmurs of low attendance aside, Art Basel Miami Beach reported more registered collectors and cultural institutions than any previous year. The Miami Herald said that almost half of the galleries at Art Basel saw drops in sales, however, and after just two days into the fair, only sixteen percent of galleries at Basel and the satellite fairs saw sales growth. There are fewer visitors roaming the fairs than in years past, but the art world won’t give up.

Of the three Chicago galleries at Art Basel Miami Beach—blue-chippers Richard Gray, Donald Young and Valerie Carberry—I noticed a sprinkling of red dots covering David Hockneys at Richard Gray. During an unstable time, art buyers will invest in artists whose names they already know and trust. Kavi Gupta Gallery led the way at the younger, more casual, Chicago gallery-populated NADA Art Fair, even positioning Tony Tassett’s “Snowman” (2008) by the coveted fair entrance. Within the first hour of the fair, that piece sold for $70,000, which “shocked” Gupta according to reports from Artinfo.com. Red dots covered works by Melanie Schiff—a 2008 Whitney Biennial participant—including her “Untitled” (2008), an exquisite play with light, shadow and circular lens-like mirrors and symbols that are curiously shaped like Schiff’s nipples, recognizable in her other works.

David Lieske at Rowley Kennerk Gallery

Imperfect Articles represented a more affordable slice of Chicago’s art world at NADA, selling t-shirts designed by Andrew Rafacz Gallery’s Cody Hudson, among others. Nearby, Bridgeport-based Proximity Magazine and Pilsen-based Golden Age showed off their print goods. The West Loop’s Western Exhibitions dedicated their entire space to the work of Chicago’s husband art team duo Stan Shellabarger and Dutes Miller, who are quickly becoming the gallery’s art-fair darlings, and included a live knitting performance of their pink umbilical cord-like tube, making early on a $5,000 sale of a book filled with self-portrait silhouettes. Chicago galleries Rowley Kennerk and Shane Campbell Gallery also showed at NADA.

The West Loop contingent was further seen down the street at PULSE, where Monique Meloche Gallery’s booth featuring L.A.-based emerging artist Kendell Carter sold a variety of his works ranging from $1,700–$12,000, including the space’s wainscot wall installation, something that’s certainly more difficult to sell than, say, one of the artist’s shoelace drip paintings. Lake Street’s Packer Schopf Gallery did Bridge for the past three years but switched to PULSE this year; owner Aron Packer says that Michael Dinges’ paintings on deceased Mac computers and Steve Seeley’s whimsical taxidermy drawings were “a hit.” Tony Wight of Tony Wight Gallery smiled from inside his crisp white-walled space, which included a strong selection of work including abstract, kaliediscope-esque photos from NY-based Tamar Halpern’s solo exhibition recently seen in Chicago.

Catherine Edelman Gallery, Douglas Dawson and McCormick Gallery brought work to Art Miami, another of the vast tent fairs. Chicago representation at the poppy young Aqua Wynwood Fair included Kasia Kay Art Projects and Thomas Robertello Gallery, who smartly curated works from Lily McElroy’s “I Throw Myself at Men.” In this series, the artist hand-selected men either from Craigslist or at dive bars in Chicago, and literally threw herself at them, toying with assumptions about male-female power dynamics.

The Chicago born-and-bred Bridge Art Fair led Chicago representation in Miami, bringing ALL RiSE GALLERY, Accomplice Projects, Antena, GARDENfresh, Swimming Pool Project Space to the Miami location, and Aldo Castillo Gallery and Ryan Schulz Projects (of the recently closed NavtaSchulz Gallery on Lake Street) to the new Bridge Wynwood. Emerging artist Mathew Paul Jinks says “I’m seeing a lot of interest—my Web site stats peaked this week, and GRACE, a Brooklyn gallery, asked me to do a performance next year.” Likewise, at Bridge Miami Beach, gallery co-owner Liz Nielsen, of the less-than-one-year-old Swimming Pool Project Space, saw two $500 video art sales of work by Latham Zearfoss and Aspen Mays.

