Melanie Schiff is obsessed with decay and detritus, so much so that she presents her scenes in large-format black-and-white and color. Yet Schiff is not your standard-issue ruins photographer, reveling in the profusion of devastation; she adds the note of breakdown to her images so that it dominates its more normal context, but does not overwhelm the setting. Take her most extreme shot in which a hollowed-out tree stump seems to merge with the rocky, desiccated, weed-strewn patch of land that surrounds it. The stump looks like nothing so much as a gaping skull. The other images do not cut to the quick that way, but the intrusion of death is always there, as when we see spent shell casings littered on a barren, wasted bluff. Schiff even lets herself play; we come close to the side of a house where various wilted vegetations have grown, and we look up through the picture window and are dazzled by a display of colored-glass vases, bowls and beakers that give us a shot of kitsch. (Michael Weinstein)
Through December 8 at Kavi Gupta Gallery, 835 West Washington
Rising Heroes: A Review of Nikko Washington at Kavi Gupta This new solo exhibition by Chicago artist Nikko Washington pays homage to Black athletes and creates room for fresh insights into the roles of myth, folklore and heroism in contemporary American culture.
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