(Note: I’m catching up on my backlog of shows I attended, photographed, and never wrote about. Enjoy the pictures and the brief summary.) Berry Sanders is a painter from Eindhoven, Netherlands (home of the Van Abbe Museum, recently mentioned here), and his show Tales From the Bubble was a series of large, black and white […]
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Posted 14 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.) The first show at the new Ebersmoore space was also the last show at the Ebersb9 space. Given the straightforward title of Group Painting Show, and including the work of Amy Mayfield, Howard […]
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Posted 14 November 2009
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39 Verbs was a one night event put on by Industry of the Ordinary at Packer Schopf. 39 artists were invited to create works based on a list of verbs taken from the IotO website’s history. Though a few artists chose to put in pieces were from their extant work, most took to the project […]
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Posted 14 November 2009
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Last week I wrote a bit about Eric Lebofsky‘s Superfreaks at the smaller of Western Exhibitions two spaces, with the promise of returning to examine the main space and Melissa Oresky‘s A Wildness of Edges. This here is that. To start with, a few weeks before the opening of her two local shows (she also has […]
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Posted 02 November 2009
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Heartland is about mid-western art: its existence, its creators and their motivations, its role and its history, and its place in the larger context of American and global culture. If that sounds like too big an undertaking for one show, you’re right – the Smart Museum show is only a younger sister, the second iteration […]
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Posted 31 October 2009
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Since Logan Square’s Concertina Gallery is pretty fresh and steaming, I’ll introduce their newest show by introducing the space itself: as I understand it, Concertina Gallery is the apartment gallery lovechild of directors and SAIC graduate students Katherine Pill and Francesca Wilmott, who, along with co-founder and former resident Corina Kirsch and design help from current […]
Here in Western Exhibitions second gallery space and separated (though barely) by frames rather than by posting dates, Lebofsky’s heroes hold themselves well, funny by way of observational comedy and clever by way of creepy absurdity.
Remember this psychotic painting at the Hyde Park Art Center‘s Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture show by Caleb Weintraub? It was the one with the kids with axes and the owl costumes and crushed space and the one which, when I wrote about that show, I complimented as the show’s “only piece to actually disturb me.” […]
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Posted 30 September 2009
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First some back story on Robyn O’Neil: Robyn is a Houston all-star who, while not doing the media rounds, cranks out me-sized graphite drawings which may pass as illustrative, narrative, and serial, with one leading to the next in a giant comic book panel approach to story-telling. As the tale goes, a little drawing of a track-suited […]
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Posted 28 September 2009
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Its quite possible that Scott Speh, owner and director of Western Exhibitions in the West Loop, is curating his 2009 exhibitions in order to destroy you. When examining the last few shows at the gallery, we find some aggressive works: first an eyeball assault show from Geoffrey Todd Smith show, followed by a Dutes Miller […]
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Posted 25 September 2009
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This last Sunday I made it back to Oak Park for the latest opening at The Suburban, which I experienced for all of twenty minutes before the sky opened and I had to run splashing for cover. While I didn’t have long to spend with the work, both Carl Suddath‘s installation in the small space […]
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Posted 24 September 2009
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The latest show at Scott Projects represents Baltimore’s second featured incursion into Chicago, but while NAH POP NO STYLE brought the painters, Brad Troemel‘s brought the photographers. And punk archivists. Okay, maybe just one photographer and one punk archiver, but they’re definitely from Baltimore and their work is definitely in Chicago and their names are […]
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Posted 04 September 2009
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Antwerpian artist and illustrator Ephameron‘s exhibition list stretches for Internet miles, but this Friday it got one line longer with her show Letting Go at Believe Inn. With travelogue subject matter and print-sketch composition, Ehpameron (real name Eva Cardon) put together a show which, while it included some digital prints, was best when demonstrating her […]
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Posted 01 September 2009
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Despite what everything from the title to the content and presentation of the work might suggest, I’m pretty sure that Jason Ferguson isn’t really concerned with God, or finding God, as much as he is in searching for him. With only three pieces installed, two of which are photographic prints and the third a sculptural relic […]
The very busy culture masters at the The Co-Prosperity Sphere put together a new show for us this weekend which features nine artists’ contemporary takes on the tradition of portraiture. Specifically, it was about the overlap between self portrait and portrait, that grey ground that exists in the relationship between artist and subject, the choice […]
I was touring through St. Louis this weekend and stopped by Laumeier Sculpture Park to walk and sweat and see their collection, which includes a killer Tony Tasset and a friendly Vito Acconci and many others. I was also very happy to find their indoor space filled with a group exhibition from the Kranzberg Exhibition Series, […]
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Posted 18 August 2009
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Two little shows opened this Sunday at The Suburban, the backyard super-space of Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam. The first, Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo, is a small collection of works by Borrman and six others. The second, located in the original ten by […]
Mystery replaces history this month at the Hyde Park Art Center, where the heavy and the high of contemporary art have been shaken south for one of the hottest shows of the summer. Following the curatorial undertaking that was Artists Run Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center’s Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture is a doomsday blend […]
I first dropped by Roots and Culture’s latest show on opening night, squeezed past the crowd outside and poked my head over shoulders of an unusually tall crowd to see the art, decided the tide had turned to afterparty early, and ran out. While too much crowd to see art with both eyes, not bad for […]
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 […]