Daniel Lavitt @ Peregrine Program

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

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

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)

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 PEREGRINEPROGRAM500 W. Cermak Rd, 727.

Share

Comments 1

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.