Filed under: Chicago
Chicago Art Review is now at:
www.ChicagoArtReview.com
I’ll leave this site up for posterity.
I like artists books but don’t really know anything about them, so it is with great pleasure that I present local maven and collector Anthony Elms’ first in a regular or irregular feature of artists books suggestions. He’ll be focusing on books that are generally affordable, still in print, and available to a Chicago buyer at a local bookstore or via the web. Let Elms spend your money!
Exhibition Prosthetics by Joseph Grigely
Every now and then I teach a course, “Publications as Curatorial Practice,” and the most frustrating part of organizing the class is finding readings that don’t talk about publication projects as if artists’ books are the only solution to thinking with form. Now there is this slim volume from a lecture Joseph Grigely gave in London at the always interesting (let’s hope) Architectural Association. The book is published by the newish upstart publishing imprint Bedford Press run by the friendly graphic designer Zak Kyes (who you might also be reading).
Exhibition Prosthetics, by Joseph Grigely
You’ll read this book in 40 minutes, tops. And that is if you rest to take notes, or wonder why all the images are yellow. But a good and necessary quick read. It will train your eyes on the little ways that art is framed, and the peculiar, strange and necessary relationship between titles, wall labels, press releases and art works. In fact, even if I have a disagreement with the angle Grigely takes a time or two (privileging the artist a touch too much in the relationship to museum wall labels, stopping to consider press releases as artistic gestures, but not simply as press releases, etc.), the only real complaint is that the book is over too soon. So some items seem skimmed rather than developed. Then again, it was just a lecture–with a lecture’s gentlemanly time constraints. And I must admit that I know this book is just the beginning of Joseph’s recent public grapplings with the issues. (See, for example his recent exhibition at Rowley Kennerk Gallery.) Exhibition Prosthetics is an opening volley into what are essential and complicated questions. (Anthony Elms)
Here’s a big collection of new shows to see this Friday and Saturday and Sunday. I usually try to keep these lists down to a few favorites, but there’s really just a ton of excellent work hitting the city this weekend. See the post’s toes for extras too.
Andreas Fischer @ Galhberg Gallery
While the Hyde Park Art Center has Andreas Fischer’s Ghost Town portraits, the landscape arm of this two-part exhibition are in Glen Ellyn’s Gahlberg Gallery. See the work and the artist tonight, Thursday, January 21st from 6-8 PM @ Gahlberg Gallery, 425 Fawell Blvd, Glen Ellyn.
Andreas Fischer, Original Location
Jeff Marlin @ Corbett vs. Dempsey
Noble Square gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey opens a survey of Jeff Marlin’s work, loaded and worked paintings exploring surface, source, and interaction with mechanical processes. Solid process work like good moons with surfaces guaranteed to reward exploration. Marlin’s show opens this Friday, January 22nd from 5-9 PM @ Corbett vs. Dempsey, 1120 N. Ashland Ave.
Jeff Marlin, Untitled
Mike Kloss @ The Hills
I don’t know much about Mike Kloss or The Hills, but I’ve heard a buzz to follow. Kloss’s show The Hills have Thighs opens this Friday, January 22nd from 7-10 PM @ The Hills Esthetic Center, 128 N. Campbell Ave.
Mike Kloss, I Dislike Parties
Daniel Lavitt @ Peregrine Program
Daniel Lavitt‘s awesome miniature living spaces address domesticity at various economic levels and look damned smart too. Come see Chicagoland‘s opening on Friday, January 22nd from 6-10 PM @ PEREGRINEPROGRAM, 500 W. Cermak Rd, 727.
Daniel Lavitt, Inside the Garden
Rune @ Ben Russell
JT Rogstad, Melanie Schiff, Deborah Stratman, Joshua Manchester, and Ryan Fenchel come together for a show about runic magic and darkness and mystery and other topics of the totally fucking metal persuasion. Rune opens Saturday, January 23rd from 6-9 PM @ BEN RUSSELL, 1716 S. Morgan St, 2F.
JT Rogstad, Theory
MinimumixaM @ Pentagon
Relatively new space Pentagon hosts the Twelve Galleries Project’s group exhibition curated by Nicholas Cueva, Dan Gunn and Heather Mekkelson, and featuring work by Eric Fleischauer, Chris Edwards, Xavier Jimenez and Liz Nielsen. With a very clever title, layers upon curatorial layers and promising work too, Quarterly Site #1: MinimumixaM opens Saturday, January 23rd 7-10 PM @ Pentagon, 961 W. 19th St, 1F.
Eric Fleischaur, Untitled (Flowers)
Ethan Greenbaum and Katrin Sigurdardottir @ The Suburban
Architectural, physical, and psychological space are considered this month at The Suburban, with Ethan Greenbaum‘s hard-media installations and more along with Katrin Sigurdardottir‘s documented recreation of the Oak Park exhibition space inside her Iceland studio. Reception this Sunday, January 24th from 2-4 PM @ The Suburban, 125 N Harvey Ave. Oak Park
Ethan Greenbaum, Concrete
Elijah Burgher @ Shane Campbell
While you’re at the Suburban, don’t forget to check out Shane Campbell’s opening of Elijah Burgher‘s eerily calm blood ritual drawings. Plenty of room in the river. Show opens Sunday, January 24th from 2-4 PM @ Shane Campbell Gallery, 125 N. Harvey Ave.
Elijah Burgher, Letting Blood
If that weren’t enough, also check out: Bobby Burg and Jeremy Bolen @ Andrew Rafacz, Vincent Como @ Proof, and Mark Booth, Karen Christopher, and John W. Sisson, Jr @ the Epiphany Episcopal Church, and Cabin Fever @ Co-Prosperity Sphere. That’s a lot to see!
