It’s been over six years since Brandon Alvendia and Caleb Lyons put together a Spring Break-themed art show at the Butcher Shop Gallery, a cavernous warehouse on Lake Street, now closed. Featuring over fifty artists (including me), it was primarily and ultimately a formidable bacchanal. Alvendia, who was giving out stenciled spray-tans, was again present for another iteration of the gallery beach party, again in a cavernous warehouse right by Lake Street.
The coherence of this show at The Hills set it apart from the earlier one, while making me think of the theatrically elongated shadow Ed Ruscha has cast over “party art.” Alec Regan’s horizontal stack of box fans turned on and then resealed in their boxes evoke Jeff Koons, Kate Ruggeri and Carson Fisk-Vittori’s fern stuffed into a basketball hoop might suggest David Hammons, and Winslow Smith’s videos of art and design museum displays composited with dancing feet and sunset vistas could be chalked up to institutional critique. But Jesse Butcher’s (again) sunset vista postcards announcing “Life’s A Beach Timeshare,” Alex Chitty’s vibrantly blurred photographic prints, Josh Reames and Amber Thomas’ sparkling molded glitter-sand canvas, complete with shells and cast-off Splenda packet, and Ben Foch’s installation with hanging yellow Frisbee (as sun), striped beach chair with matching striped canvas, and (again) printed postcards, left no doubt. The east-coast Pop adulation of graphics and celebrity was in many ways overpowered by Ruscha’s amazing formal juxtapositions, uncanny koans, and subtle hints at anarchy. Perhaps Chicago has always wanted to borrow some of that castrating firepower—hinted at in Amber Thomas’ sculpture of a sawed board folded over to painfully squeeze an inflated beach ball, Richard Serra-style.
The enigmatic subtitle of the show was “Forbidden Pair of Dice (The Final Chapter).” There was definitely some kind of important dice game going on at the bar, featuring, I’m pretty sure, altered dice. I didn’t bother to find out more—after all, as Ruscha said: “Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head.” (Bert Stabler)
Through October 9. The Hills Esthetic Center, 128 North Campbell.
Fleeing Desperation: A Review of Ada Trillo at Chicago Center for Photojournalism In this heartbreaking yet visually beautiful exhibition, Ada Trillo implicates herself within her subjects to shine a light on both the hope and the hopelessness of their lives. If you are not moved by these images, surely your heart is made of stone.
Home Is Where the Family Is: A Review of Chicago Chiquito at Bridgeport Art Center This small but significant exhibition shows the history of Chicago Chiquito, or little Chicago, the nickname given to La Hacienda, a small town in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. Its families have migrated north to find work for over one hundred years.
