RECOMMENDED

Mannequins, grocery-store checkout belts, paintings and an assortment of domestic detritus are a few of the items in Cathy Wilkes’ mixed-media installation, “I Give You All My Money,” at the Renaissance Society. Most of these items have undergone some form of decay: ash-covered pierrot mannequins, jars of encrusted baby food, tattered bits of cotton, flower petals and a rusted basket.

The death of a child imbues the overall theme and tone of the exhibition. Macabre traces and remnants of this child—an empty stroller and empty jars of baby food, bowls with baby spoons and a knee-high table that suggests a child’s accessibility—imbue the installation with maternal mourning. Wilkes’ installation, in total, is a still-life arrangement that remarks on the fragility of life. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The impulse to sort and classify William J. O’Brien’s 100 vessels, urns, plates, masks, heads, fragments and geometric constructions in his current exhibition should be suppressed, at least momentarily, for the power of this display is in its collective glut, as a chorus of many shouting, horrible and sick faces and visceral sculptures, raw or glazed, in densely textured and richly colored patinas. After this exhibition, the 100 sculptures will be removed to their respective homes and propped onto shelves or pedestals like the good trophies that they are, but for now, these goblins of taste are presented buffet-style like the feast of some pagan ceremony.

The mostly ceramic sculptures tickle the line between natural-history-museum artifacts and Tiki mug souvenirs, not as a critique of ethnographic cultural consumerism and exoticism but as a way for O’Brien to articulate a spectrum of symbols on the cusp of original feeling and mainstream sentiment, like a parade organized by James Ensor. The crowd of objects expresses a dynamic psychology: there are things buried and prematurely unearthed; there are freshly bundled and hoarded piles of waste; there are plenty of finger-sized orifices. Most importantly, the urns, vessels, heads and totems burn with internal tension, reliquaries of ashen and neutered desire. Like Freud’s tchotchke shelf, some things seem grotesque because they are so familiar. (Jason Foumberg)

Through June 26 at the Renaissance Society, 5811 South Ellis, Cobb Hall 418, University of Chicago, (773)702-8670.

"Esther"

RECOMMENDED

“I want to make work about biography, but I don’t want to talk about myself,” Anna Shteynshleyger explained when asked about the apparent emotional disjunction of the biographical work currently on exhibition at the Renaissance Society. Twenty large photographs (most forty by fifty inches), portraits and landscapes from the series “City of Destiny,” examine the artist’s relationship to the orthodox Jewish community and landscape in which she has grown to be a part.

Spiritual allusions are embedded in each image allowing the photographs to be “read,” in a manner similar to religious allegories. In “Father and Son,” a father holds a sapling while his son is looking out into the woods though a video camera, symbolically “learning” to see the world from his own perspective, he is awaiting the tree that will one day become material for his house.

“Portrait With Mordechai” nods to the biblical story of Esther and Mordechai, with Shteynshleyger herself cast as the pregnant Esther, looking emotionlessly at the camera. Although biographical in nature, her identity seems inseparable from the intricate social and religious web she weaves into the composition of her photographs. Shteynshleyger is not interested in depicting individual experience, but rather a collective, even spiritual engagement

Shteynshleyger’s portraits focus on couples, youths, families and vacant-if-not-abandoned slumbering landscapes that document the vanishing vestige of human presence. The exhibition paints an emotionally alienated world that to outsiders (maybe even more specifically, non-believers) is bound by laws that are difficult to access, but easily assumed to be isolating or oppressive. (Beatrice Smigasiewicz)

Through February 14 at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 5811 South Ellis.

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

Jim Lutes’ mid-career retrospective at the Renaissance Society last winter silenced any doubts regarding the painter’s status as one of Chicago’s preeminent living artists. It also showed that Lutes, after producing exceptional work for over twenty years, is only now—owing to an unexpected encounter with egg tempera—reaching the top of his game and continuing to improve. His latest show at Valerie Carberry stands as further evidence of his ascendant arc. The paintings haven’t changed drastically since the retrospective; instead, they intensify the program he began years ago.

