Chicago has a complicated relationship with public art. Anish Kapoor’s beloved Cloud Gate aside, many of the City’s outdoor works have been met with contempt or irreverence by critics and the public alike. Tony Tasset’s Eye fascinated some, but perplexed most; Seward Johnson’s Forever Marilyn sculpture was denounced as “kitsch” and was repeatedly vandalized — once with streaks of red paint surely meant to evoke menstrual blood — until it was taken down in May; and even works that are now symbols of the art establishment, such a... [more]
Hauntology: Derrida and the spectral arc by Courtney R. Thompson Anthony Adcock, Laura Biery, Alexis Chaney, Margaret Crowley, Erica Fagin, Katherine Harvath, Nabira Khan, Scarlett J. Kim, Alexander Kornienko, Stephanie Litchfield, Karla Martinez, Edward Menendez, Mikey Molina, Zoe Petticord, Jennifer Smoose, Megan St. John, Kelly Street, Shane Ward, Serene Yang at DOVA Temporary
June 7th, 2012 - June 28th, 2012
Posted
6/13/12
The term hauntology is attributed to Jacques Derrida and his text, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. It is important to note that this text is a translation of Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la Nouvelle Internationale which was an ordered collection of Derrida’s lecture notes following a conference organized in 1993 that asked, “Whither Marxism? Global Crises in International Perspective.” While the writing... [more]
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's year-end Graduate Thesis Exhibition, featuring work by more than 130 students, represents SAIC's largest graduating class to date. New this year, guest curators Steven Bridges, Tumelo Mosaka, Pablo Helguera, Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska transformed the Sullivan and Wabash Galleries into a series of shows-within-a-show. These thematic sections unfold throughout the spaces in a sequence of visual encounters and unconventional experiences.
ArtSlant... [more]
Rashid Johnson employs an afrofuturist methodology to create an alternative universe out of black cultural detritus so that histories and possibilities of black life in America can be imagined otherwise. In his current solo show, Message to Our Folks, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Johnson projects a concept of blackness that cannot be confined or defined—it is the blackness of the universe, perhaps, which extends beyond the realm of our ability to completely grasp it. At the same time,... [more]
Image Becomes Content by Joel Kuennen Roy Lichtenstein at The Art Institute of Chicago
May 22nd, 2012 - September 3rd, 2012
Posted
5/16/12
On May 22, the Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective, an exhibit that’s been five years in the making, will open its doors. Expertly curated by Sheen Wagstaff and James Rondeau, this exhibit presents, a-chronically, thematic slices from Lichtenstein’s vast body of work; including Art History, Black and White, Mirrors, and War and Romance. It is the largest retrospective on the artist to date, with 160 pieces of work filling the back hall of the Art Institute; a normally open and spacious gallery, it has b... [more]
Tim Nickodemus' exhibition at Alderman Exhibitions, titled Megatheria, has put me in a bind. I enjoyed the show despite itself. This is perhaps the ultimate admission of arbitrary criticality, but run with me: I want to write about it (and here I am) not because any of the paintings held particular resonance as great art objects, but rather because of how they engaged my attention as a viewer.
A standard move in art is to elevate a common observation to the level of high consideration, framing this s... [more]
To paraphrase a dead white guy completely out of context, it’s the best of times and worst of times for American women today. Taking inspiration from the Occupy Movement, the Guerrilla Girls are Not Ready to Make Nice, and remind us that although the Mad Men era of discrimination might be gone, men still primarily hold the bulk of the world’s privilege, power and money. Riding on the social and institutional critique they started in the 1980s, the group of masked art-world players aren’t chang... [more]
It was a serendipitous decision to read Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art in the weeks prior to visiting the opening of the Stanley Tigerman exhibition. I’ll admit it’s initially an odd formulation to think of the Chicago architect as trickster. For me, it was the kind of timing where tangential interests in a particular architect’s oeuvre and mythical narrative seemed to open the door on each another without knocking. The more the curator Emmanuel Petit a... [more]
Meditation on a Fuse by Joel Kuennen Daniel Bauer, Matias Cuevas, Joel Dean, Michael Hunter, Irena Knezevic, Raquel Ladensack at ALDERMAN EXHIBITIONS
February 24th, 2012 - March 18th, 2012
Posted
3/5/12
As I walked up the stairs into the darkened gallery of Alderman Exhibitions’ new loft space in an old warehouse on Randolph Street, I heard a long hissss and looked up to see a fuse burning in a shaky frame. I had walked in on the screening of Long Fuse, 2012, by Robert Chase Heishman and Brendan Meara.
