(Note: I’m catching up on my backlog of shows I attended, photographed, and never wrote about. Enjoy the pictures and the brief summary.)

September’s main space at Western Exhibitions featured Paul Nudd, I had wanted to give Dan Attoe’s show in the second space its own review. The show was quiet, stretching its three pieces for maximum effect and building an atmosphere of creepy, confident mystery. The central piece, Sea Kayakers (You Are Not Special) was actually a very similar to an image made by Robyn O’Neil (who was at the time showing across the hall at Tony Wight Gallery, reviewed here). However, while O’Neil’s Masses and masses rove a darkened pool; never is there laughter on this ship of fools contained almost the same content for a narrative purpose, Attoe’s use of the imagery seems more arbitrary and hallucinatory. That desert trip vibe carried through to the other two as well, which flashed clips of text and image like daily glimpses from a wounded nomad’s fever trek.

Dan Attoe, Sea Kayakers (You Are Not Special)

Dan Attoe, Sea Kayakers (You Are Not Special)

Dan Attoe, Monument Valley

Dan Attoe, You Ruin our Time

Dan Attoe’s solo exhibition opened Friday, September 11th and closed Saturday, October 10th @ Western Exhibitions, 119 N Peoria St, Suite 2A.

Last week I wrote a bit about Eric Lebofsky’s Superfreaks at the smaller of Western Exhibitions two spaces, with the promise of returning to examine the main space and Melissa Oresky’s A Wildness of Edges. This here is that. To start with, a few weeks before the opening of her two local shows (she also has work at the Gahlberg Gallery’s On Paper show in Glen Ellyn until November 28th, 2009), Melissa was kind enough to let me visit her studio, giving me a great sneak peek at the mountains of work she’s been putting together over the last year and handing out a cheater’s insight into its generation and content.

L'Atelier de Oresky

The first thought I had on entering Western Exhibitions was a shock at how sparse the display was. Having hosed the Paul Nudd paintings off the walls and sterilized the studio to prevent any more from growing along the base boards, the good people of Western Exhibitions have made here a much more specific install instead. While it may have looked sparse, the way A Wildness of Edges was hung with an intention, giving three dimensions to the three elements present in the work and encouraging the triangulation necessary to see their interaction.

Melissa Oresky, A Wildness of Edges

Of the eight gridded paintings occupying the north-east corner of the gallery, four pairs of images are shown mixed between the two. Each image has its sister, with the one showing a more specific, voluminous, and solid object within a space, and its pair showing the same object but with its space reversed or extruded, and where the object is creating the space rather than occupying it.

Rock Garden (installation view)

The differences reflect a change of control, with one executed in an intentional manner, with Oresky reigning her materials into specific shapes and exerting full control over her paint; and the second presenting something of the opposite, allowing for the phenomena resulting from transparency, the skittering marks of chance, the self-generating content of material interaction and generally of a more impulsive or intuitive way of painting. As the title Rock Garden for this group might suggest, these two ways of treating a surface are to Oresky a metaphor for gardening, of imposing control over self-describing materials or of loosing those materials to compete freely. While the choices of a painter may not be that different than those of a gardener, the conclusion that the action of paint is as challenging and alive as a plant or a weed is a fun one to consider.

Melissa Oresky, W1, Apatite

So to demonstrate, we’ll have two similar images, like W1, Apatite (above) and W2, Plagioclase (below), operating with the same materials of color and shape, but with each presenting different ways of painting, of presenting a landscape, and of describing space.

Melissa Oresky, W2, Plagioclase

These pairing connections are important, and can be inferred by their palettes and their titles, but they’re not hung in a way to show this pairing off right away. I like that in hanging the work, Oresky apparently deferred to the overall aesthetic impact of the group rather than sacrifice looks to shore up the activity between them.

Melissa Oresky, Mineral Tree

On the far side of the gallery, tying together the elements in the Rock Garden series and reflecting them back, is Mineral Tree. The larger painting is the most individually impressive piece in the show, a best example of the collision of shapes and colors that result from Oresky’s processes, and a solid work that balances the exhibition’s display. Containing bits and pieces of each of the Rock Garden paintings, it operates as a third corner to the work, letting the any given painting bounce both to its pair as well as its place in Mineral Tree.