It seems there are two distinct types of paintings on display, the divide epitomizing a contention between figuration and abstraction in Lutes’ work, though neither side wins, as even the most earnest photorealism quickly meanders, almost disappearing, into characteristic ribbon-like flourishes. The seemingly pure abstractions, composed entirely of the ribbons, concentrate, or perhaps coagulate, into concentric masses reminiscent of an overburdened body. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes sound.” This quote from John Cage functions as a starting point and thesis for “Several Silences”; its message can be sensed soon after entering the large, open space of the gallery, which becomes an echo chamber for the steps and mutterings of viewers and the various sound pieces included in the exhibition. Read the rest of this entry »

Lowell Thompson

By Jason Foumberg

A panel discussion was assembled this past Thursday, March 26, to address a perception that artists on Chicago’s South Side are under-known and undervalued or, at worst, intentionally ignored. As a nod to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel “Invisible Man,” the multi-part event, which included the discussion, was titled “Invisible Artist: Creators from Chicago’s Southside,” underscoring a divide that is not merely geographic but also—and mostly—racial.

The “South Side problem” is a micro-argument of the “Chicago-problem,” or second city syndrome, an old topic recently dusted off once again at the University of Chicago for the roundtable “Chicago Artist? Is there such a thing anymore?” in January. In both cases there’s the acknowledgement of a healthy and active art scene followed by its perceived dismissal by a large and vaguely defined power-granting establishment. Unfortunately this can be distilled to the question, Why haven’t “They” made me famous yet? This is unfortunate because it assumes a passive, backseat role to one’s career, which has not been the enduring feeling of the many do-it-yourself art scenes on the South Side and in Chicago alike. In both cases artists have pushed through the various stereotypes (the South Side is violent; Chicago is provincial) to create their own artistic home.
Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

That the arts suffer in an economic recession/depression is reflected by the recent shrinkage of Chicago’s own gallery scene. Undoubtedly this will mean fewer opportunities for everyone involved—fewer places to show and sell art, fewer projects initiated, fewer things for the critic to criticize. With this, a new terminology has entered the fray, drawing upon medical and bodily processes: the slimming down will be good for us—a tonic; like a detox, it will purify the body politic; we’ll have to necessarily trim the fat (presumably only a skeleton is needed to keep a body standing). Now that the system has been flushed, the creatives will have to get creative again, as if the strongest wills require the smallest amount of sustenance.

Haven’t some of the most potent art forms been birthed from the direst means—I’ve heard this spoken so often now—the bohemians, the punks, the starving artist? So much of this seems out of control—out of our control; it’s no wonder that a medical vocabulary comes in handy. It calmly and authoritatively explains a natural process, the biologic function of ruin, the doctor’s orders. The trusty diagnostic manual is scientific, prescriptive and factual. Thus the art market, happiest during periods of unbridled growth, is treated like a rampant disease.
Read the rest of this entry »

Kerry James Marshall, untitled, 2008. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY

By Jason Foumberg

This week I found a very similar image in two different exhibitions. The perspective is from the beach, looking seaward. There, against a cloudy horizon, a large wave breaks dramatically causing a frothy white cloud to rise up. In one image, by Kerry James Marshall, the wave splashes against a bracing figure who stands thigh-deep in the water; in the other image, a promo card for the exhibition “Women Get Fucked,” the wave crashes against a large rock. This image of unbridled nature could variously serve as an inspirational poster or as a romance novel cover, but here they’re positioned to speak about race in one exhibition and gender in another.

Just when you think you’ve shelved the history book on identity politics, chalked it up as a style that climaxed in the 1990s, and after Kara Walker has exorcised her demons, and black art is now post-black, they return and ask to be “reconsidered”—again. Just last April the Renaissance Society rolled out “Black Is, Black Ain’t,” a large group show that explored representations of African American race. One of its strengths was the inclusion of non-black artists, providing a thesis that ‘blackness’ is available to anyone willing to grapple with its history. Today, we have a new exhibition that opens much of the same dialogue. “Across the Divide: Reconsidering the Other” is on view at the Illinois State Museum. Read the rest of this entry »