I perched on the top step and watched the fuse burn over snow, ice, grass, wood, concrete and soil. When was the bam, or kaboom, or, my favorite, kablooey!? When will there be resolution to thi... [more]
Now That's Fresh by Abraham Ritchie David Leggett at Western Exhibitions
January 27th, 2012 - March 10th, 2012
Posted
2/20/12
With two significant shows concurrently on view in Chicago at Hyde Park Art Center in addition to Western Exhibitions, it has been rewarding to watch the increasing interest in David Leggett's work over the last couple years. Undoubtedly the artist merits the attention and more; his unique style fuses his own idiosyncratic way of making art with distinct historical influences from Jean-Michel Basquiat to the Leipzig School to the Chicago Imagists, and pop culture figures like Rick Ross and the porn... [more]
Day is done. by Mia DiMeo Molly Zuckerman-Hartung at Corbett vs. Dempsey
February 3rd, 2012 - March 17th, 2012
Posted
2/6/12
“It’s a mean humor, so it’s a critical joy. You know, it’s negative joy. But that’s art, I think—for me, at least.” Mike Kelley, describing Day is Done to Art21 in 2005
Echoes of mourning for the late Mike Kelley, who died early last week in Los Angeles, were piling up in art columns and Facebook pages as Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s show opened at Corbett vs. Dempsey, its title and timing, in her words, “a weird and sad and wonderful coincidence.” The emphatic paradox in Kel... [more]
Today, when words have lost their material base—in other words, their reality—and seem suspended in mid-air, a photographer’s eye can capture fragments of reality that cannot be expressed in language as it is. He can submit those images as documents to be considered alongside language and ideology. This is why, brash as it may seem, Provoke has the subtitle ‘provocative documents of thought.’
-The Provoke Manifesto (1968), Koji Taki & Takuma Nakahira
... [more]
I Give You All by Steve Ruiz Cathy Wilkes at Renaissance Society
January 22nd, 2012 - March 4th, 2012
Posted
1/31/12
Walking into the Renaissance Society, my eyes bulge and I don’t know what breaks my heart more: the crushed figures wrapped in plastic at the foot of a mannequin draped in rags, leaning on impersonal machinery, its head trapped in a birdcage and painted with debris; bowls and dishes caked with dried out food, the empty vessels of domestic care, unclean, uncared for, color coded in tragic narratives; or the horse shoes, icons of domestic production, sharpened into symbols of dome... [more]
Laura Mackin’s practice gently translates the amateur, everyday practices of archiving, and the professional acts of the artist who would frame and present these encounters through explicitly aesthetic approaches. Her “120 Years” exhibition at threewalls captures, frames, and critiques our current flood of armchair curating of found images (Tumblr is the obvious example par excellence) and the compulsive digital archiving of our private lives for public consumption. The work in Mackin’s show con... [more]
Bodies pull, collide and fall into unison. People hold hands watching as she takes her time, dancing for them all. A couple stares at each other, their eyes inches away, as an operatic crescendo climbs from the speakers above the stage. For some reason modern dance fell into the cliché for many people. But every time I see it, I watch with amazement as bodies contort to rhythms that seem unremarkable, and I am sucked in by it. The visceral character of dance, the impact of highly trained bodies u... [more]
Two Gelatin Silver Prints and a Typewritten Page by Erik Wenzel Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Mel Bochner, Tony Conrad, Michael Heizer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Emilio Prini, Ed Ruscha at The Art Institute of Chicago
December 13th, 2011 - March 11th, 2012
Posted
1/17/12
When you are cremated, you aren’t actually reduced to ash. After the body has been incinerated dry bone fragments remain, which are ground up into dust. Sandwiched between two lens-shaped pieces of glass on a small pedestal is a group of what appears to be shards of coral, almost like a decoration you’d see on someone’s coffee table. These are actually human remains presented as a sculpture. In addition to this is another incarnation of the piece. Human Dust (1969), by Agnes Denes consists... [more]
add to mylist
forward by email
print this page
subscribe