RECOMMENDED

Duncan Anderson’s newest exhibition at Kasia Kay Art Projects, a continuation of his miniature sculptural tableaus and fantastical figurines, is fascinating in its meticulous storytelling. Anderson toys with train-set men and dollhouse furniture, creating architectural-style models of strange worlds and fantasy narratives. The titles invoke mysterious stories of tiny, mundane heroes and heroines. An amputee octopus with little-girl legs clutches a harp on the first day of school. A policeman and his dog are locked in a face-off with another officer, trapped in a desolate landscape.

Resting on mismatched shelves, columns and pedestals, Anderson’s characters huddle together in the small gallery space like a forgotten back room of Grecian statuary. Yet, instead of marble, the common materials are cheap plastic and gift-shop souvenir porcelain. Working on such a miniature scale allows for a play between the charming and the strange, but the crushed velvet and tacky painted surfaces are slightly repulsive. The size, as it draws one closer, begs for a kind of craftsmanship that is lost beneath a plastic pallor.

Within the individual sculptures lie arresting juxtapositions of familiar and alien worlds. However, viewed as a whole, the exhibit is less coherent because the range in the sizes of the characters is wildly varied. Anderson’s experiment—and his problem—is scale.  (Julia V. Hendrickson)

Through March 20 at Kasia Kay Art Projects, 215 N. Aberdeen St.

Top 5 Exhibitions

Anne Wilson, Rhona Hoffman Gallery

Watercolors by Winslow Homer, Art Institute of Chicago

“Adaptation,” Smart Museum

Chuck Walker, Hyde Park Art Center

Mark Wagner, Western Exhibitions

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Art Shows

Jenny Holzer, “Protect, Protect,” Museum of Contemporary Art

Edra Soto, “The Soto-Chacon Show,” Rowland Contemporary Gallery

Alan Lerner, Art on Armitage

“Made in Chicago: Portraits form the Bank of America,” LaSalle Collection/Chicago Cultural Center

“Benin—Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria,” Art Institute of Chicago

—Marla Seidell

Top Five Photography Shows

Delilah Montoya, La Llorona Gallery

Jowhara Alsaud, Schneider Gallery

Frederic Chaubin, Chicago Architecture Foundation

Jill Frank, Golden Gallery

Carla Gannis, Kasia Kay Art Projects

—Michael Weinstein

Top 5 Museum Shows

“The Smart Home: Green + Wired,” Museum of Science and Industry

“Chic Chicago,” Chicago History Museum

“The Glass Experience,” Museum of Science and Industry

“Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam War,” DuSable Museum

“Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters,” Field Museum

—Laura Hawbaker

Top 5 Museum Shows

Edward Hopper, Art Institute

“Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others,” Spertus Museum

“Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light,” Art Institute

“Earth From Space,” Museum of Science and Industry

“Benin—Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria,” Art Institute

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Freshest Art Spaces

Swimming Pool Project Space

Old Gold

Hyde Park Art Center

65 Grand

No Coast

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Art Spaces We’ll Miss

Alfedena

Gescheidle

Garden Fresh

Contemporary Art Workshop

32nd & Urban

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Contemporary Art Exhibitions about Nature

“Biological Agents” at Gallery 400

Lora Fosberg at Linda Warren Gallery

“The Leaf and the Page,” Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery

“Future Farmers,” Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

Claire Sherman, Kavi Gupta Gallery

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Art Exhibitions About Food

Maria Tomasula, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery

“Portraying Food in Contemporary Chinese Art,” Walsh Gallery

“Sugarcraft,” Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery

Pamela Michelle Johnson, Urbanest

Isabelle du Toit, Byron Roche Gallery

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Feminist Art Exhibitions

“Ladylike,” Gosia Koscielak Gallery

“Henbane: Dialectics of the Feminine Sublime,” Medicine Park

“Are We There Yet? 40 Years of Feminism,” ARC Gallery

Amelia Falk, ARC Gallery

“A Minyan Without Men,” Woman Made Gallery

—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Exhibitions/Events at Alt-Art Spaces

