New Icon was the Contemporary Arts Council annual show for 2010, located this year in the very nice and spacious Loyola University Museum of Art. The show was curated by Britton Bertran (well known for directing Gallery 40,000 and for many other projects since its closing) and included seven artists: Zachary Buchner, Pamela Fraser, Carrie Gundersdorf, Dan Gunn, Diana […]
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Posted 17 August 2010
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Here’s a late run review written earlier this summer by Paul Germanos. Thanks, Paul! Break a beverage bottle’s tamper-evident seal and a plastic ring falls free from the cap. According to the chosen brand’s marketing scheme including the improving of the website with the use of a SEO company, this Gilbert SEO Expert that can […]
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Posted 16 August 2010
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Last Saturday University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gallery 400 closed its late spring show, which had featured Eun Hyung Kim‘s wall paintings and drawn sculptures in the main space, a video by Erin Cosgrove, and, nestled between the two, paintings and a monumental artist’s book by Andy Moore titled John’s Luv. I’m not throwing that work […]
Despite what you may have read, Justin B. Williams is not dead. The lengthy and entertaining accompanying text for his latest exhibition Justin B. Williams: The last paintings (1985-2010) at Monument 2 describes the art-heroic discovery by Nevin Thomlison of the last paintings Justin executed before his equally heroic death saving a child from an […]
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Posted 14 June 2010
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I slipped into Kavi Gupta last week to check out Susan Giles‘ new show, Buildings and Gestures. I’d seen some of the promotional shots and remembered her sculptures from last year’s NEXT fair and had been expecting some average sized memory based sculptures, the kind of architectural combinations that show off the novelty of form removed from […]
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Posted 24 February 2010
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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 […]
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Posted 31 January 2010
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There have been a lot of shows lately with occult, mysterious, or power image content, but Elijah Burgher does more with the material than most. In his work on display at Shane Campbell‘s Oak Park space, Burgher knits together queer culture and witchcraft/sorcery/the occult with soft, muted drawings of nude men preparing spaces for and […]
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Posted 26 January 2010
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The folks at the Western Corridor shared live/work studio/venue/loft known asThe Hills Esthetic Center have recently added a fresh white cube and brick gallery to their space, and this last Friday kicked off their exhibition foray with a show of work from Mike Kloss called The Hills Have Thighs. While Kloss’ work spans plenty of […]
Mark Mulroney’s WEATHERBEE’S REVENGE is full of paintings that are dirty and gross and funny, operating on an adolescent paradigm where humor and violence and sexual fantasy are everything and interchangeable. Mulroney’s working process of painting his own depraved bodies under cut-out heads from Archie comics is simple enough, but the ridiculous narratives, awful jokes fit […]
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Posted 13 January 2010
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Despite their sharp cornered, faux-wood and steel physicality, there’s an undeniable comfort and familiarity to old school stereo equipment. Like a good tube amp or a vinyl record, they suggest a warmth of sound and barely retro aesthetic which brings invisible music closer to something tangible, simple, less scary, especially compared to the layered and compounded […]
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Posted 12 January 2010
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Party Crashers was Concertina’s curatorial take on the family and all the domestic confusion attached. They show featured a good balance of media, mostly photographs, but also prints by Canadian Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, fax letterpresses by Micah Lexier, and a gallery-wide performance by Stan Shellabarger and Dutes Miller of their ongoing and ever distancing Pink […]
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Posted 05 January 2010
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Holly Holmes and Tom Burtonwood‘s domestic gallery space project, What It Is, provides a nice and homey retreat for contemporary art in Oak Park. Their last show featured the work of Michelle Welzen Collazo Anderson, a Chicago native and painter who presented bright textile pattern work inspired by a pair of Blum Jerro shoes, and […]
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Posted 05 January 2010
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There is a certain elegance to Monument 2 special among DIY spaces, its high ceilings, stark white walls and glowing, well-maintained hardwood floors lending an edge and hone to the gallery. Fitting entirely with this style, both in its minimalist sheen and provisional underpinnings, comes SAIC undergrad Daniel Sullivan‘s SOFT THROAT, a solo exhibition most remarkable for […]
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Posted 13 December 2009
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As someone easily distracted, I have mixed feelings on music at galleries. As much as I enjoy looking at paintings, when there is music at a gallery I’ll spend more time staring at the performers or tracking the locations of speakers than I spend focusing my attention on the art. Some spaces are able to double […]
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Posted 07 December 2009
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Last Wednesday I drove in the middle of a rainy night to a place I’d never been before, parked in a gravel lot, and descended a staircase into a basement to see Brennan McGaffey‘s Fire and Judgment purging event. A model of the KC-135 Stratotanker occupied most of the basement, sitting on sawhorses, connected at […]
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Posted 07 December 2009
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Austin Eddy apparently hasn’t let the attention he’s received prevent him from turning corners, swapping influences, and sliding into new bodies of work. Trading trippy magic stages and Keegan McChargue for Matisse-ey interiors and Tyson Reeder, Eddy’s latest work was an intensely colorful look into work in flux. There’s something going on in painting – I’ve seen many […]
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Posted 29 November 2009
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A couple really good openings this weekend. Here’s what I’ll be trying to see: Nicholas Frank / Joe Hardesty @ Western Exhibitions Two text-based artists hang work this weekend at Western Exhibitions, Nicholas Frank‘s self describing biographical narrative projects and Joe Hardesty‘s self-describing drawings. Check out more info here. Both shows open with a reception […]
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Posted 19 November 2009
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With a new address, coat racks, a paneled ceiling and a floor covered in tiny stones, Old Gold has opened again with a one night show featuring the work of Aline Cautis, Josh Mannis and Andy Roche. There was the prevailing social element to the event of the kind expected at one night events, with the work itself giving […]
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Posted 16 November 2009
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(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 […]
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Posted 16 November 2009
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(Note: I’m catching up on my backlog of shows I attended, photographed, and never wrote about. Enjoy the pictures and the brief summary.) At the end of September, Dominican University’s O’Connor Gallery opened Site Unspecific, a group show which included work by Heather Mekkelson, Mara Baker, Adam Farcus, Rafael E. Vera, Brian Yates and Heidi Norton. The […]
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Posted 16 November 2009
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