Melissa Oresky, Y2, Orpiment

There is little to complain about as far as the execution of A Wildness of Edges. The concepts and intentions behind the work are present, the manner of display did nothing to distract from them and actually gave strength to the purpose of the work, and the paintings themselves were well made and beautiful. If there is fault, its the second edge of its success. The well planned, self-imposed parameters to which Oresky kept and which allowed for the show’s success as a structure of self reference may have ultimately prevented any accident of inspiration which may have extended it into something unknown and more. As it is, A Wildness of Edges is a very well executed show of specific proportions.

I give it a:

8.1

Melissa Oresky’s A Wildness of Edges opened October 16th, 2009 and runs through November 14th, 2009 @ Western Exhibitions, 119 N. Peoria.

Heartland is about mid-western art: its existence, its creators and their motivations, its role and its history, and its place in the larger context of American and global culture. If that sounds like too big an undertaking for one show, you’re right – the Smart Museum show is only a  younger sister, the second iteration of the exhibition which was first installed in the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands a year ago this month. Even with two halves and a thick catalog too, attempting to describe anything as complex, geographically expansive, and nuanced as a “mid-western aesthetic” just might be an exercise of well illustrated curatorial over-reaching.

Greely Myatt, Cleave

I might as well address the issue of text, as the written word was so present in this show that it deserves first mention. Beside the many expository didactics and expansive catalog essays, almost every piece in the show included text in some way, whether the handwritten notes of Jeremiah Day, the speech bubbles of Kerry James Marshall, the acrylic tangents of Deb Sokolow, the books and magazines of Design 99, the annotated maps and posters of the Compass Group, the display case documentation of the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, the post-Katrina environmental guide notes of Marjetica Potrc; or even in the on page cursive titles of Joseph Yoakum, the pointed imagist exhibition posters, or the trippy and spare signage of Whoop Dee Doo.

Marjetica Potrc, House and Modernism Outweighed

Not only does this ubiquitous text element slow down and weigh the show, leaving few moments for the deep breath of visual experience and instead reducing many visual elements to on-site illustrations of written messages, it also projects a skewed view of mid-western art as overly wordy and prosaic. However appropriate text is in the individual installations comprising the show, including so many artists who use text in their work is simply inappropriate in a regional show like Heartland where commonalities will be mistaken for generalities. While it has its place in our history, I don’t consider text as all that uniquely mid-western and certainly don’t see it as the most salient aspect of mid-western art as suggested by its outstanding presence in Heartland.

Carnal Torpor, CalmDome

Other than that the mid-west loves to write on their drawings, what do the Heartland artists here say about mid-western creative expression? For one, we are a people engaged in specific problems. There is little contemplation of the sublime or ephemeral or critically artistic, but many questions of the realities of race, class, poverty, urbanism among agriculture, and the repeating theme of the landscape, the river, the plain, and of narratives within them. Carnal Torpor’s CalmDome might be the most lofty of the works included, and its about hiding from those realities.

Design 99, Heartland Machine

For fans of Deb Sokolow’s work (and really, who isn’t?), Heartland provides a healthy dose with Sokolow’s three-wall Dear Trusted Associate. While not very different in content from her recent large installations, it did have some added  physicality, some minor but exciting roughness with her limited materials that I hadn’t noticed in her Spertus piece, The Way in Which Things Operate (speaking of which, check out this bizarre and absolutely awesome video version her cousin made for that one). In the context of the show, Sokolow’s direct references to real businesses and even people grounds the work in Chicago, but suggests a daydream longing for dramatic narrative within a mid-west mostly devoid of spectacle, intrigue, or surprise.

Deb Sokolow, Dear Trusted Associate

The big standout in Heartland is without question Kerry James Marshall’s Dailies, the masterful ink on newsprint drawings of which the Netherland crew got to see all forty but which only a limited selection could be exhibited here in the Smart Museum. Drawing from his Rhythm Mastr series, Marshall presents multiple, weaving narratives with heady dialog instantly translated in a foam of speech bubbles, as if each speaker were a South Side polyglot demon. Marshall is still a powerhouse, and I was thoroughly impressed.