Imperfect Articles

Talk of sales was still on everyone’s lips until Art Basel Miami Beach closed their doors on Sunday, December 7, at 6pm sharp. As the power went out on Donald Young Gallery’s four-channel Gary Hill video piece, guests streamed out of the convention center. When the Art Basel Miami Beach closing party began at the newly renovated Fontainebleau Hotel at 41st and Collins, which was recently renovated in line with Morris Lapidus’s original design, the food and wine flowed as if someone had just won the lottery and was treating thousands of close friends. Guests ate little slices of decadence, like grilled jumbo shrimp, succulent beef polenta, fresh cherry tomatoes and finger-food desserts of soft sweet cakes, rich chocolate morsels and creamy puddings. Free champagne, wine and mixed drinks flowed endlessly at the bars, some of which were crafted entirely from ice. And as the party meandered into the hotel’s new LIV Lounge, where shiny stairs led the way into a lounge-like pit of sweaty bodies dancing against one another, Art Basel Miami Beach Co-Director Annette Schönholzer smiled, sliding alongside collectors and exhibitors. No one was thinking about unsold paintings needing to be shipped home.

Newcity’s daily coverage from Miami can be found here: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four

By Jason Foumberg

John Opera is a photographer who goes searching for personal aesthetic experiences, and he’s also an outspoken critic of his chosen medium. I recently spoke to him about his current solo exhibition.

Why photograph nature?

The show is the culmination of a lot of the things I’ve been concerned with over the last three years, and this has been the perfect conclusion for me. The work speaks to notions of interiority, whether it’s being inside somewhere and meditating on a space, or being outside, in an exterior setting, and being absorbed by it. I was hiking in Zoar Valley, outside Buffalo, New York. You can go in there for three or four miles and not see anybody. I photographed a guy with a telephoto lens, so he wasn’t really aware of what I was doing completely. He knew I was there and that I had a camera. He acknowledged me and then continued to do his thing. It’s an eight-second exposure. The smoke and the stream are blurred, yet this man is very still. It’s not manipulated in any way; it’s a documentary image. For me, the important thing in the image is that there’s this guy who was probably there to seek out something he wasn’t getting in the rest of the world. It’s an image that’s very absorptive, in the tradition of Jeff Wall, where this person is engaged in this super-absorptive, singular, personal moment, and the whole world is going on behind him.

What did you go into the forest looking for?

I don’t know; I never know. I tend to get interested in landscape around the time the seasons start to change, right before the fall foliage turns or right before things bloom, very early summer, very late winter. That’s what drives me initially to return to landscape as a subject matter. All my landscapes are made in western New York. For me, there’s a very personal drive because these are places that I frequented as a kid with my father, a retired geologist. My work speaks to certain aspects of origin, as well as just being there and observing. More often than not, something else happens. I would go out and sit in the woods for eight to twelve hours alone. Almost always it’s important for me to be alone. In the picture “Zoar” I like to imagine this persona as an equivalent of my own kind of desire to seek out these places and use them as meditative tools.

How many photographs do you take in an eight-to-twelve-hour period?

Sometimes none, and sometimes two-to-three. The way I try to keep it authentic for myself is to not really think about going out with the specific intent of making a picture—of course that’s why I’m really there, but I try to be patient. I use a large-format camera, so that process is really about slowing down. It’s not the kind of camera that you just shoot off. Using that kind of camera trains your eye to recognize images without looking through the camera, necessarily. I like that. For me, it becomes much more about the space that’s not so tied to looking through a viewfinder. There are things that I respond to that remind me of painting space—and of course it all ends up as a photograph.

Why do you bring up painting?

There is the photo ghetto: the photo world that folds in on itself that is only really serving itself. It’s associated with the grand failures of photography in the twentieth-century, and it includes the whole feminist critique of photography being a machismo mode of representation, or the myth of the “decisive moment,” or staging. There’s part of photography that’s still closely connected to failures in late Modernism that most other art forms have recognized and moved on from.

