"Helpless," 2008

RECOMMENDED

Imagine being diagnosed with “rapidly cycling mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder” (hearing alien voices in your head ), being a photographer, being on meds that allow you some clarity, isolating yourself in your digs, and recording your responses to your condition in straight toned scenario shots; and you will grasp Lauren Simonutti’s amazing project of projecting subjective images of mental disease into small-format silver gelatin contact prints. Simonutti’s images beckon us to look into the disorder—the good, the bad and the ugly; the sublime and the ridiculous—that always populates our own minds and is obscured by the controls that the ego slaps on to keep us believing that we have integral selves. The phantasmagoria of madness is concisely captured in “Helpless” where we see bundled and disheveled sheets surrounding an illuminated area where a stylized silhouetted horse stands starkly configured and obdurate—this is what imagination gives, devil take the hindmost. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 6 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

Following a recent tendency of postmodern photo-artists to take their conceits to extremes, Gregory Scott piles medium upon medium by taking photographs of interiors and hanging framed videos of himself performing in scenes that he has painted on the walls of the spaces he has shot. Once the meta-photographic novelty has worn off, which takes a while, the viewer is left to fathom any deeper meaning, which is not immediately apparent. In Scott’s most representative photo-work, we are drawn into a museum gallery where we contemplate an ornately framed video in which our (anti-)hero walks back and forth along a rural road, sweeping it, flying a kite, getting out of a taxi, and strolling with a woman, among many other unrelated and mundane activities; then, in medias res, the artist invades the video and tries unsuccessfully to hang a picture over it, and then the road play resumes to no obvious purpose. This is meta-photography spiked with dada—a hyper-elaborate shaggy-dog story. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 2 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

By virtue of the impact of Zen Buddhism on their high culture, Japanese photographers have developed the talent of bringing forth the intensely concentrated potentialities of the straight still image beyond any other national group. Shooting in black and white, Hiroshi Watanabe is a powerful exemplar of the Japanese tradition, whose studies can be most readily appreciated as visual haiku. Watanabe’s portraits of macaque monkeys that have been disciplined by their masters in “monkey dancing” steal the show; their expressions are so individualized and, yes, thoughtful that they should be required seeing for all those who have doubts about the truth of Darwinian evolution. Zen is often ironically subversive, but it always emotionally evocative; in Watanabe’s deepest image, a mangy black dog rounds a bend in a dirt path under a haze towards a rude fence on the staves of which long-stemmed flowers have been placed unobtrusively. (Michael Weinstein)

Through October 31 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

Among the twelve Chicago photographers practicing a variety of genres who Catherine Edelman has selected to showcase from her online gallery, Leasha Overturf and Philip Dembrinski take the honors for their inventive visual reflections on the disordered psyche. In her color self-portrait, “Conflict,” Overturf has placed a ripped magazine photo of a model’s broad toothy smile over her own lips to create a provocative play with her relaxed cheeks and shut eyes. In his bitterly poignant color scenario shot, “Keep it Coming Like a Miracle,” Dembrinski has his male subject lost in sweet dreams at a weathered picnic table on a patio littered with detritus in front of a ramshackle house. To their credit, Overturf’s and Dembrinski’s images fit their titles like a glove, showing that perceptive conceptual art can enrich the sparest of texts. (Michael Weinstein)

Through September 4 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

With a bevy of his black-and-white street portraits of blind Mexican children now on view at the Cultural Center, we get a chance here to look at what Jed Fielding captures when he encounters sighted young subjects who can respond to the camera at will. Whereas the Mexican series was inevitably voyeuristic, the tables are turned in this one, which was shot in Italy, Spain and Mexico. Especially when the kids are in groups and have leaders, they stand up to Fielding and mug outrageously, admire their expressive friends, or simply ignore the photographic event going down. Feistiness rules the roost, as the leaders glower like fierce protectors, smile with sly superiority, stare down the shooter with intensity, or vogue in masks and seductive poses. Taken together, Fielding’s two shows make the obvious point, which bears reinforcement, that sight is a glorious gift of power. (Michael Weinstein)

Through July 3 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

RECOMMENDED

German still-photographic dramatist Achim Lippoth stages group scenarios, mainly of children, that he shoots in clear though muted color; and that run from wit to fantasy, and are always formal, even when the activity of his subjects is intense. In Lippoth’s banner image, we are invited back to primary school where we witness two young girls sitting studiously and attentively at their desks as two boys in the back row lean forward behind them shooting spitballs—if only that would have transpired back in the day. When Lippoth sends up the Nazi youth aesthetic in his “Little Wolves” series, he show us barefoot girls in snowy white t-shirts and black skirts tossing red balls in the air with obvious glee that subverts any sense of disciplined order—the new Germans just want to have fun. (Michael Weinstein)

Through May 9 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior.

RECOMMENDED

They are black, white, Hasidic, Muslim, Christian, urban, rural, disciplined, dissolute, protected, abandoned, poor, middle class, straight, gay and much more; they are the youth of Gen Y whom Robin Bowman photographed in black and white, and induced to write capsulized autobiographies so that we might understand the plight of the contemporary American teenager. Unburdened by any ideological baggage, Bowman’s ambitious series of informal portraits is less a reflection on the triumphs and tragedies of adolescence than a reflection of the sheer diversity of American lives. The stories are all worth reading, but the images could stand alone without any text, because Bowman is a sensitive shooter who eschews a signature style in favor of leaving her subjects sufficiently free to project their own attitudes without allowing them to take on self-staged poses or to vogue. Of course, the eternal teenager makes an appearance; with a cigarette dangling from his lips, Patrick Roberts looks quizzically into the camera. He writes, “Recently, I think I feel lonely, if that’s a legitimate emotion. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 7 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior.

Julie Blackmon, "Girl Across the Street," 2008. Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

RECOMMENDED

Far from a desperate housewife, Julie Blackmon—surrounded by her extended family in Springfield, Missouri—practices photographic sublimation by shooting her husband and children, and assorted more distant kinfolk, and then tweaking her color images in the computer to create fantasy scenarios that are loose, high and fancy free, yet betray an undercurrent of detachment that subverts all the play and makes us think of our fundamental isolation. Take “Girl Across the Street” in which we see a little tyke from behind looking out of a living room window at a lawn on which a little girl in her undies stands provocatively with hands on hips; only he is immune to her charms and stares past her, seemingly at nothing—we can only hope that changes in a decade or so. Blackmon calls her genial series “Domestic Vacations,” and her images provide us with sprightly relief from the teapot tempests of the everyday. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 3 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior

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

RECOMMENDED

In a season in which political art suddenly seems to be a rising force in Chicago, the master of photographic depth psychology, Joel-Peter Witkin, has produced the most brilliant and brutal visual criticism of the fading Bush administration that we are likely to see. Reprising the image of “The Raft of Medusa,” painted by Theodore Gericault, which depicts a monstrous scene of human suffering caused by inept and selfish leaders, Witkin has created a scenario photograph of the “Raft of George W. Bush” populated by the president and his minions who disport themselves in the most unflattering ways. Bush is pictured in a McDonald’s paper crown with an American flag across his shoulder as he clutches the breast of a supine Condoleeza Rice. Witkin’s accompanying text that lambastes the regime with rapier rage is a must-read for this must-see. (Michael Weinstein)

Through November 1 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior, (312)266-2350