Top 5 Museum Shows
Olafur Eliasson, Museum of Contemporary Art
Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H.C. Westermann Study Collection, Smart Museum
Paul Chan, Renaissance Society
Mary Lou Zelazny, Hyde Park Art Center
James Castle: A Retrospective, Art Institute of Chicago
—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Gallery Shows
Rob Carter, Ebersmoore Gallery
Big Youth, Corbett vs. Dempsey
Sarah Krepp, Roy Boyd Gallery
Everybody! Visual resistance in feminist health movements, 1969-2009, I Space
Ali Bailey, Golden Gallery
—Jason Foumberg Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

Jin Lee, "Ice 2," 2008. Courtesy devening projects + editions, Chicago

Art is long, but institutional memory is short. In many ways, Chicago’s art history is written as it occurs, in situ, by the people who produce it. Artists toil in their studios, heads-down. Apartment galleries open and close as briskly as the seasons change. We consume one-night-only events by the half-dozen, like so many bottles of free Grolsch beer. Even as new art blogs proliferate, with more scenes being represented than ever before, the snapshot commentary and weekly content often feels dated by week’s end. And yet, paintings aren’t bubblegum summer jams; they’re codified slabs of culture, philosophy and style. We seek dialogue, inspiration and long-term change. In short, we seek longevity, with lasting importance for our work and our peers’—but who has time to write contemporary history while we’re in the midst of making it?

That said, Chicago loves its art history. Outsiders, Imagists, Modernists and firebrands—memorize their precepts and you’re halfway to an MFA degree (however, please don’t leave Chicago once you earn the other half). Our traditions always feel in danger of becoming tinder for the next great fire, so we hand-cobble our history and share the stories orally like a rite of passage. This is to our strength and our detriment. History is our bind. We don’t trash Paschke or cold-shoulder Mies because we’ve worked so hard to carry their legacies. In many global art centers, successive generations of artists break with the past like rebellious teenagers, but Chicagoans do not. Here, innovation comes from influence and education. Doing otherwise, it would feel as if the whole thing could unravel.

As we approach the end of the century’s first decade, it’s time to take census of our situation. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Three plastic liters of off-brand pop sit on a table next to two stacks of plastic cups and a bowl of ice. That black-and-white photo welcomes us to Jenny Walters’ party, where we get to see images of bound flowerless stalks and rolled fabric bundled tourniquet fashion around an upright vacuum cleaner, and color portraits of women of various ages, all of whom exude an air of distance, self-enclosure and alienation. As old-school feminism makes a comeback this season, Walters offers a particularly excruciating variation on the theme, introducing us to all the lonely people, whether they stand before us dolefully with an arm in a sling or hold tightly a “reborn” doll (“lifelike” simulation of a baby) with mildly distressed tenderness. Walters is not issuing a call to action; she is making a plea that we understand and feel what it means to be trapped in life, as we all are, regardless of gender. Open the pop and take a swig; it is Walters’ brand of aqua vita. (Michael Weinstein)

Through June 13 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee.

By Jason Foumberg

You’re not going to find an abstract painter in the bunch of this year’s breakout artists. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s getting difficult to define the value of traditional, solo practices in the age of the networked artist. Today’s image makers are less studio artists than opportunists in the expanded field, less gatekeepers of taste than trailblazers in the public sphere—“social entrepreneurs,” as Mike Bancroft calls it. The timing is just right. As this feature is printed, Chicago’s renowned but diminished commercial art fair has opened its doors to include the city’s beloved alternative, artist run and non-profit spaces. The market’s embers are cooling off, and for many that smells like opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“Without You I am Nothing” features print work from both Chicago and Rhode Island artists. The viewers’ interaction with the artwork and with other visitors is integral to all the interactive pieces on display, so the exhibition is also an exercise in “relational aesthetics,” a fancy term for the radical idea that it’s okay to talk to someone else about art.

The tone of the work on view ranges from playful to serious: there’s an art-inflected game as well as a screen-printed chart for the only Vatican-approved birth control, the complicated and unreliable Natural Rhythm Method. “And We Built a City Together” (2009), by Meg Turner and Andrew Oesch, requires the viewer to participate in constructing the actual work itself. You are presented with a bag of stickers of buildings and other urban accoutrement like trees that you then place onto a gallery wall that has the bare outlines of streets on it. Think “The Sims” or “SimCity.” I found this a little facile at first, but how a citizen constructs their world is vitally important. This was clinched when I noticed that on one of the sticker graveyards someone had penciled in “CPS” which could either indicate the schoolchildren killed this year (another shameful record), or the state of the school system itself.

Those who believe that Art is only oil-on-canvas-and-frames will most likely be disappointed, but as the exhibition text states, “satisfaction need not be guaranteed each viewer.” (Abraham Ritchie)

Through April 25 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee.

