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.
Signaling the theme, a Ryan Duggan piece rests in the doorway, greeting gallery visitors as a simultaneous memorial plaque and title placard. The work reappears in a slightly different guise on the promotional postcard, but its sentiment does not, at least until much further inside. Duggan again picks up on the theme of unhappy ruin with a screen-print titled “Invest for Tomorrow,” showing a pot of gold and a rainbow set next to optimistic yet disconcertingly vague words of wisdom rendered in his characteristic handwriting.
The remaining work coalesces only under a comparable style. Interestingly, all three artists, whether Carrie Vinarsky’s repetitious pinecones or Alex Valentine’s totemic appliqués of screen-printed fabric, adhere to a similar treatment, beginning with images mined from external sources, then hand-drawn and finally silk-screened. The result is a quirky but unified style throughout the work, feeling personal and homemade, but far from evoking the concerns announced up front. (Nate Lee)
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.
Trust Fall: A Review of Deeper & Deeper at Roots & Culture It is in this interplay between disciplines, between science and art, between truth and fiction, psychology and neuroscience, that Balara and Gonzales suggest the mutual capacity of art to transform all those involved in receiving it.
As Tall As My Roots: A Review of Laleh Motlagh's "Contemplation" Motlagh’s ability to treat reduction as a gesture, distilling down to only the necessary, results in an exhibition that is contemplative, introspective, and a stunning demonstration of an artist taking gratifying risks.
