RECOMMENDED

Jason Lahr’s paintings at Packer Schopf Gallery hang together as an argument and a story. The story is the story of boyhood. The argument parses out which stars in the sky of mass culture correspond to the dots that boys will string together to be boys. Lahr describes his paintings as “a bit like a vulture picking through a mountain of boy scout manuals, cd covers, hunting and fishing magazines, and related miscellany, savoring the tasty bits and creating a tangle of hypertexts among the images, the texts, and the ‘world.’”

The world depicted in the paintings is sparse. He treats each panel like a screen washed with a gradient of two to three colors. There’s a geometric fragment that lends texture to the background. The pattern of these fragments change, calling to mind anything from Josef Albers’s color experiments, to pointillism, to Pop Art, to pixels, to the generational decay of digital images compressed again and again and again. On each panel, a few stars are plucked from that sky of mass culture’s ideas about masculinity: logos and brands and band names. Snippets of atmospheric text refer to some long lost platonic “He” and “She” like Lichtenstein’s elliptical captions but with an intensity that feels like film noir. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Blending formality and informality in her approach to the photographic portrait, Maria Ponce hit upon the conceit of shooting Chicago TV news personalities out of stage dress, yet let them pose as they wished, creating images that hover between promotional headshots and playful snaps. We see all the old and new familiar faces—twenty-six of them, including Maria’s father Phil Ponce (WTTW), Bob Jordan (WGN) and Jay Levine (CBS)—in black-and-white diptychs; all of the subjects appear to be trying to look as hip and cool as they possibly could, according to the ways they interpret those two qualities. The one impression that stands out is that these trained performers will not surrender control over their images, even as they seek to loosen them; they are calculating in their projection of fun. In his star turn, father Ponce closes his eyes, draws in his face, furrows his brow, and purses his lips in feigned intense reflection in the left image; and stares intensely, with head forward and straight closed lips in the one on the right, with only a hint of ironic humor peeping through in either shot. TV never lets you let go all the way. (Michael Weinstein)

Through December 23 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake

"Ask," by Jason Lazarus. A priest forgives sins via text messages.

Everyone knows that a verb is an action word. To paint or to cook, for example. Artistic interpretations thereof are slightly more complex. Is it possible to express “walk” through singing, or exemplify “ask” through texting? Can an action like “invite” be conveyed through a static medium, like a painting? If so, are the unrelated actions tied together? These were some of the questions raised during Industry of the Ordinary’s performance, titled “39 Verbs.”

The Chicago-based art collaborative compiled a list of thirty-nine verbs from the online descriptions of their projects over the past five years. They then invited cultural workers such as artists, curators and critics to create artwork based on the randomly assigned verbs. For one night only, the thirty-nine works, including painting, video, installation and performance, packed into the Packer Schopf Gallery and competed with one another for visitors’ attention, resulting in an over-stimulating environment.

Many pieces invited audience participation, such as Anna Kunz’ Host (esss). Kunz toured the gallery asking participants to wear one of her mixed-media collaged “parasites.” In this way Kunz and the viewers fulfilled host-related roles; Kunz as a hostess bestowing gifts on gallery goers, who in turn become a crowd of hosts. Kunz was personally very pleased with her verb assignment, feeling that it fitted well with her work. Other artists had more difficulty with their assigned verbs.

Jeanne Dunning was first disappointed when she received “Solicit.” It was only through verbalizing her frustration to others that she came up with her concept for her piece. Dunning found that she, as well as the majority of her acquaintances, associated the verb with prostitution. Dunning chose to embrace the association, and solicited sex workers to attend the event and interact with gallery goers in “whatever way made sense to them.” The viewers, informed about the sex workers’ presence without specific introductions, couldn’t help but make their own assumptions about fellow gallery goers. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Addicted for a good while to placing girls’ and dolls’ clothing and accessories on photo-sensitive paper and coming up with glowing and pristine black-and-white negative impressions of her subjects, Karen Savage now has taken the step of scanning the little dresses and blouses directly into the computer and producing color images of the garb that exude a new sensibility of worn and faded childhood memories. Poignant and piquant, rather than fantastical, Savage’s scanned studies awaken flashbacks of going through old and forgotten garments stowed in boxes in the attic or the backs of closets, as when we see, in her banner work, a blouse embroidered in aqua patterns that must once have been ironed and shiny white, but is now wrinkled and dappled with blotches of tan, yellow and red—the stained traces of the spills and scrapes of outrageous childhood. (Michael Weinstein)

Through October 10 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake.

RECOMMENDED

For several decades, photographers have been exploring the aesthetic values and virtues of scenes of environmental degradation; now some of them are doing the same with the contemporary battlefield, including Krista Wortendyke. In her brightly colored, graphic and digitally altered photo-collages of the killing fields, Wortendyke serves up great clouds of red, orange and yellow fire filled with shards of black metal, around which aircraft buzz and soar, and beneath which soldiers scurry in the midst of their doom machines. Neither glossy propaganda glorifying boys with their toys, heroism or bracing adventure; nor grim denunciations of willed destruction, Wortendyke’s photo-works are spectacles of grandeur to be contemplated with or without whatever moral judgments viewers happen to bring with them. By placing her scenes in backgrounds of elegantly interrelated rectangles of earth and sky tones, Wortendyke lets us know that she intends to sublimate warfare. (Michael Weinstein)

Through August 15 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake

RECOMMENDED

Brian Dettmer is a biblio-sculptor and literary coroner. His book sculptures condense delicate leaves of a tired lexicon into jaw-dropping, articulate worlds.