Carol Wax, "Writer's Blocks," mezzotint

By Steven Wirth

If you happen to be curious about the current state of affairs in the wide world of printmaking then look no further than the forthcoming Southern Graphics Council’s annual conference hosted by Columbia College and Anchor Graphics from March 25–29. Established in 1972, the Southern Graphics Council, or SGC as it is commonly called, is the largest print organization in North America, and each year its annual conference is the largest celebration of printmaking of its kind.

The conference itself means many different things to many different people: Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

Red Light for Green Lantern Gallery

Green Lantern, a contemporary-art venue and small-edition publishing house, recently received an unexpected visitor from the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Licensing. Gallery director Caroline Picard was cited for displaying a sign without the proper permit. For years a sandwich board sign sat on the Milwaukee Avenue sidewalk, in Wicker Park, right outside the gallery’s entrance. Picard said the sign lured a good number of visitors to the space, which hosts exhibition openings, performances, readings and, until recently, held regular open hours. The standard hours can no longer be maintained since, after citing Picard for the sign, the city official inquired about the gallery’s business license. Green Lantern is established as a not-for-profit, but no license was ever acquired. Picard paid the $440 fine, which she ceded was fair since the space is partially commercially zoned, but attempts to resolve the license issue at city hall have proved complex and frustrating. This may be in part to Green Lantern’s mission as an alternative art space, which is difficult to properly classify. With its neighbors in the Flat Iron Arts Building, the Green Lantern is one of the last vestiges of a formerly robust arts district in Wicker Park. For now, events must be deemed “private,” but visitors can expect an attendant on hand to open the door during what used to be the open hours. Best to call first, though.

Matthew Paul Jinks currently shows at Green Lantern, 1511 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd floor, through March 13.

Not For Sale

Would it be strange to encounter art listed NFS (not for sale) in a commercial gallery? This label is sometimes applied to an artwork that an artist simply cannot part with, but gallerist Rowley Kennerk instead uses NFS as a keen strategy. Currently his eponymous gallery is exhibiting two paintings from private collections alongside two paintings available for purchase. Kennerk’s strategy, which he employs often, pairs well-known artists with emerging artists, and the result seems more like a curated exhibition than a gallery show. Exhibiting well-known work by important artists establishes and maintains credibility, says Kennerk, for both the younger artists and the gallery itself. “The gallery is not simply a showroom of goods, but a space in which assertions about culture are made,” says Kennerk idealistically. Currently, a work by Llyn Foulkes, born in 1934, who’s had large retrospective exhibitions, and a painting by Enrico Baj, an Italian of Foulkes’ same generation, are hung with paintings by gallery artists Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and Malthias Dornfeld. The good company certainly lends a boost to their resumes, and the private collection loans round out a theme on contemporary portraiture.

Of course, cultural value and monetary value go hand in hand. Recently The Art Newspaper pointed a finger at the Rose Art Museum for lending a Willem de Kooning painting to a commercial venue, Haunch of Venison in New York. The museum’s director defended the loan with an editorial in a later issue, justifying the intellectual completeness of the gallery’s exhibition. Woefully, the museum’s board has since decided to sell the museum’s entire collection, a move that was not anticipated at the time of the loan, but sheds an indecorous light on the de Kooning, which now may or may not be inflated in value due to the excellent company it kept in the New York show.

“Portraits” shows through March 21 at Rowley Kennerk Gallery, 119 N. Peoria St.

The More the Merrier

If the art market is drowning, then perhaps now is the perfect time to trot out smaller, more affordable works. Prints and other small edition works can often pack as much punch as a major sculpture or painting. Several galleries in Chicago are taking advantage of collectors’ shrinking budgets for art and, with the influx of print lovers for the upcoming Southern Graphics Council conference, are putting on large shows of small works. Dan Devening released a new series of multiples, his third such collection. More than eighty editions are on view in “Max Multiple,” from editions of three to 100, ranging from $1 to $3,000. There are some gems here. New Catalogue prints pair famous Minimalist sculpture with designed objects such as the slinky and the parking cone. Adam Pendleton screenprints on mirrored steel. You can grab a bumper sticker conceived by Philip von Zweck for $5 (“Honk if you love silence”) or a poster for $1 by Jason Pickelman. There’s also some sculpture in the shape of functional objects, such as Cody Hudson’s vases and Im Schafer’s porcelain cups—at least that’s what they may be. For good measure Devening exhibits some works from his collection, including selections from the En/Of series, where an artist designs LP liner notes and album cover for a musician.

“Max Multiple” shows through April 1 at Devening Projects + Editions, 3039 W. Carroll.

