Nancy Klehm and Emmanuel Pratt. “For the Common Good: Meet the Remediators”
RECOMMENDED
Social-practice photographer and activist Emmanuel Pratt fills the gallery’s north walls with splashes of vivid and exuberant color images, done in the humanist magazine and brochure style, depicting the efforts of the Mycellia Project to reclaim the urban wastelands of Chicago and transform them into gardens through the ministrations of the local community. The site for the research-activist group’s major project embraces the South Side’s Englewood, Washington Park, and Woodlawn neighborhoods, where some of the residents have turned contaminated and blasted ground into bounteous little farms.
Apart from the worthiness of the project as an example of the environmental regeneration that it seeks, Pratt indulges in a bit of his own photo-art, eschewing the straightforward documentary shot for composite works in which he overlays a base image with smaller photos that replicate it. The initial and lasting effect of the photo-artist’s strategy is to divert the viewer’s attention from his documentary purpose to the aesthetic surface of the image, which induces the kind of disorientation that attends the first look at a cubist painting. Yet after a visual sorting process, some of the images stand out for their surreal elegance. In “Foreclosed House Transformed: Think-Do House,” the base image of the gray building sporting a vibrant mural is overlaid by three successively smaller replicas, such that the two middle ones seem to be partly cut out to reveal the sky. There is no apparent meaning to the construction that could be related to the social significance of its subject, but the eye is delighted. (Michael Weinstein)
Through March 8 at City Gallery, 806 North Michigan.
Symbols of Life: A Review of Theaster Gates at the New Museum in New York City Gates unites his artistic beginnings as a ceramics sculptor with the impressive amount of objects that he has acquired as an archivist. Titled “Young Lords and Their Traces” it follows the lineage of his artistic and archival practice through multiple times and histories.
Sounding the City: How Experimental Sound Studio Reaches New Audiences Newcity spoke with Olivia Junell, development and outreach director of ESS, about accessibility of sound art, plans for future iterations of the festival and how the main mission of ESS has shifted to accommodate the needs of artists today.