Kerry James Marshall, Dailies (detail)

There were plenty of other works present, including a rare collection of Imagist work, including the grossish and rocky exhibition flyers from the Hairy Who show; the large scale Oprah inspired digital collage by Artur Silva; a very strong double video piece by Julika Rudelius, which left me wondering among other things where and whether I can buy the leather furniture of the powerful; and a room full of curious but extremely poorly lit landscapes by Joseph Yoakum.

Imagists!

If you’re unable to visit the show, or if you want to read the accompanying essays, you can thankfully view the entire Heartland catalog online – however the good people who extended this kindness decided to do so while shitting all over the images by compressing them as much as possible. While a minor slight against every interested party who does not live in or near Chicago or Eindhoven for the sake of selling catalogs to those who do, this choice to digitally deface artwork in preference to the written word speaks volumes about the secondary role the visual side of visual art plays in Heartland.

Peter Friedl, Map (as seen in online catalog; I mean, come the fuck on)

In the end, Heartland just felt a little off, with content too dense and prosaic, and a context that not all the work included fit well into despite their individual quality. I would recommend seeing the show, but only because of the strength of certain artists’ installations, not the success or relevance of the exhibition’s thesis. I give the show itself a:

7.5

Heartland opened October 1st, 2009 and will continue through January 7th, 2010 @ The Smart Museum of Art, 5550 Greenwood Ave.

Remember this psychotic painting at the Hyde Park Art Center’s Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture show by Caleb Weintraub? It was the one with the kids with axes and the owl costumes and crushed space and the one which, when I wrote about that show, I complimented as the show’s “only piece to actually disturb me.” There was something feverish about that painting, small as it was; what the hell was going on? For some expansion and explanation, Weintraub’s work is up for review this month, and with a large exhibition (selling like fire) in the West Loop’s Peter Miller Gallery, we might find some answers.

Caleb Weintraub @ Peter Miller Gallery

Like a few other artists showing around town, Weintraub is working in a representational, illustrative, and narrative mode. Also like a few other artists, he’s working in a sorta post-apocalyptic, sorta surreal setting. While his images don’t describe events within a specific storyline, they do come out of a specific circumstance: some how or other, the children have taken over and, with a little of the supernatural afoot, are reinventing humanity and culture with blind idiosyncrasies and campfire voodoo. The artists statement lays it all down, but suffice to say that we have extremely literal illustrations referencing from a consistent, designed and imagined world.

Caleb Weintraub, Battle of the Beards

If all that sounds negative, it might be. It is disarming to see a show with such direct, unabashedly contrived content, regardless of paintings quality. Weintraub is an excellent painter, and these images contain some very skilled pooling impasto (sort of ala Adam Scott) along with more traditional brushwork and spraying and more. Standing before a larger painting like Battle of the Beards orThe unlikely resurrection of General Burnside on account of his estimable whiskers, picking out the variety of techniques can a pursuit in itself. There are some paintings where the pallete suffers, is either overwhelmed or underwhelmed and seldom balanced, but they all fall squarely in the class of cool stuff to look at. From what I can gather, they’re his best paintings yet.

Caleb Weintraub, Things that may or may not go on in the dark, in the night

However, we’re still looking at pictures of children in forests with weird shit going on, which is an exhausted setting bordering on pop surrealist trope. It’s possible that the dynamic way that the paint has been used is the only thing separating Caleb Weintraub from your run of the mill Juxtapoze Magazine, Mark Ryden, middle brow bullshit, because boil off the backstory and the content is pretty much the same. The question that Sunday Games and Souveniers poses is really whether all that really matters, and whether making grungy, curiously painted pop surrealist art will bring it into the more serious contemporary art conversation that Ryden et al aren’t a part of. It certainly looks smarter.

Caleb Weintraub, Situation Room

I would say maybe. Weintraub’s work dances the issue’s razor so delicately that I can’t find an imbalance either way, and it wouldn’t be my place to push him one way or the other. I can say that my experience of viewing the show including a serious doubt at the imagery and content of the work, along with a dynamic pleasure of observing the way Weintraub works.

Caleb Weintraub, While wandering, we just came upon it there, like it had sprouted up out of the ground and we knew we would never see anything the same way again

While I liked Caleb’s apparently absurd, mysterious imagery in the Hyde Park exhibition, I ultimately don’t care about his narrative, am not moved by the pictured drama, and connect with the work only when the paintings are good enough as paintings to make me forget them as illustrations. Thankfully that isn’t a rare event at Sunday Games and Souvenirs either. It’s not a perfect show, but there’s certainly plenty here to like.

