Weekend Preview: Its all happening at once.

Liu Bolin

This weekend is the big fuck all weekend when every gallery in the city opens its doors with new shows and a new season. Art districts will surge with freshly minted art students and seasoned art connoisseurs alike and Grolsch will be consumed by the kiloliter and no one will actually see much art but that’s okay, they’ll come back on Monday if they really care.

What matters here is that there are too many galleries to list, and almost too many good ones to list too, so I’ll put down only the ones I would see if I weren’t spending the whole weekend at the Flat Iron Arts Building as part of their Fall Smartshow. Never mind the creepy drunks on the splash page, come by and check out my own work or chat about art with me, but don’t tell me what I’m missing on the outside.

Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin

William Staples @ 65 Grand

Opening Friday, September 11th from 7:00 – 10:00 PM @ 1378 W. Grand Ave.

Ed Flood @ Corbett vs. Dempsey

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 9:00 PM @ 1120 N. Ashland Ave, 3rd Floor.

Family View @ The Family Room

Opening Friday, September 11th from 7:30 PM – 12:00 AM  @ 1821 W. Hubbard, Apt. #202.

Kim Curtis @ Kasia Kay

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM @ 1044 W. Fulton Mkt.

Melanie Schiff @ Kavi Gupta

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM @ 835 W. Washington Blvd.

Caleb Weintraub @ Perimeter Gallery

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM @ 118 N. Peoria.

Luis Gispert @ Rhona Hoffman

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 7:00 PM @ 118 N. Peoria.

John Stezaker @ Richard Gray Gallery

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM @ 875 N. Michigan, Ste. 2503.

Craig Doty @ Roots and Culture

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 – 9:00 PM @1034 N. Milwaukee.

Liu Bolin @ Schneider

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 7:30 PM @230 W. Superior.

Pinata Smashing Spectacle @ Spoke

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 – 10:00 PM @119 N. Peoria.

Molly Springfield @ Thomas Robertello

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM @ 939 W. Randolph.

Philip von Zweck @ threewalls

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 – 9:00 PM @119 N. Peoria.

Robyn O’Neil @ Tony Wight

Opening Friday, September 11th from 6:00 – 9:00 PM @119 N. Peoria.

Vivan Sundaram @ Walsh

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM @118 N. Peoria.

Dan Attoe & Paul Nudd @ Western Exhibitions

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM @119 N. Peoria.

Amy Casey @ Zg Gallery

Opening Friday, September 11th from 5:30 – 7:30 PM @ 300 W. Superior.

I’ll be adding to this list as more information comes my way. This doesn’t even include the shows opening on Saturday, which at least include a cool looking show at a brand new Logan Square apartment gallery, No More Worlds @ Concertina Gallery, with an opening Saturday, September 12th from 7:00 – 10:00 PM, at 2351 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd Floor, and Jessica Labatte @ Scott Projects, opening Saturday, September 12th from 6:00 – 10:00 PM @1542 N Milwaukee Ave #3.

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No More Perfect Moments @ Scott Projects

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 Justin Kelly and Andrew Laumann respectively and their show is called No More Perfect Moments.

Scott Projects

Scott Projects

Justin Kelly’s work is locked on the point of intersection between disaster and entertainment. His three digital/found photo grids pictured below aren’t all images of disasters, but they feel like it. Most are harmless scenes of controlled danger – roller coasters, fireworks, shark tanks, etc – but throw in the occassional flaming Ferrari and the potential for disaster present in every photo is suddenly engaged, as if the next and last photo on digicam would surely be the spiderweb cracks in the shark tank.

Justin Kelly

Justin Kelly

Justin Kelly

Justin Kelly

With this mixture of potential and realized violence, Kelly turns every image into a bomb. His video installation, a large wide shot of a shark tank with tourists marveling at the bottom, makes for a frightening example of the proximity between danger and delight. The work has suspense and beauty, all bathed in the false coral sand blues of an artificial beach.

Justin Kelly

Justin Kelly

Andrew Laumann’s work came off less about us as himself, an inward facing archive of a former punk life. There are a lot of items to examine, everything from tarred kicks to an unwound Nirvana cassette to a couple rusting nails. Mixed with these are plenty of photographs, some found and some larger digital prints but most disposible camera snapshots of anonymous friends, each neatly framed.

