What do angels look like in our modern-day world? This was the question that Chris Jackson and Laura Lee Junge posted on ChicagoArtistsResource.org, and their Jackson Junge Gallery is now showing the paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs of twenty of the artists who responded. Junge is herself one of the artists on display, and not surprisingly many of the pieces share her “wouldn’t it be nice if…” approach to the subject. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were powerful forces of good and our lives were mysteriously worthy of them? This is what you might call an interest in fantasy and it characterizes popular entertainment rather than the sacred myths that take a more serious and demanding view of the human condition. So most of this work is light, frothy and belongs on a greeting card or above the scented candles in a new age gift shop. But not all of it. George Clark has wisely gone back a few hundred years and drawn well a few broken Baroque angels he saw in a German church. Laura Lein-Svencner, a deft collage artist, has imagined a lonely young woman who seems to be haunted by crows, and photographer Dimitre shows us the dark, formidable gates of an industrial complex, presumably suggesting the gates of a heaven that will never let you in (or give you a job). So Jackson and Junge had a very open approach toward the variety of local artists, young and old, BFAs or self-taught, who answered their call. It’s a fun show, though it does suggest that Chicago isn’t now ready for a divine visitation. (Chris Miller)
Through January 15 at Jackson Junge Gallery, 1389 North Milwaukee
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
