Ninna Berger, "Venus in Clothes," 2010

RECOMMENDED

Do you remember “USA for Africa”? What about “We Are the World”—those well-intended expressions of the otherwise non-existent Reagan-era social conscience? (Okay, we shouldn’t forget “Hands Across America”). In 1985, composer Quincy Jones, along with stars Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, enlisted the help of dozens of (then popular) recording industry superstars, forming a megalo-group called USA for Africa.  They cut a chart-topping, best-selling single, the results of which—a few million dollars of food-aid—was literally dropped into Africa. In full disclosure, this author was prenatal at the time, and thankfully born to parents in Minnesota, and not Mogadishu.

Nearly twenty-five years after the original release of “We Are the World,” a young generation of artistic talent has decided to unite around the glib spirit of this bygone phenomenon with a similar (modest) proposal of their own, in “We Are the World,” at Roots & Culture Gallery. In truth, the group of artists, hailing from places as diverse as Oslo, San Francisco and Chicago, configure themselves around the title of the eighties charity single in name only, taking from it what they will, and ultimately relating to the “We Are the World” phenomenon as the mutual beginning of their collectively lived-experiences. In fact, the entire show is essentially a subtle rumination on the paradoxical conflation of collective and subjective experience endemic to this generation, resulting from its complete and total immersion in post-industrial societies in which consumerism proliferates as a (nearly) unquestionable doctrine. Read the rest of this entry »

Edra Soto, "Light Within The Dark," 2009.

RECOMMENDED

Brian McNearny and Edra Soto’s two-person show, “Forever Vegetal,” treats the themes of birth and death with mythological import. On the birth side, McNearny’s “Bog” is the place where life begins—in a thick, heavily textured oil painting. The primordial Dagobah sends forth the figure of “Glob,” the vaguely mutant form surfaced from oil paint on a found desert-camo-looking banner, giving the work a vaguely sci-fi militaristic tinge.

Edra Soto’s explorations are more geared toward the end than the beginning, though “forever” could probably nest in either camp. Stuffed animals covered in shit-like sod occupy the floor of a too-dark gallery, parked around an illuminated square—think Billie Jean. The light is certainly transcendent, and the animals are appropriately reverent, despite their recent unearthing. The question remains which way the light will take whatever beleaguered soul decides to step on, up or down? In the same corner lives “Light Within the Dark,” where baby Jesus rests upon a charcoal mountain range like Christ the Redeemer surveys a sinning Rio. Tucked behind the miniature range are a string of Christmas lights, the light most directly behind the Jesus figure blinking like a beckoning landing beacon. Crash ye planes unto me, the tot says, in the ultimate come-to-Jesus moment. Merry Christmas. (Erik Wennermark)

Through January 16 at Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, 1034 North Milwaukee Avenue

Rob Doran

The West Town gallery Roots & Culture has shown a wide variety of work over the last three years, but, as with most good independent spaces, there’s a house style. It is a recognizable look, the folksy RISD-style psychedelic expressionism promulgated in the wider culture by macramé owls with twig antlers and Day-Glo silk-screen posters with misspelled words arranged on mountains made of diamond shapes. As we reach the turn of the next decade, this faux-primitive handmade aesthetic has, on the one hand, consolidated into a formal surface of ready signifiers that can be freely manipulated like beats and samples and, on the other, deepened into a legitimate if intuitive conceptual approach.

This former aesthetic hedonism teeters on the boundary of self-awareness and pure shamanic design in the works of Rob Doran, now on display. Hot colors in gradient discs sit amidst thick and muddy zigzag brushstrokes. There are, in fact, twigs, mountains, diamond shapes and misspelled words, both handwritten and printed, not to mention dirty white backgrounds and handmade frames. The moment of self-awareness for me comes with a small outsider-esque sculpture sitting on a found plank, in which a braided white snake peers up at the viewer through a miniature wild-haired African mask, flouting the last forty-odd years of scathing critique directed at Picasso-style colonial appropriation. If we are in a truly post-colonial (if not post-racial) universe, then these pieces deliver evocative atavism with breezy aplomb. If we are not, then there’s more of a kick here, though it might be directed at Doran rather than (or as well as) from him. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Ryan Duggan, Alex Valentine and Carrie Vinarsky share many bonds as members of a young generation of printers and poster makers carving out a highly visible place for themselves through their promotion of Chicago’s cultural landscape, but bonds in one case become restraints in another as the three shift to a purely artistic mode of practice with the opening of “My News is Bad News,” on display at Roots & Culture. The title denotes a rumination upon—you guessed it—the sour state of affairs in the global financial world and its permeating effects upon the rest of us; but reading the work as well becomes an unhappy affair, as what initially appears enticing and satisfactory falls short of its conceptual aspirations and flounders when divorced from its functional context as graphic or poster art. Read the rest of this entry »

Vincent Dermody, "Chicago Style"

By Jason Foumberg

The Hyde Park Art Center has long positioned itself as a booster for a Chicago Style. In the 1960s the Center hosted the legendary “Hairy Who?” exhibitions and now, seventy years after opening its doors, they’re at it again by defining a moment in the city’s artistic history with the exhibition “Artists Run Chicago.” This huge group show, with ninety artists and about 150 objects, doesn’t promote a single stylistic lineage (like the Imagists or Hairy Who), but rather celebrates the act of participation. Curators Allison Peters Quinn and Britton Bertran have selected thirty-six artist-operated “spaces,” or exhibition venues, and collected them in a single, but very large, gallery. All of the spaces, many now closed, have existed in some form (some for-profit and others not, some nomadic, one inside a bathroom medicine cabinet) in the past ten years. This was one criterion for inclusion, which illuminates a thick decade of art history in Chicago. The most important organizing principal, though, is that each space was initiated by an artist, for artists.