Andrew Laumann

Andrew Laumann

The work came at me in two ways and I never was able to decide which was more important. On one hand, Laumann’s work could easily read as a bunch of shit from his apartment that had been hung cleanly on gallery walls, each item serving as a relic of a punk rock history traded for something more modern and aware. Equally possible, the work could represent a false history or an engineered display, with objects and items included to stand for the multitude of similar stuff from the era that could be honored in the same way our parents might cling to the relics of their 1960’s and 70’s past, but which we (and I use that word broadly) don’t consider as significant.

Andrew Laumann

Andrew Laumann

While neither interpretation make ups for the general blandness of the actual work, I’d prefer to think of its conceptual thrust as the latter, a critique on a generation’s apathy toward its moment of cultural definition. Then again, the spirit of the era may have been apathy itself, so its possible that in rejecting our history we may be sticking to its character. Laumann may have been anticipating the critical question of whether to throw away your Gang of Four albums or play them for your kids.

Andrew Laumann

Andrew Laumann

As a name for the show, No More Perfect Moments does a good job of knitting the fireball potential of Justin Kelly’s work with the anti-nostalgia of Andrew Laumann’s, but thought the two have apparently been collaborating for some time, they don’t seem to overlap much beyond geography. Still, Kelly’s video pieces create a very effective and anxious impression and Laumann’s installed works present a good conversational topic, so it’d be a good show to catch before every gallery in the world has their opening next Friday.

I give it a:

6.5

No More Perfect Moments runs August 29th through September 11th at Scott Projects, 1542 N. Milwaukee, Apt. #3.

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Seven Artists of the Week – at Your Door

This week’s picks from Ryan. Don’t worry! Click images for more!

Folkert De Jong, Halleluja (detail)

Folkert De Jong, Halleluja (detail)

Damien Flood, Unchartedlake

Damien Flood, Unchartedlake

Naoki Koide, New Home

Naoki Koide, New Home

Black Acid Co-op, Russs

Black Acid Co-op, Russs

Edie Fake, Gay Utopia Symposium p.40

Edie Fake, Gay Utopia Symposium p.40

André Butzer, Obstgarten

André Butzer, Obstgarten

Jacob Ciocci, Rainbow Days

Jacon Ciocci, Obstgarten

Wednesdays are haunted!

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Ephameron @ Believe Inn

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 fluid ability to bring the vector aesthetic and mobile composition of digital illustration into traditional media.

If you like pretty birds and houses, there will be plenty to throb at; but if you like to wonder why everyone is using collage and fucking graphite in 2009, this might be a more thought-provoking show too.

Ephameron, Collages

Ephameron, Collages

There are five or six separate bodies of work in Letting Go. Two are digital, three are traditional two-dimensional media, and one is sculptural (some cute feathers which were jigged out in the back studio with blades surely bobbing nervously along an unfamiliar, less reassuring path). The grids of the digital work are balanced and blasted by the heavily drifting feathers, black duct tape wall piece and the overlapping display of the drawings.

Ephameron at Believe Inn

Ephameron at Believe Inn

The display of the show isn’t too unique or novel, but then the work really doesn’t provide many conceptual plates to spin. In Letting Go, like goes with like and it serves the work well.

Ephameron, Book

Ephameron, from Love/Pain

Throw in a pair of really beautiful books, and the amount of work to look at is more than satisfying. I shouldn’t make these two out to be anything less than awesome, so I’ll repeat that: these books are awesome. You will buy them for your girlfriend and she will love them and you will love them and you both will spend the rest of your relationship fighting over them. Get them here.

Ephameron, from FOUND+LOST

Ephameron, from Found+Lost

But once my greatly appreciated eyeball wash of beauty and craft finished was done, it was the play between digital and traditional that really me in the gallery. (Though it didn’t keep me long enough to catch Stan Chisholm’s Moneybags, so if you did feel free to let us all know how that was.)

The best place to start talking about that sisterhood would be with the drawings.

Every drawing has been made with what looks like a number two pencil, somewhere between sharp and dull, and with only a single kind of line. There are no stressed heavy lines or gentle light lines here, just a regular, medium pressure, mostly straight contour line. The artist rarely crosshatches, though value is built up occasionally by near marks. It’s incredibly straightforward. This same approach to drawing is called back on the wall piece, which with only black electrical tape makes the line even less dramatic.

