RECOMMENDED

Always possessed of a sensibility directed towards decay, disorder and ultimately death, Laura Letinsky has at last reached the limit in her latest series of tabletop color still-life photographs, which take the leap into the abyss of memento mori. Shot at dusk, when French folk wisdom has it that dogs transform into feral wolves, Letinsky’s shadowed images serve up surfaces scattered with the detritus of life, as when we are treated to an array that includes a gruesome dead bird, cigarette butts, a fragment of an orange peel, a plastic candy wrapper, and some black globules of uncertain origin—all placed on an oblong piece of sadly wrinkled paper. Proof that Letinsky has come a long way down the highway to hell hangs in the gallery’s back room, where an earlier study of a kitchen table counter, replete with a dirty beaker, soiled butter knives, a folded sponge, and a wilting plant was shot in the morning and still carries the promise of a return to neatness and intelligibility. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 13 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 2154 W. Division

RECOMMENDED

The signs of these times seem to be predominantly distress signals. At Monique Meloche Gallery’s new location in Wicker Park, six artists from various regions of the United States of America weigh in to qualify recession blues in two and three dimensions. Let’s start in the middle, De Moines, where Michael Patterson-Carver renders average Americans voicing now ubiquitous concerns. A place where Boteroesque Iowans gather in watercolor to lobby for healthcare and employment may also be a place ripe with vacant commercial real estate.

Kim Beck dominates the façade of the Division Street location, with monumental signage simply soliciting space. Part of an ongoing project, “Everything Must Go,” is comprised of hand-drawn signage announcing liquidation. Beck turns the lens to the employees pronouncing impending vacancies, affirming that the work is intended to speak to “the more personal repercussions of the economic collapse.” Carrie Schneider seems equally entranced by the ghosts of retail past. “Recession,” the inspiration for “Sign of the Times,” is a self-portrait of the artist as exasperated consumer doing some recession-style window shopping, her torso flaccid, gracing the surface of an empty storefront. (In December, Schneider will address the MCA 12×12 space with “Slowdance,” a short film made in Helsinki.) Read the rest of this entry »

Helen Maurene Cooper, in the exhibition Faking It?

As digital cameras and their cell-phone-affixed counterparts continue to grow in ubiquity and facility, and as more and more people use these devices to transmit daily personal updates, in the form of pictures of themselves and their activities to personal Web-based facades like Flickr and Facebook, a new technologically informed obsession with personhood—either one’s own or someone else’s—dubbed “egocasting” by cultural critic Christine Rosen, has taken hold in our culture. It resonates particularly well with the young, overly self-aware members of society. An apt art theorist should remain attentive for signs of this new phenomena reemerging in the work of young contemporary artists; the lay art theorist may claim that portraiture is, by now, a pervasive and eternal tendency.

The Co-Prosperity Sphere, Bridgeport’s hip and somewhat secluded multi-purpose alt-space, recently hosted nine artists in an exclusively portrait-based exhibition titled “Transplant Reflect.” The work is unusually divided between two different approaches: technically refined photography and Pop-surrealist street art. Anna Shteynshleyger updates Man Ray’s photograms using the camera-less photographic process to capture images of individual hairstyles, suggesting that an entire personality may be reduced to the shape of a haircut.  At a moment when self-design has become the norm and conformity is unequivocally shunned, we are perhaps nothing more than our outward appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tacky as it often is, the American rural road descends into downright sleaze when Joel Ross arrives under the cover of night, plants one of his outrageous signs at the side, and shoots his handiwork in garish color. Subtlety is not Ross’ strong suit; his penchant is to take red-state cultural quirks beyond their already elastic limits, sending them up and revealing the repressed expressions lying just beneath the surface. Would we really be shocked and veer off the highway if our headlights happened to fix on a placard reading, “And then Jesus said: Shut the Fuck Up”? More likely, we would be prompted to drive on a ways and take the next right after glimpsing the tempting sign inviting us to visit the “Unisex
Bordello.” After we had finished pleasuring ourselves, we would surely continue our trip and follow the polka-dot arrow to the land of “False Promises.” (Michael Weinstein)

Through June 13 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 118 N. Peoria

RECOMMENDED

Justin Cooper’s varied (and usually collaborative) performances provide context for the objects in “Paranormaldise” at Monique Meloche. Several sculptures congregate in the main room while the back room houses a video titled “Studio Visit” surrounded by drawings. Shown sped up, the video captures the endeavors of a wild intruder in Cooper’s studio. The visitor attempts to draw a still life of oranges and apples, and when unsuccessful, proceeds to trash the studio in a fit of rage. The trope of the sped-up video illustrates Cooper’s performances, which tend toward the comedic, the libidinal and the chaotic. While the playful drawings are tenuously related to the video, they find their fullest expression in the sculptures.