At artist-run venues, the airless white-cube ideal is not always upheld. Often you find yourself in somebody’s front room, or hanging out on their balcony, or sitting on their couch watching video art on their television monitor while a cat rubs its face on your leg. Often the show is open for a single night, as normal business hours are not kept. Sometimes there are children, a DJ, beer bongs, a dank moldy smell, a long flight of stairs, and stubble in the sink from the proprietor’s recent shave before the opening. Often this context cannot be divorced from the art in the artist-run space. Read the rest of this entry »

Sabine Gruffat’s video art and Vanesa Zendejas’ drawings/collages couldn’t be less similar, and experiencing the two together at Roots & Culture is less thought-provoking than incoherent. Gruffat’s work is much stronger and more provocative, suggesting an obsession with media theory in the Marshall McLuhan tradition of media as extensions of ourselves. Gruffat plays with the concept of electronic language and signaling through an interactive video game across several television screens, complete with joystick, that has the interactivity of a video game—when you press various buttons the lines and patterns on the TVs, like analog signals or hospital monitoring machines, change configuration and the pitch of an electronic drone changes—without any of the content. Her “Black Oval White” presents a chaotic montage of video interference, integrating live-rendered computer animation, from which the viewer discovers and creates patterns and shapes. Read the rest of this entry »

Compiled by Jason Foumberg

I asked art fair participants and insiders to make predictions for this year’s fair. At turns grim and hopeful, the responses present a slice of Chicago’s varied interests.

Brian Sholis, Art Critic: I suspect this year’s fair will be a cake of apprehension and worry frosted with taut smiles and outward expressions of hope.

Britton Bertran, Curator and Dealer: Commodity expectations are at their lowest and artists will do whatever they can to be heard in the loudest possible way. But what might be more interesting is when galleries and other enablers (non-artists) start to rear their own heads in protest and anger without repercussions from their own enablers (those that run these fairs). But what are they protesting against?

Carl Baratta, Artist: Everything will be at least competent except the free drinks. They will be perfect. Read the rest of this entry »

Michelle Bolinger, "Untitled (second)." Oil, graphite & colored pencil on paper

RECOMMENDED

“Suspend” focuses on the work of five contemporary female painters working in various modes of deconstruction: from flat surfaces and geometric patterning to painterly landscapes and aggressive gestures. That the work is not immediately “feminine” is to its credit—it holds up as a legitimate counterpoint to all-boys shows, like the one currently at neighbor 65 Grand, without expressionistic angst or self-conscious posturing.

Michelle Bolinger’s creamy built-up canvases with passages of stippled impasto are the most developed paintings in the show. The inclusion of “I’ve been through the desert (second)” with “The Frontier” is an excellent opportunity to compare the effects of her multimedia (oil, graphite and colored pencil) technique on both paper and canvas.  “Frontier” has a dawn snow-like, aurora borealis luminosity that every Chicagoan will easily identify. Clare Gill’s paintings are almost representational, and though flames in “Smoke Signals” are admirably burnished and fiery, there is an awkward patchwork-effect in the others that suggests an internal dissatisfaction with a singular style or manner. Aliza Morell seems more settled with a series of paintings that could be about light and space, but are equally plausible ‘80s disco quilting patterns. Although this variety fuels the show’s interest, there is a remarkable coherency to the selection of paintings, a testament to the power of good editing. Also showing Stacie Johnson and Kimberly Towbridge. (Rachel Furnari)

Through February 14 at Roots & Culture, 1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Isak Applin’s exhibit “Six More Miles” presents a case study on the life and times of an assemblage of various hipster types. “5000” stands as a quasi-example of “The Potato Eaters” of our time; a bunch of beard-sporting, flannel-wearing guys alongside women bearing equally expressionless faces bears a striking resemblance to the emptiness and futility of Van Gogh’s overworked and poverty-stricken subjects. Only in this case, the subjects are not poor, but soul-deprived. “Geno D’s” exhibits disaffected youth once again with relish, suggesting that music is the modern-day God of youth, with the girl standing on stage pulling up her top for the audience’s benefit—a fitting example of a generation in search of connection. Like co-exhibitor Ben Seamons, whose egg and tree-stump forms tug at some sort of pagan symbolism, Applin’s saving grace is his use of color. The unbridled pastels bespeak a dewy dreaminess perfect for reverie. (Marla Seidell)

Through October 17 at Roots & Culture, 1034 N. Milwaukee.

RECOMMENDED

Walking into Roots & Culture on an off day is always a treat. Two welcoming tiger-striped cats play fought on the wooden floor underneath the paintings and it was good to be inside out of the weather. Above the cats hung works by Carmen Price and Kristen VanDeventer. Price presented delicate gouache paintings of slightly folksy figures. Usually hovering in space as a tableau, the figures engage in a group activity, as in “Honing In.” Here a line of men carry an array of weaponry such as Uzis, axes and torches in search of something, like a mob on a witch-hunt. Price’s quirky imagery is never so vague as to be indecipherable but also never so clear as to be too literal. VanDeventer’s modestly scaled oil paintings feature strangely figured elements and bright color choices. When in her element, VanDeventer’s vision cranks out poetic works like “Sunset Eyes” and “Horizon” in which a darkly silhouetted figure stares off the canvas with its diminutive yellow pupils. Unfortunately some others don’t live up to that standard and don’t make sense within the context of the show. “Feral Children” suffers from a lack of coherence but its successes make it worth a look, especially on a lazy Chicago afternoon. (Dan Gunn)

Through May 17 at Roots & Culture, 1034 N. Milwaukee.