Ephameron, Drawings

Ephameron, Drawings

Where have we seen this kind of use of line before? I’ll blame Adobe. Like the gentle blends in a tattooist’s notebook or the (stolen) Prismacolor marker puffs in a graffito’s sketchbook, this tactical, vectory, undecorative use of line is as familiar in digital composition as it is unfamiliar here on paper. Add in the use of cut and paste collage and (mostly) fill painting, and you’ve got a very casually integrated set of formal tools borrowed from any image manipulation software. I could even go so far as to point to the use of erasable graphite as a tangible analog to the infinitely erasable digital line.

This is different from conceptual digital/material translation pieces. This is perhaps more significant in that it isn’t conceptually driven, just stylistically present. Its part of the deep structure.

Ephameron, Drawings

Ephameron, Drawings

Now I’m pretty sure that every traditional media artist, especially in the face of increasingly capable artistic software, hedged on an inevitable return to traditional, tangible, and unique art objects. I sure did. Whether by painterly conspiracy, market pressure, or (more likely) the towering height of the digital stack of shit produced since fine artists first got their hands on hacked copies of Photoshop, we were mostly right. But while the one-off framed piece of art is still king, maybe we’re not so post-digital as we think. If the digital influence on traditional art-making has been overlooked, Ephameron’s Letting Go may be a good place to start seeing ghosts.

I give it a:

7.3

Ephameron‘s Letting Go runs August 29th through September 30th @ Believe Inn, 2043 N. Winchester.

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Gimme Baby Robots @ The Empty Bottle (tonight!)

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a sweet auction tonight at The Empty Bottle. If you’re looking for top shelf art on a dime, Gimme Baby Robots is your kind of event: auctions start at just a few bucks – and with works from over a hundred artists including Jason Dunmars and Mike Rea on the block, you’re sure to make those dollars stretch.

Melissa Steckbauer

Melissa Steckbauer

Gimme Baby Robots is tonight only, August 31st from 8:00 – 10:45 PM @ The Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.

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Artphone: Wildlife Features @ Fill in the Blank Gallery

Better late than never: Mary from Fill in the Blank Gallery called last Thursday to talk about the relatively new gallery’s definitely new show, Wildlife Features from artist and illustrator Kyle Harter. The show opened Friday, but it runs through to September 26th at 5038 N. Lincoln Avenue. Here’s the free sounds:

Kyle Harter, theramin

Kyle Harter, Theramin

And as always, if you’ve got a show and want to leave voicemails for me about your show, you can do that!

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Weekend Preview: When the oceans rise, we’ll be the new New York

Its an alt-space weekend!

Open House @ Evan Lennox’s Apartment

Its an SAIC party! Its a one night apartment gallery! Evan Lennox sent me an e-mail about this show he’ll be hosting with André Lenox and Lynnette Miranda, featuring work by a dozen Chicago artists including Brad TroemelEric Ashcraft, and Syniva Whitney. Check out more information at Curatorial Community, or view the full flyer here.

Opening reception this Friday, August 28th, from 5:30 – 9:00 PM @ 3106 W. Fullerton, Apartment #1.

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Ephameron @ Believe Inn

From Antwerp and beyond and with prints and drawings and tape comes the very prodigious Eva Cardon, aka Ephameron. Her new show titled Letting Go will be showing this month at Believe Inn, but also keep an eye out for the Moneybags project (a shared pet of Stan Chrisholm, who was recently reviewed here for the Built show in St.  Louis).

Opening reception this Saturday, August 29th from 6:00 – 10:00 PM @ Believe Inn, 2043 N Winchester.

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Ephameron, Drowning in Nostalgia

No More Perfect Moments @ Scott Projects

Speaking of Brad Troemel, and speaking of apartment galleries too,  two Maryland artists will be showing at Brad Troemel’s Scott Projects apartment gallery. With photos and video and paintings, No More Perfect Moments will see Andrew Laumann and Justin Kelly tackling cultural rot and personal banality and other Nathan Williams-y themes.

Opening reception this Saturday, August 29th from 6:00 – 10:00 PM @ Scott Projects,1542 N Milwaukee, Apartment #3.

Andrew Laumann

Andrew Laumann

Julia Hechtman @ Dan Devening Projects + Editions

Sunday brings cropped up nature photos from Julia Hechtman at Dan Devening’s space. The show is titled Irrationalism and will include some new photos which look to trade clever irony for compositional carpendry on an unplaced mystery safari.