The year 1950 saw India signing into effect a new constitution, officially marking the nation as a republic free from British rule. One year later, Ealing Studios, England’s oldest film-production company, released the film “The Man in the White Suit,” a satire starring Alec Guinness as a befuddled, good-natured scientist whose invention of a glowing white fabric that cannot deteriorate or stain is meant as an altruistic gesture towards the common man. Yet, the material threatens to undo the entire textile industry and is instead met with hostility and alarm, particularly by labor unions.

India’s independence and the release of the film, two events (one historic and the other quite banal) at first seem mutually exclusive. Yet, for English artist Mathew Paul Jinks, who generations later now works and lives in Chicago, there is something of a post-colonial parable betwixt the two—particularly considering that India is today one of the greatest exporters of textiles, an industry employing millions and millions of people, and fraught with tricky, trans-national power relations.

For Jinks’ serene, thirteen-minute film project “The Queen’s Tailor,” on view now at Green Lantern Gallery, the artist has loosely cast himself as the Alec Guinness character getting a suit made by two Indian men—one man (Parveer Singh) is a Sikh in real life.

This is certainly not a literal reinterpretation of “The Man in the White Suit.” Instead told through a series of pensive, meditative vignettes that stream between physical and metaphysical moments, “The Queen’s Tailor” presents a very ordinary but complex set of questions for today’s global day and age: Does the production of this item (the white suit) participate within a colonialist structure? Or, has reconciliation somehow been reached, making this okay? Or, is it just overly PC to really worry about any of it?

Jinks doesn’t pretend to know the answer. “The piece considers what it means for this group of people, myself included, to pass through this ‘third space’ here in America, forming a strange kinship while together re-enacting a kind of colonialist relationship,” says Jinks, borrowing a term from theorist Homi K. Bhabha, excerpts from whose book “The Location of Culture” repeat throughout the film.

A subtle cross-cultural glimpse at the play between appearance, gentlemanliness, nation and custom is also at work in “The Queen’s Tailor,” particularly as we watch Jinks receive a haircut in the presence of Singh (the Sikh), whose turban covers hair kept long for religious reasons.

“The push and pull of these uncomfortable moments may be a bit naughty,” says Jinks, who frequently appears as a figure within his own work, “but it is through enacting these moments that perhaps a new kind of understanding can be formed.” (Danny Orendorff)

Through March 13 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee, second floor. By appointment.

RECOMMENDED

If you don’t already know how to check your tits and/or balls for cancerous lumps, you can learn everything you need from Shannon Gerard’s installation currently on view at Green Lantern Gallery. Despite their purported educational value, Gerard’s screen-printed illustrations work best as comedy rather than straightforward instructional material.

Jennifer Wilkey’s photographs of knitted and embroidered objects in hospital settings combine the warmth of handicraft with the sterility of medical institutions. The objects themselves, such as a doctor’s mask embellished with embroidered microorganisms, or cups of pill capsules stuffed with green fabric, seem more at home in staged photographs than on display in the gallery.

Clare Britt and Derek Haverland address consumer culture in conjunction with pathological illness. Haverland’s installation of stacks of stark white credit cards, reminiscent of pristine medical settings, recalls economic issues surrounding healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. In a similar vein, Britt’s wall collage of found images from fashion magazines only relates to illness in the context of this exhibition. A swirling black mass of Fendi and Versace labels, shoes, jewelry, and sunglasses, brings to mind a tumorous growth or a magnified pathogen, as well as consumerism as a kind of sickness. (Jamie Keesling)

Through February 7 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee, 2nd floor.

RECOMMENDED

The work of Kari Percival and Greg Cook, both Boston-based artists, couldn’t be more different in terms of concept and form. Illustrator and puppet-maker Percival explores the earthy delights of the natural world in her brightly colored woodcuts. “Free Swim,” which details a beaver swimming on its side, reminds us of animals’ symbiotic relationship with the out-of-doors. Percival’s forest-greens pop with lush fecundity, urging us to become more in tune with our natural surroundings as well as our primal urgings, such as moving one’s body without restraint. The map of the world made out of felt, spread out in circles on the floor, and Chicago’s latitude—composed of dangling fuzzy yarn balls—strikes a less interesting note. Bits of stone on the map scrawled with messages like “hunger moon” and “deer loose antlers” may appear more comprehensible to the artist than audience. In sharp contrast to this romp with God’s creatures and planet Earth, Greg Cook paints a compelling picture of humankind’s “despicable” nature. Cook implements American history to shows us an interrelation between early American settlers’ obsession with “victory” and present day horrors of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Cook’s phallic missile made out of bed sheets alarmingly addresses a sexual lust for war, reinforced by a banner of pilgrims cutting down the “savages” (Native Americans) with machetes. A black-and-white cartoon strip depicting dehumanizing torture of prisoners at Gitmo drives home the message that our indigent treatment of others says much about our culture.  Cook demonstrates that “defeating the enemy” is a disguise for genocide, greed and oppression. (Marla Seidell)

Through October 4 at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee, second floor