I give it a:

6.9

Caleb Weintraub’s Sunday Games and Souvenirs runs September 11th, 2009 through October 17th, 2009 @ Peter Miller Gallery, 118 N. Peoria.

First some back story on Robyn O’Neil:

Robyn is a Houston all-star who, while not doing the media rounds, cranks out me-sized graphite drawings which may pass as illustrative, narrative, and serial, with one leading to the next in a giant comic book panel approach to story-telling. As the tale goes, a little drawing of a track-suited dude was the spark for the seven-year project, each drawing expanding on the mythology of the race of track-suited dudes and their trials and their tribulations and, with the 2007 execution of These final hours embrace at last; this is our ending, this is our past, their last moments too. The track-suited dudes were dead (long live the track-suited dudes), the end. What’s next?

For that answer we’ll need to cut to Tony Wight Gallery and On Sinking, their latest exhibition and O’Neil’s first or second substantial presentation of new works since killing all her characters.

Robyn O'Neil, Hurricane

The imagery picks up where it left off, at sea. Most works in this show feature the ocean and only the ocean, its strength visible and rendered in waves that ripple like muscle fiber, flexing and relaxing and tearing depending on the image. These landscapes or seascapes should be understood as abandoned, which they are in the sense that there aren’t any of the usual characters in view because (and here’s where the back story comes in) those characters are all dead as shit. They’re all pretty dramatic pictures of the arbitrary power of nature over man, the insignificance of man, etc, sort of, but not entirely, because there’s a problem and its a big one.

Robyn O'Neil, Almost Calm

In trying to describe an apocalypse, and of a view of a totally abandoned landscape, the drawings suffer from an intractable element in the illustrative method which O’Neil uses. Simply put, when you describe a three-dimensional space, the drawings describe those areas visible to the viewer depending on his or her presence within the assumed space. Whether we are the artist or an imagined observer, the the narrative of the space assumes our existence. In short, the problem is that we’re still here.

Robyn O'Neil, A Song of So Many Beginnings

If we’re still here, then we’re certainly not a track-suited dude, and if we’re not one of them, then it follows that we’ve just been looking in on their experiences like a kid with an ant farm. Sure, you may have learned a life lesson or two about the ultimate meaninglessness of existence and the purposelessness of labor in the face of inevitable and total mortality, but when the ants all die, you throw out the farm or start the whole cruel mess over again. These works provide an epilogue for her past narrative more than show a new direction or reading for her work, except perhaps to suggest that O’Neil just really likes drawing the ocean and big landscapes and would probably gladly continue doing so even without a narrative structure.

Robyn O'Neil, For the Next Breath

These post-track-suited-dudes drawings only occupy about half of the show, however. The rest is the kind of interesting, gestational work I would expect to see when starting a new body of work. The largest of them, For the Next Breath leans on scale the artist’s detailed working method to create a kind of landscape on the three-quarters-reversed view of an anonymous man’s head. The size and tight, meticulous rendering of the hair suggest a physical proximity which balance large, deep margins of untreated surface. The two other pieces in this theme, To the Left and Occurrence feature three other men, similar but not identical. As a total break from landscape and drawn narrative (the titles still suggest a story), these show O’Neil reaching into the toolbox of drawing, testing rhythm and scale as main thrusts, and finding some success. The Dismantled, and Turbulent Beliefs, while enjoyable, could even be considered one-offs.

Robyn O'Neil, The Dismantled

In total, On Sinking is not the cohesive show that one might expect from Robyn O’Neil. While there are some strong pieces, the work can best be seen as evidence of a transition, suggestions of things to come. If you’ve followed O’Neil’s career, it may even be a popcorn and soda glimpse of O’Neil’s struggle to reinvent, that great and necessary fight which, while it may produce a few bad drawings, really separates the career artist from the post-grad star child. Love the work or not – it makes for a good exhibition.

I give it a:

7.8

Robyn O’Neil’s On Sinking opened on Friday, September 11th and will run through Saturday, October 31st @ Tony Wight Gallery, 119 N. Peoria.