Opening reception this Sunday, August 30th, from 4:00 – 7:00 PM @ Dan Devening Projects + Editions, 3039 W Carroll.

Julia Hechtman, Orange Top

Julia Hechtman, Orange Top

That’s all I know for now. If you’ve got the scoop on something worth seeing, let us know.

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Seven Artists of the Week – for Seven Sisters

Another set of artists to check out courtesy of Ryan Travis Christian. Delicious. As always, click images for more, and don’t forget to check the ebersb9 review I just put up and immediately bumped down with this.

Chris Vasell, SELF (landscape)

Chris Vasell, SELF (landscape)

Jules De Balincourt, Holy Arab

Jules De Balincourt, Holy Arab

Justin Eddy, There is a party in bed and we're all invited

J. Austin Eddy, There is a party in bed and we're all invited

Carol Dunham, Leaf (two)

Carol Dunham, Leaf (two)

Jen Stark, Candyland

Jen Stark, Candyland

Dan Attoe, Accretion #39 (The World is Expanding - You Don't Know Anything)

Dan Attoe, Accretion #39 (The World is Expanding - You Don't Know Anything)

Patrick Brennan, Coat of Arms (detail)

Patrick Brennan, Coat of Arms (detail)

Blackest part of night.

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Google Searching for God @ ebersb9

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 display, the latest show from the dynamic ebersb9 duo is much more of a thinker more than a looker – but that’s okay, there’s plenty to think about here.

Jason Ferguson, Google Searching for God

Jason Ferguson, Google Searching for God

If you’re into the classic omniscient Deity model, the idea of Google as God isn’t too far of a stretch. Even if you’re not ready to kneel on your keyboard, you could probably admit that there is something strange and magic and special about looking for something online. With the right eye, the search itself is fascinating.

Since we all add data to the searchable material (the internet) at a faster rate than any human can observe, the searchable material becomes (at least for the human user) functionally infinite. For every bean you count, two are being added to the pile. While less romantic than trying to count the stars (and filled with a lot more pornography), I’m sure everyone has at once time marveled at the kind of unknowable infinity of the internet. I’m sure Jason Ferguson has.

Jason Ferguson, Google Searching for God (detail)

Jason Ferguson, Google Searching for God (detail)

Ferguson’s sculptural piece (also named Google Searching for God) consists of a scroll on which has been inklessly typed the entire page source of Wikipedia’s God entry. Each instance of the word God has been lit from below, through cuts made on the wooden surface on which it rests. Like any good relic, it is both beautiful and appears supernatural, revealing a human craft and undertaking of monk-like dedication.

The important thing to remember is that like all religious material, the pieces in this show were artificial – not only physically but also in their content, determined by the crowd culturally or otherwise,  generated through emergence and individually selected on by the artist for elevation and confirmation. While this piece references God, the piece itself first references the Wikipedia page, another man-made structure and one that in this context makes a convincing real-time candidate for enlightened text.

Jason Ferguson, God Sighting A

Jason Ferguson, God Sighting A

Ferguson’s two Google Maps images, while not really adding anything to the content that wouldn’t be brought up in the scroll and sculpture, are none the less satisfying visual accompaniments to this central piece. Blown up and saturated, the satellite imagery works very well as art object, with their pixelation encouraging viewers to approach and retreat to bring them to focus in that well-known op-art gallery dance. If you feel like seeing the original to compare, here’s God Sighting A in its original context. It looks better at the gallery.

Jason Ferguson, Google Sighting B

Jason Ferguson, Google Sighting B

When you put these three works together and wonder at the point, you might come to conclusion that the deity most separate from humanity is most often found buried in its crawling development, its web-weaving, and its organic self arrangement. Wikipedia is the ultimate emergent model for knowledge, with millions of users determining its form; Google’s search engine runs on PageRank, a system is entirely dependent on the entire internet ‘s intelligence to decide what is most relevant and important; and the satellite/God’s eye image is constantly used as a method of illustrating the odd algorithmic growth patterns of human construction.

Using such real inhuman and limitless ways to search for the cultural embodiment of inhuman and limitless is a clever mirrored elevator, and it doesn’t bother me that this sort of recursion can easily come off as absurdity or humor. Recursion is always absurd, as in when I ask a dog to pronounce “bark” or put a car in your car so you can drive while you drive, and there’s always a risk that it may distract those who haven’t played blow-minded awe-struck with Google Earth for weeks like I have from getting past the humor. As potentially absurd as its premises are, if take Google Searching for God seriously, it crafts a compelling conversation between concepts as apparently diverse as the divine and the online.  Not bad for an end of summer show.

