control c, control v @ ebersb9

If you’ve been following Fecal Face‘s features this year and panting at work coming out of California, you’ll be happy to know that  Ebersb9‘s latest show control c, control v has brought lots of familiar Fecal Face featured (fecal?) faces to Chicago. This fecal feel probably has something to do with Ryan Travis Christian, sole contributor for Fecal Face’s Chicago bureau, local starlet, a person I once stole a killer painting from, and curator for control c, control v.

While a collage show, only half of the artists really take a direct and formal collage approach. Hilary Pecis‘ Untitled, Hisham Akira Bharoocha‘s All That Baggage, and Alexis Mackenzie‘s Youthless and Dust are all straighforward (at least in construction), whereas the other artists’ work feature a more collage of content rather than of form. In Eric Yahnker‘s Bearded Asterisk, the collage came before the drawing, chopped and composed digitally and reconstructed in graphite on the paper. Likewise, Bjorn Copeland‘s Kokomo and Tobacco/Beta Carnage’s Hawker Boat are both the kind of video collages you might wind up with whirling a razor in a local access hell-vault, composed of weird, surreal, and sort of familiar bits from just about everywhere.

That slant towards extra eclecticism infects much of the art in the show. There is that certain aesthetic flavor to much of the work that is hard to name but easy to recognize. I’d call it psychedelic, but its visual intensity and chaotic content would be a hard microdot to swallow; no, this is closer to digital psychosis, a glitchy tour of shit culture with saturation at max, an intense absurdism. Its the flavor of Dan Deacon, Tim and Eric, of a purely aesthetic reading of Ulysses with 3D glasses on, and perhaps most crystally of the split second random commercial drop spliced between breaks of a show you recorded years ago on VHS. It feels very west coast, though its not entirely separate from the visual intensity and weirdo content of Chris Millar or Patrick Lundeen.

Whatever you want to call it, its here to see, more (see Pecis, Yahnker, and both video artists) or less (see Matt Irie’s Loomy Tombs) in every piece. Even Mackensie’s subdued natural collages have a hint of strange collission.

By the way, I’m calling it drop culture.

Not only is this the strongest show yet at Ebersb9, control c, control v is really just way too good for being only the third opening at a brand new apartment gallery. Had Ryan and Sara and Dominic been given enough space to exhibit larger works from the same artists this show could easily compare to and compete with any exhibition currently in Chicago. As it is, control c, control v still packs in a solid group without overburdening the main space.

Though the backroom/bathroom is getting crowded.

I give it a:

8.53, give or take .01

control c, control v runs from July 17th to August 15th, 2009 @ Ebersb9, 1359 W. Chicago Ave.