That seems to be a developmental stage inherent in the artist rather than the medium.

For me it certainly was. When I was a kid I was reading Ansel Adams books and really looking at those seriously. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized his work is just hopelessly boring, and almost capitalistic. It’s staggering that he was able to maintain his photographic project for the duration of his entire life and arrive at nothing except technical prowess. His work is often associated with political agendas and popular recognition of spirituality or beauty or this or that. Pictures like that are very much theatrical; they are very much about sending something outward that’s very pointed.

Do you believe in purification by nature?

Yes, I think it can occur in many spaces, but it’s a myth. Anyone walking into this show can have a fantasy of solitude. The interesting thing happens with the work in terms of tropes and problems with cliché; it’s also where people attack the work. I like the fantasy of myth. You know, you read mythical stories and it’s like the landscape is always waiting to accept the person in the story. I don’t have any delusions about “don’t forget to love nature” bullshit. For me it’s more transcendental. I don’t think about how these pictures tug at people’s heartstrings. For me it’s a lot more subjective.

John Opera shows at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington, (312)404-9188, through October 11.

Diana Guerrero-Macia

As we consider the fall lineup in the West Loop gallery district, it’s probably best to start with a roundup of a few changes that took place over the summer while the rest of us were off educating our palettes with Old Style, PBR and brats. First, the bad news: Lisa Boyle Gallery and Gescheidle closed. Both proprietors are continuing to work with their artists, but are abandoning their permanent spaces to become members of the aspirational class of wily independents. Gardenfresh is shuttering its doors at the end of the month after a final group exhibition, transforming itself into a vaguely defined “nomadic curatorial collective.” All of this is making me wonder if Chicago’s art market will ever be able to sustain a diverse gallery scene, or if it’s time to stop complaining and acknowledge that Chicago (at its best) is about short-term interventions whose benefits are innovation and a DIY ethic where anything goes. Some, however, are adapting. ThreeWalls downsized, eliminating its Solo gallery while maintaining its larger exhibition space and residency program. Not one to waste time, Scott Speh has moved his Western Exhibitions into the vacant spot, pleasing everyone who enjoys centralization. Finally, Bodybuilder & Sportsman and BucketRider have both changed their names to reflect the identities of their owners: Tony Wight Gallery and Andrew Rafacz Gallery, respectively.

The West Loop is busy this September and a few standouts deserve special attention. Two galleries, Kavi Gupta and Rhona Hoffman, are featuring independently curated exhibitions. At Hoffman, art critic and curator Terry Myers continues his theme of “ambient materialism” in “Angles in America.” Despite the precious title, the show is a broad and well-conceived treatment of geometry and angularity that spans forty years of American art. Myers’ focus on what Siegfried Kracauer called “surface-level expressions,” in contrast to grand historical statements, leads to a varied group of artists working in almost every medium. This is not your father’s modernism—Mary Heilmann’s 1980s bright abstractions interact with a Robert Overby post-Minimalist cast door and contemporary films by Jennifer West and Laura Riboli.

Curator, critic and ex-Chicagoan Marc Leblanc has put together a show of metaphysical, neo-Romantic Los Angeles artists at Kavi Gupta. Go for a crash course in form and formlessness. Rashid Johnson is also returning home for a double feature at Monique Meloche and Richard Gray. At Meloche, Johnson is creating “a creolized orgy between Sun Ra, Paul Gaugin, Kazmir Malevich, Debra Dickerson and Eldridge Cleaver (if his soul were no longer on ice).” Sound fun? Try the shea butter. Across the street, Diana Guerrero-Maciá has new work at Tony Wight; her combinations of text and image in large-scale collages underscore the arbitrariness and absurdity of symbolic representation, while experienced veterans Josiah McElheny and Cristina Iglesias present new work at Donald Young. Punk-rocker Patrick Berran’s abstract paintings at Thomas Robertello are at once more serene and dirty than expected. So fans, it’s a new season. Pull out the pompoms and grab your free beers, it’s game time. (Rachel Furnari)