I give it a:

7.8

Google Searching for God runs August 21st, 2009 to September 19th, 2009 @ ebersb9, 1359 W. Chicago Ave, apartment B9.

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Transparent Reflect @ The Co-Prosperity Sphere

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 of setting and treatment as a reflection of the artist. In short, its that added context that makes portraiture the fun it is.

While not strictly a “Portraiture in 2009” show, a challenge to any show like this is that it inevitably operates like a body of evidence: here are thirty pieces of art picked from nine artists, all of whom are young and human and generally doing the same thing which has been done for a long time. But while the show includes some very strong works, detectives beware: if you’re heading in expecting to gain by commonalities some insight about how emerging artists are viewing themselves and their peers at the end of this decade, you might not find much of an answer.

Swoon
Swoon

Speaking of really strong work, the fact that the two prints from Swoon came from Ed (Edmar) Marszewski’s personal storage makes me wonder what else he’s got up there. Back from “before Swoon was Swoon,” these two pieces which apparently never made it to the wheat paste were instead well framed and hung wonderfully against the east wall like sentries for the black lit hollow of fellow street artist Goons‘ installation. While the latter presented fun and illustrative and modestly fucked up paste ups, Swoon’s pieces had the hammer elegance and expansive community narrative that one expects to find in a Courbet rather than in an alley way.

Goons
Goons

Then again, Goons is alive and well and in Chicago and had a display of random shit for free.

Nick Wylie, Men I Would Marry

Nick Wylie, Men I Would Marry

I probably got the full title wrong, but Nick Wylie’s Men I Would Marry (Drawn for as Long as They Lasted) is one of the most immediately visible and the more challenging works at the show. Sixteen crotches and cocks, hastily sketched in charcoal and gridded large on the wall present a visual document of friends or lovers or both and their stamina in one way or another. I liked the work’s dependence on experience to deliver its form and though its probably the most fitting example of the curator’s theme, I did have problems with the form itself.

While the work’s appearance and construction are intrinsic to the idea that generated them (provided the title can be believed), I found Wylie’s charcoal on rag paper distractingly plain despite, okay, its art school attachments to the nude and yeah, its utility as a fast medium. I’ve probably been spoiled by artists who can figure out how to fit strong and interesting craft into any concept that doesn’t specifically prohibit it.

Matt Austin

Matt Austin

To some degree, I felt the same about Matt Austin‘s photography and audio piece. This was probably the most conceptually gripping piece in the show, with a narrative that followed me out the door, into the car, and back home, but the presentation didn’t always strike well with the content. The work consisted of a tent, with an audio reading of an e-mail exchange surrounding his father’s eviction and a slideshow of photos detailing that eviction projected against one wall. I thought it all worked together well, establishing a sympathetic space for its narrative, but was a little put off by the delivery of the reading, which, while pretty hard to listen to after a few minutes, did render the eviction tale less dramatic, more common, and maybe scarier for all that.

Zach Aubucker, Breaking Cycles Like This is Really Difficult For Me (from Sleep)

Zach Abubeker, Breaking Cycles Like This is Really Difficult For Me (from Sleep)

While painting was surprisingly light (only one painter was included, Kristen Flemington, and her work was pretty straightforward portraiture and pattern), photography was well represented. Maureen Peabody‘s sparkling misty glamor portraits were easy on the eye and light on the head, and Anna Shteynshleyger‘s wigs were an interesting departure and, with their culture and fiber, a bit heavier on the head. Zach Abubeker‘s Sleep photos looked familiar, but still made for damn fine portraiture.

Adam Golfer, from *kin

Adam Golfer, from *kin

Adam Golfer‘s three photos from his German *kin travel series are the strongest of the bunch, especially the one featured above and titled in the show but nowhere else (someone find this out for me). The history and tradition of the traveling artist, while now mostly limited to photographers, still just might be the best overlap between self and sight and other. This picture isn’t really anything clever or tricky, only that somewhere in the excellent composition and movement and the mysterious model/travel-partner’s clenched fists the work excels.  Such easy snapping of an apparently unposed shot suggests an experienced eye, which an online tour of Golfer’s work definitely confirms.