“Tomorrow,” Vega Estates

“The Baby,” Knock Knock Gallery

“Pere Portabella’s Masterpiece Vampir-Cuadecuc,” White Light Cinema

Sumi Ink Club and Lucky Dragons, Golden Age

“Zummer Tapez: Jim Trainor,” Roots and Culture

 —Tim Ridlen

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

Intrigued by Jezebel in all her manifestations—from biblical seductress inviting hapless men to sin, to a victim, rebel or healthy assertive woman in feminist narratives—Carla Gannis embeds her photographic heroine in color scenarios that she creates in the computer. Always dressed in red and black, and represented by several subjects, including herself, Gannis’ Jezebel can be found dead in an alley covered by a red cape with a priest, a cop, a businessman and a pants-suited woman standing over her indifferently with closed eyes; sitting on a table in bikini underwear with her legs wide open, with a black-and-white image of her on a television screen off to the side; firmly holding a candelabra astride a white horse in the gothic wastes; and in a hospital recovery room after breast-cancer surgery. Postmodern Jezebel knows no bounds and that is just Gannis’ point. (Michael Weinstein)

Through November 15 at Kasia Kay Art Projects, 1044 W. Fulton Market. (312)492-8828

RECOMMENDED
Visit “Sugarcraft,” the group exhibition of more than fifty international crafters and artists, and you might wonder if you haven’t somehow stumbled into a living Candy Land: a seven-tier table shaped like a giant pink cake festooned with crocheted Oreos, felt doughnuts and a box labeled “Recipes for Love” greets you at the door. Nikki Renee Anderson’s confectionary sculptures line the wall, followed by the large-scale embroideries of Connie Richards, theoretically wholesome creations that heighten the overwhelming sweetness of the exhibit. “Sugarcraft” borders on saccharine, however, its underlying bite—the twistedly lurid, erotic candy coating dripping from Anderson’s sculptures; the sexually charged silhouettes of apron-clad housewives found in Richards’ stitchery—infuses the show with a playful sardonicism far richer than the cream and sugar that coat a number of the pieces. Curator Wynter Whiteside deftly melds together a myriad of sugar-themed creations, with pieces ranging from works made of actual sugar (with both edible and non-edible end products) to those that, in tapping the DIY vein, turn the craft works/femme trope on its ear. “Sugarcraft” provides viewers with a broad range of choices, not only in themes and media, but in consumption as well: working with My Paper Crane, Whiteside creates an in-house mini-shop of small and affordable works created by a number of the artists in the show. Though frivolous and thoroughly sweet, “Sugarcraft” is surprisingly meaty, creating an indulgent experience too good to pass up. (Jaime Calder)

Through August 9 at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery, 1044 W. Fulton Market, (312)492-8828.

RECOMMENDED

“I’m telling a serious thing by way of joking,” writes Chinese color-scenario photographer Maleonn. The humor is obvious in Maleonn’s “Days on the Cotton Candy” series in which the sticky billowy white stuff—actually a simulation of it—blows all over and settles down in clumps in a kitsch-cluttered bathroom presided over by young housekeeping lasses who contemplate their handiwork, including a fine-spun man doll with a prominent phallus that one of them embraces, with varying degrees of irritation and admiration. It is far more difficult to determine what, if any, serious purpose lies behind Maleonn’s depictions of his staged messes, although he dedicates his series to his “life and fantasy,” which it is probably prudent not to explore too deeply. Freud might be interested in a maiden standing in a yellow bathtub, wielding a hand vacuum cleaner out of which pulses a viscous white cloud. (Michael Weinstein)

Through June 21 at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery, 1044 W. Fulton Market, (312)492-8828. 

RECOMMENDED

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice explains in a world of her making, “Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.” Rachel Beach has constructed such a world with her thirteen works in the exhibition “Rachel Beach: Rabbit Hole,” the title a reference to Carroll’s “Wonderland.” In this current exhibition, Beach combines and synthesizes art forms that were largely separate in her previous work. The juxtaposition of placing a painting and a sculpture in conversation with each other in earlier works titled “Pairs” now merge into a singular form in “Rabbit Hole” that is neither fully sculpture, nor fully painting. Extending between two-to-six inches from the wall, the interplay of light on the negative space, the perception of depth created at times by an almost modernized intarsia­—juxtaposing light and dark woods to suggest spatial depth—and the minimal use of rich paint to accent or further the illusion heightens the tension between the effects of surface illusion and the actual and physical three-dimensional forms in space. Beach successfully plays with the viewer’s perception of spatial relationships, depth, illusionism and the traditional roles of specific media to make a new type of art form, like Frank Stella had with his shaped canvases, that both is and isn’t what it seems. (Kate Tierney Powell)

Through Feb 16 at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery, 1044 W. Fulton Market, (312)492-8828.