RECOMMENDED Corbett vs. Dempsey’s latest eccentric exhibition spans forty years of artwork by renowned musician Peter Brotzmann, an improvisational saxophonist and clarinetist. Mr. Brotzmann’s adeptness at jazz improvisation is also seen here in gritty assemblage, coarse oil paintings and darker, more sedate watercolors. Though his artwork is seldom shown Mr. Brotzmann displays a lyrical awareness and sensitivity to materials that evidences a lifetime of work. Noticeably influenced by the Italian movement Arte Povera, the assemblages incorporate common household objects like sponges, cans or newspaper. The carefully gathered materials create a poetic contrast that charges each piece and form a world where a dish sponge can double as a cloud. For example “Window with Bamboo Shade” from 1979 is just that, a deep plaster box with a square hole in the center. Inside of the hole is scrawled a colorful landscape with a tiny bamboo shade to cover the “window.” The surprising effect is that the image emerges from such roughly hewn materials and that it seems so natural at the same time. While Mr. Brotzmann’s work lies safely within well-trod European styles of assemblage, each piece is clearly cared for and the exhibition displays the contented virtue of an artistic life. (Dan Gunn) Through November 30 at Corbett vs. Dempsey, 1120 North Ashland
Complicating the Narrative: A Review of Them at Roots & Culture Featuring a cohesive body of works by Flor, Manal Kara and Caleb Yono, the exhibition is a stunning display of the magic that can happen when fixed ideas about artmaking and identity are thrown out the window.
Other Forces: A Review of Maw at Apparatus Projects Ailes and Lopez’s installations, images and sculptures function as a cosmos of life—worlds where the viewer is placed in a disordered exercise of cognitive sense-making between rather than sense-making of.