Filed under: Artists of the Week
This week’s picks from Ryan.
Josh Slater, Space Ritual T-Shirt
Ali Bailey, Baseball Plant
Zarina Hashmi, Home is a Foreign Place
Andy Vogt, Lathberg
Zak Prekop, Untitled
Bob Ross
Tuna safe dolphin!
Here’s whats up.
Armita Raafat @ threewalls
Armita Rafaat‘s work goes up this month at threewalls, covering the newly renovated space with Persian and Islamic arabesques falling and spreading and crumbling over and from the freshly built walls. Catch the show‘s opening reception is this Friday, January 15th from 6-9 @ threewalls, 119 N. Peoria St.
Armita Raafat
Edelweiss Cardenas @ LivingRoom Gallery
Curated by Thea Liberty Nichols, this is a solo drawing and painting show from Edelweiss Cardenas titled Wanderers Wonder Where. Opens this Friday, January 15th, 6-9PM @ LivingRoom Gallery, 1530 W. Superior. As a bonus, and through the magic of online voicemail, here’s Edelweiss herself talking about the show:
Edelweiss Cardenas, No Fall in Sight
Joseph Cassan @ Golden
Joseph Cassan’s essential sculptures will be on display this month at Golden, each a pointed construction made of common materials to make a kind of skinless realism. The show opens Friday, January 15th at 6 – 9 PM @ Golden, 816 W. Newport.
Joseph Cassan
Bob Linder @ He Said-She Said
Britton Bertran helped curate this Bob Linder show at He Said-She Said, the dichotomous Oak Park exhibition space/neat stuff sharing center ran by Pamela Fraser and Randall Szott respectively. Linder’s work should fit right in, using a few different approaches to arrive at sentimental, alternative realities. Whatever it is, it opens this Saturday, January 16th, 6-8 PM @ He Said-She Said, 216 North Harvey Ave., Apt. 1, in Oak Park.
Bob Linder @ He Said-She Said
EXHIBITION 4.01162010 @ MVSEVM
Group show at MVSEVM this month, featuring the work of Karen Archey, Chris Bradley, Brian Dongarra, Dominic Paul Moore (the moore in ebersmoore), Montgomery Perry Smith, and David Schafer. Also featuring audio recordings from Japanese fluxus composers Toshi Ichiyanagi & Kuniharu Akiyama. Stacked list, I’d see it. The show opens this Saturday, January 16th, 6-10 PM @ MVSEVM, 1626 N. California Ave, #2.
Dominic Paul Moore, Rectangles
Andreas Fischer @ Hyde Park Art Center / Gahlberg Gallery
Andreas Fischer’s two part Ghost Town exhibition kicks off this week with its first part, called Sunday Best, at Hyde Park Art Center, with a selection of painted portraits from old west tintype photographs opening Sunday, January 17th @ the Hyde Park Art Center. The second part, Original Location, opens this next Thursday the 21st at 6-8 PM, will be an exhibition of landscapes @ the Gahlberg Gallery in Glen Ellyn.
Andreas Fischer, Original Location
Also, the latest Proximity magazine comes out this weekend, with a release party Saturday, January 16th, 9-1 AM@ the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Its a really good issue, thick with contributions from everyone including myself. See you there or elsewhere.
This week’s picks from Ryan, with an repeat replacement from me.
Jedediah Caesar, 1,000,000 A.D.
Dan Graham, Pavilion
Kelly Lynn Jones, The Recreational Place
Scott Wolniak, Weed Sculpture
Art Clokey, Gumby
William Lamson, Long Shot
Josh Slater, Over Layer
Ultra-art.
Mark Mulroney’s WEATHERBEE’S REVENGE is full of paintings that are dirty and gross and funny, operating on an adolescent paradigm where humor and violence and sexual fantasy are everything and interchangeable. Mulroney’s working process of painting his own depraved bodies under cut-out heads from Archie comics is simple enough, but the ridiculous narratives, awful jokes fit together just right with Mulroney’s clean style and fearless imagination.
Mark Mulroney, WEATHERBEE'S REVENGE @ ebersmoore
In addition to the paintings, Mulroney included four painted wooden sculptures, three of which were interactive in some way. You could rearrange a chest of breasts and mysterious bumps in Archie Spare Boob, below, lever Archie and Betty into reverse-cowgirl coitus, or pull a string to give Archie a clumsy erection.
Mark Mulroney, Archie Spare Boob
Having never actually read the Archie comics, the characters’ debasement isn’t as rending as when I stumbled onto a fan-drawn Simpsons orgy. As any unfortunate internet wanderer knows, there are massive communities dedicated to producing cartoon porn of every shape and variety and franchise crossover, and its only a matter of time before “Archie porn” shows up in this blog’s traffic statistics. However, its obvious that Mulroney’s motivations are far from any deviantart weirdo’s, giving retrospective form to a kind of innocent perversion of pop imagery.
Mark Mulroney, Archie Collage
Mark Mulroney, Archie Poll
Mulroney creates plenty of narrative variation among the pieces, some abstract and bizarre, and others shamefully clever. Every piece looks like it was floated together easily, with the artist’s illustrative handling clean and confident whether rendering a disemboweled Archie or a weeping dick in detail, showing a level of artifice and care which was, I guess, appreciated.
I give it a:
7.6
Mark Mulroney‘s WEATHERBEE’S REVENGE opened January 8th and runs through February 6th, 2010 @ ebersmoore, 213 n morgan, #3C.
(special thanks to Anni Holm for the photos)