In “First wet dream,” Cooper balances a wheelbarrow vertically by one handle atop a conch shell, a rare moment of perpetual stillness in the maelstrom of folding chairs atop loops of garden hose, or the large steel armatures of “Giant Leis” covered in plastic ruffles. Cooper’s sculptures oscillate between the residential aesthetics of the hardware store and the party store. For instance, a prefabricated paper palm tree titled “Exhausted” rises out of its pot only to droop quickly and lay flaccid on the ground. “Exhausted” is an image of the insufficiency of cheap entertainment made with disposable, single-use decorations. Cooper’s engaging work feels as seedy and discontented as an office party luau but suffers slightly from the absence of the enlivening presence of Cooper himself. (Dan Gunn)

Through March 14 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 118 N. Peoria.

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

Carrie Schneider, "WE (Baltic Version)," 2008

RECOMMENDED

In a photographic journey to the center of her mind, performance self-portraitist Carrie Schneider ventures into her own patch of territory, which is the ironic and a bit kinky scrubland adjacent to the enchanted new-age forest. Posing in profile in deep color with a headdress made of foliated tree branches entangling itself over her torso and a sly seductive smile crossing her lips, Schneider is no earth-mother nature goddess; she is the girl you go to on the far side of town when mama’s attentions and smothering discipline have lost their luster. Of course, Schneider can be anything from a damsel fully shrouded in a burka-like zebra-striped body suit, wading in a river; or a proud princess who has exchanged tree branches for a bark-like haughty hat, and has abandoned seduction for imperious menace—she knows all the tricks. (Michael Weinstein)

Through December 6 at Monique Meloche, 118 N. Peoria, (312)455-0299.

RECOMMENDED

In the 2001 show that launched his career, curator Thelma Golden defined the work of Chicago artist Rashid Johnson as “postblack,” a style that supposedly aligns race, racism and the rejection of their implications. A paradox, to be sure, but if his latest exhibit is any indication Johnson seems to have mastered the concept with humor and gusto. In “The New Escapist Promised Land Garden and Recreation Center,” his site-specific, third solo show at Monique Meloche gallery, Johnson transforms the gallery into a wood-paneled lounge, bedecked with spray paint, palm fronds and bamboo chairs. Johnson refers to his installation as a “creolized orgy,” and the South-Side-meets-Gold-Coast concept is laid on thick. This does not, however, detract from the sheer aesthetic marvelry of his work, especially the jarringly large “Self-portrait as the black Jimmy Connors in the finals of the New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club Summer Tennis Tournament.” The 60×48-inch lambda print looms over his faux living rooms, showcasing the artist in full tennis regalia, surrounded by foliage and being blasted with a jungle-like mist. The knife-twisting irony of a black man as a white prepster is painfully akin to work in his previous shows, which have featured works such as “The Brother with Knowledge of Other Planets,” a simple close-up portrait of an otherwise anonymous black man. Exhausting though his race-charged themes may be, they are ones that have proven successful in the past and do not fail here. Enigmatic, vibrant and just plain fun, “The New Escapist Promised Land Garden and Recreation Center” is one center worth visiting. (Jaime Calder)

Through October 11 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 118 N. Peoria

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)

RECOMMENDED

As a whole, “Boys of Summer” presents a case study on the emotionally inhibited psyche of the American male. Zane Lewis’s acrylic cutout of a smiling Obama pushes forward an important question: is this a man or the caricature of a fantasy? In two digital prints, Nick Cave exhibits himself, his face hidden by an ornately decorated ski mask that appears both ominous and tribal at the same time. He appears an exotic, dangerous animal, suggesting how African-American men utilize disguise in order to gain access to respect and recognition. Cave and Obama are different sides of the same coin, reflecting limited avenues of selfhood. Assertions about white men are equally compelling. Joel Ross’ somber portraits of American serial killers reveal a less than cheerful aspect of a repressed culture. James Gobel’s sad and eerie portraits of the gay teddy-bear man in kitsch cowboy garb illustrate how loneliness and the pursuit of a stereotype are symbiotically intertwined. The most expressive and captivating piece is Danish artist Jesper Julst’s two-minute DVCAM installation, “No Man is an Island.” A portly, balding, middle-aged man joyously dances in a town square, amidst disaffected teenagers, while Julst watches on, his face streaked with happy tears. This attempt to free men from Dionysian restraint is both liberating and lighthearted; yet it offers a solution. Julst addresses a universal male need for a healthy outlet, as well as hope for the possibility of one. Dancing in the square to a waltz is not as impractical as it sounds. (Marla Seidell)

Through August 2 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 118 N. Peoria.