Dettmer’s ability to salvage the outmoded and abandoned has achieved a level of meticulous sublimation at his recent show at Packer Schopf Gallery, “Adaptations,” a collection composed mostly of gutted and revived books. The fun, life-sized melted audio-cassette skeleton that greets you at the door is a harbinger of things to come: the books inside have been the victims of an autopsy, cavities gutted, save the most vital organs. A junky old set of encyclopedias is ravaged and reincarnated as handsome pictorial Cliff’s Notes, each picture’s wake carved out smooth as pearls. His scrupulous hand responds to images and texts worth remembering by boiling down subjects, like the aggregate scientist and his cloud of terms in “World Science,” or exposing a once-useful compendium of knowledge in a complex glossary of images, as in the boundless “Full Set of Funk,” a 9 1/2 foot long set of dissected encyclopedias.

Dettmer’s video installation, which animates his process with over 10,000 photos, is hindered only by the technology that makes the viewing possible. When the projector showing the video cut out on a Saturday afternoon, guests rushed to press the button that made it work. Even the modern technology that Dettmer’s work resists cannot dissuade the viewer’s curiosity. (Natalie Edwards)

Through May 9 at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 W. Lake.

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 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

Chicago artist Michael Dinges is interested in networks—economic, cultural, virtual—and how we mediate them. His new work, in “Dead Reckoning” at Packer Schopf Gallery, includes defunct, cover-engraved Mac books and cast brass replicas of navigational devices. Located at the meeting points between the greater world and ourselves, Dinges’ objects vacillate between use, re-use, engagement and disaffection.

Most of Dinges’ pieces involve graphic work on three-dimensional objects, often done by a modern version of the nineteenth-century scrimshaw process. Used by sailors to carve and ink designs directly onto whalebone, Dinges’ version uses white PVC plastic, a drummel tool and black acrylic paint. After beginning the scrimshaw series around 2003 with gallon buckets and PVC piping as canvas, Dinges was looking forward to the day his Mac died, so he could “do the back of it.” But it occurred to him “to try to source some dead ones” instead. “It’s even better,” he explains, “because they’re anonymous… If it could speak, what would it have to say?”

One answer is imagined in “Cabinet of Curiosities.” Here, modes of knowing, acquisition and identity overlap, as the arranged specimens simultaneously order the world and fabricate a statement of connoisseurial character. Dinges wants to draw a parallel with our own computer desktops, marked as they are by collections of files and folders. The organizational impulse of our modern technology may be similar to seventeenth-century curiosity cabinets, but it seems to remove us even further from direct experience (see the contrast of the over-smooth Apple logo with the bristling textures of the insects and starfish beside it).

In another laptop work, “Data Miner,” an octopus’ menacing tentacles bring to mind an online bot-crawler and the potential capturing of personal data. Text around the border ominously reassures us, “the innocent have nothing to fear from the surveillance of desire.” Dinges cites Thomas Nast as among his influences, and there is certainly something of the dead-on punch and punnery here that you find in political cartoons. Much like the scrimshaw and trench art they reference, these works appear at once fussy and democratic, breezily populist and skillfully, obsessively detailed.

The cast brass sundials and sextants do not reuse ubiquitous materials so much as replicate outdated ones. Like their laptop counterparts, the enigmatic text and decorations on their surfaces underline the “deadness” of their purported measuring function. Creating art from the material detritus of our modern world, Dinges asks us what we want our objects to be: are they points of consumption merely? Modes of understanding? At their most successful, Dinges’ objects act as what he calls “freeze points” in the never-ceasing fluctuations of our capitalist, consumerist economy. Shunning waste and exchange, they reclaim material for medium, at however small a scale. (Emily Warner)

Michael Dinges shows at Packer Schopf Gallery, 942 West Lake, through October 11.

RECOMMENDED

“Big Women, Bigger Heads,” painting. The sight of people staring at you can be unnerving, but in Jane Fisher’s show at Packer Schopf the gaze is the draw of the exhibit. One wall of the gallery is lined with portraits of two different men reacting to something we cannot see. The way the man sits within the canvas makes it difficult to pinpoint what is prompting his facial contortions. The expressions are more comical than intriguing, and they do not call for anything more than a casual glance. The series of “bigger heads” seem more like novelty pieces than analytical art pieces. However, the “big women” series is much stronger in context. Each painting on the opposite wall features women posing in full scale and facing the audience. Most of the women are scantily clad but aren’t ashamed of their bodies, the younger women even looking proud or smug of our stares. Their gazes hold more depth than those of the male heads as if they have something to express, and their attitude soars where the men simply contain all the emotion of a driver’s license photo. Despite the difference in messages, Fisher’s technical painting ability is fantastic across the board. The male faces approach realism while retaining a painterly touch. A younger woman’s muscles appear taut while an older woman’s wrinkles contain crevices and shadow. Fisher’s constant talent makes the show worth the visit. (Amy Dittmeier)

Through August 16 at PACKER SCHOPF GALLERY, 942 W. Lake Street, (312)-226-8984.