My passion for kimchi and an irradiated, blood-hound-like sense of smell led me down to the Hyde Park Art Center where Roots and Culture was running a demo for kimchi pancakes this Saturday. Looming over this small fragrant affair was Michael Rea’s A Prosthetic Suit For Stephen Hawking w/ Japanese Steel, the imposing wooden robotic bouncer for the Center’s Artists Run Chicago.

A city-wide showcase of the best artist-run spaces from the last decade (though where is MurderSpace?), Artists Run Chicago is highlit by Guy Richards Smit’s indecipherable watercolors and Art Ledge’s in-your-face, no-holds-barred thank you list that pulls no punches and asks no questions as it thanks the shit out of some people. Beyond the very appropriate and sensitive curation, the show is also displayed in a way that manages to have a deliberate smacking of the crowded apartment openings with clustered, sort-of-amateur hangings, yet in a way that works gorgeously and cleanly in the space. The reference is not lost,  but the added result is that there are more pieces in the show than you’d expect on first glance, and digging the use of space is half the fun.

I give it a:

8.9

Artists Run Chicago runs (haha) from May 10 to June 5, 2009 @ The Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue.

But wait, there’s more! If you’re there (which you should be by now) don’t forget to pop around and take a glance at the Kenwood Academy photo show, mainly for Justine Jackson’s stellar photograph, Suicide by Train.

Justine Jackson, Suicide by Train

Overall however I feel like the entire Kenwood show looks like it was made by a bunch of fucking highschool kids or something and I give it a:

FOUR