This weeks picks, all happening on Saturday. :

Aspen Mays @ Museum of Contemporary Art

Aspen Mays gets her UBS 12×12 at the MCA this month and will be showing two bodies of prettied cataloging artwork: in the first, she documents every leaf on a tree outside her studio; in the second, every book on Albert Einstein available through the Illinois Collegiate Inter-Library Loan service (a system you may also know as the Best Thing). Show opens to the public this Saturday, February 6th @ Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago.

Aspen Mays, Einstein Rainbow

Permission to Work @ What It Is

Oak Park domestic space What It Is opens a show this weekend about how and why and what it means to smash together functioning creative spaces with domestically functional spaces. Participating artists include Lauren Carter, Elise Goldstein, Katya Grokhovsky, Samantha Hill, Selena Jones, Maya Mackrandilal and Ben Stagl. Opens Saturday, February 6th from 3-8 PM @  What It Is, 1155 S. Lyman Ave, Oak Park.

Ben Stagl

Susan Giles @ Kavi Gupta

Susan Giles opens a show of her new asteriskal architecture pieces at Kavi Gupta – the explosive monuments all rendered in paper no less – along with the equally crafty Theaster Gates in the project space. Show opens Saturday, February 6th from 4-7 @ Kavi Gupta Gallery, 835 W. Washington.

Susan Giles, Memory Palace

Austin Eddy @ Monument 2

This month at Monument 2: a new group of paintings from the ever-productive Austin Eddy. There will also be performances on February 27th by Isabella Ng & Millie Kapp, with more info coming later this month. Show opens with a reception this Saturday, February 6th from 7-10 PM @ Monument 2, 2007 N. Point.

Austin Eddy, You dont have to go home right now, but eventually you won't be able to stay here anymore.

Greg Stimac and Scott Wolniak @ Andrew Rafacz

I remember seeing one of Greg Stimac’s splattered, insect graveyard windshield photos at Industry of the Ordinary’s 39 Verbs show @ Packer Schopf. I liked it then, and am glad to see Andrew Rafacz displaying a larger set of the work this month at his West Loop gallery. Also in the show: Scott Wolniak’s bleached paper works. Opening Saturday, February 6th from 4-7 PM @ Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington.

Scott Wolniak, Untitled (Morning Drawing)

Airplanes on treadmills.

This week’s picks from Ryan, who is auctioning one of his pieces this week. Don’t miss it!

Todd James, Hot Dogs Hamburgers

Cornelius Quabeck, Cut’n’Paste

Alexander Cheves, Heaping Helping

Joel Dean, Parade

Conlon Nancarrow

Nadia Ayari, The Fence

Ernesto Burgos

Now what?

Peregrine Program is a small, brand new gallery in the Riverfront Work Lofts building in Pilsen, ran by SAIC’s Edmund Chia. After spending a few minutes trying to find out how to get into the place (turns out it was the red door), then a few more finding the elevator, I arrived at the smallish one-room loft that contained Chicagoland the mostly self-lit show of miniatures by Daniel Lavitt.

Daniel Lavitt, Untitled

In Chicagoland, Lavitt tells his story of living in Chicago through miniatures. Having grown up with the Thorne Miniature Rooms collection, I’m immediately happy to see anything crafted at a small scale; and while there wasn’t a hobbyist’s exactness and minute quality in Lavitt’s work, ideas of relative scale and privacy were acknowledged and played with really well. In The Mozart Street House, the gallery wall intersects the face of a house at an off angle, and in the upstairs window, a lamp light lights a room or a studio with a painting on the wall. In a clever turn on the King Kong voyeurism of miniature rooms, a motion sensor tucked under the eve of the roof controls this light, darkening the room whenever a viewer passes in front of it as if clicked off as if by a paranoid and drapeless artist worried about early exposure.

Daniel Lavitt, Project #33250

Many of the pieces are pretty straightforward, cool little combinations of light fixtures or miniature lights, content to stick to the novelty of scale and causal relationships within a work. A few go for something more descriptive, like Lavitt’s, Project #33250, which injects human individuality into the modular domesticity of urban housing projects, and plays out that story in colored lights and tiny paintings in standard issue cardboard boxes.

Daniel Lavitt, Project #33250 (detail)

Chicagoland has the kind of intimate, fun atmosphere that this kind of sculptural work is great at, and there were some notable moments of concept and craft connection. It’s pretty light fare for a show about urban living, but personality and play was the point and it has plenty of both.

I give it a:

8.1

Daniel Lavitt’s Chicagoland opened January 22nd and runs through February 26th, 2010 @ PEREGRINEPROGRAM, 500 W. Cermak Rd, 727.

Here’s what I’m thinking of seeing this weekend. More shows and more infos available here.

Art Auction Fundraiser @ Johalla Projects

Dozens of artists have donated work for an auction this Friday to prop up Wicker Park apartment gallery Johalla Projects. A quick selection of participants: Nathan Baker,Bridgette Buckley, Elijah Burgher, Philip Dembinski, Anni Holm, Aron Gent, Jon Gitelson, Chad Kouri, Daniel Shea, Montgomery Perry Smith. The names look great and the auction model they’re using does too, so stop by and bring some spending money. The fundraiser will be held this Friday, January 29th from 7-11 PM @ Johalla Projects, 1561 N Milwaukee Ave.

Aron Gent, Jennifer

Dialogue @ Co-Prosperity Sphere

Hold up spell-checker, this is an international show. Dialogue is a product of IRUS, a group of one-year Iran-United States collaborative art projects which will be coming to Bridgeport’s Co-Prosperity Sphere this weekend. Dialogue opens this Friday, January 29th from 7-10 PM @ Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St.

IRUS

Angel Otero @ Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago painter Angel Otero is having his biggest solo show yet this month at the Chicago Cultural Center. See what post-MFA international success and collectability looks like this Friday, January 29th from 6-8 PM @ Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington St, Chicago.

Angel Otero, 10 Karat Still Life

The Power of Selection & Suitable Video @ Western Exhibitions

Curated by the very same Ryan Travis Christian responsible for this site’s Artist of the Week picks, The Power of Selection is a group show featuring work by CA artists Alika Cooper, Allison Schulnik, Marissa Textor, Eric Yahnker, and Chicago’s own Mike Rea. In the back room, Scott Wolniak’s Suitable Video is a retrospective look at work shown in the front half of last decade at Humboldt Park’s now-defunct Suitable Gallery. Both shows have a closing reception this Saturday, January 30th from 6-9 PM @ Western Exhibitions, 119 N. Peoria St, 2A.

Mike Rea, Tsavo Manhunters, Part 1

The drying of [oil paint] is the result of an oxidative reaction, chemically equivalent to slow, flameless combustion.