While there were one or two artists who didn’t do much for the concept of the show, I’d say that Aron and Caitlin did a good job putting it all together. While the strength of the work included in Transparent Reflect (especially the two Swoon pieces) would make the show worth a visit on its own, there is plenty of conceptual meat on the bone too. I give it a:

7.5

Transparent Reflect runs August 21st through September 24th (?) at The Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 South Morgan.

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Sunday Night Discussion Post

I only saw two shows this weekend but I just know there were more out there. What did you see? What did you like? Use the Comment feature below and tell me all about it.

I think of Tony Tasset every time I pee.

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Chicago Art Preview : Decide that this matters.

A weekend preview post!

Jason Ferguson @ ebersb9

Unlike chemtrail theories and fleshlight cleaning techniques, the Google search engine may not be the best place to find God. Or maybe it is! Ebersb9 will be hosting relics from Jason Ferguson‘s Google Searching for God, his infinity-long multi-media project detailing his search for the almighty on the Internet. Check out the opening on Friday, August 21st, 6-9 PM @ ebersb9, 1359 W. Chicago, apartment B9.

Jason Ferguson, God Sighting A

Jason Ferguson, God Sighting A

Transparent Reflect  @ The Co-Prosperity Sphere

Also posted as The Portrait Show, this southmore group exhibition will feature artwork exploring portraits and self portraits as they fit with the contemporary moment. I haven’t been to the Sphere since I watched Lord of the Yum Yum blow out the eardrums of a ecstatic five year old. That’ll be hard to top. Transparent Reflect opens Friday, August 21st, at 6 PM @ The Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 South Morgan.

Adam Golfer, Kin (9)

Adam Golfer, Kin 9

Joe Grimm and Ben Russell @ Vega Estates

Two one-night only installations go up in Pilsen’s Vega Estates this Saturday: Joe Grimm’s The World of Things in Themselves, a sensual projector show that appear to mesmerize with epileptic phasing and Ben Russel‘s An Incantation for Eternity, a five part projector and speaker and prism and feedback magic dust installation that will possibly create pentagrams in the air. Too much fun to miss. Both shows open Saturday, August 22nd, 6 – 10 PM @ Vega Estates, 723 W 16th Street.

A motherfucking CONE OF LIGHT

A motherfucking CONE OF LIGHT

Painting Competition @ Around the Coyote

There’s a 1st Annual for everything, including this competition from the freshly Splat Flat folks of Around the Coyote, curated by Sara Schnadt. Check it out this Saturday, August 22nd, 6 – 9 PM @ Around the Coyote, 1817 w division street.

Mark Hansen, Lifted Up, Leveled Off

Mark Hansen, Lifted Up, Leveled Off

Also be sure to go to the secret show. If you know what I’m talking about, I’ll see you there!

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Seven Artists of the Week – Deadly

Here’s something new I’m going to try:  The following picks are from Ryan Travis Christian, who has been posting an artist of the day pretty much every day on Facebook, and who has given me the nod to combine them into weekly posts. Look back next Wednesday for the next set!

Click on images for links.

Banks Violette, Not Yet Titled (dwg09_02)

Banks Violette, Not Yet Titled (dwg09_02)

Eddie Martinez, Against The Wind

Eddie Martinez, Against The Wind

Charlie White, Teen and Transgender Comparative Study #4

Charlie White, Teen and Transgender Comparative Study #4

James Benjamin Franklin, Prayer

James Benjamin Franklin, Prayer

William J. O'brien, Untitled

William J. O'brien, Untitled

Denise Kupferschmidt, Superpositions 2

Denise Kupferschmidt, Superpositions 2

Tauba Auerbach, Stacking (YES), Stacking (NO)

Tauba Auerbach, Stacking (YES), Stacking (NO)

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Built @ Laumeier Sculpture Park

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, a project which supports and exhibits local St. Louis area artists. Entitled Built, the show brought together six installation artists to run free in the space with sound and light and paint and sculpture and thousands of keyboard keys.

Sarah Frost

Sarah Frost, QUERTY

Sarah Frost’s two installations White Wall and QUERTY are very intense recycled or recollected constructions. QUERTY features untold numbers of keyboard keys from floor to ceiling on four walls of a small room. Like many resale/found object artists, Frost’s main focus seemed to be giving new and functionless purpose to objects whose have had a history of function (sort of like Walmart greeters), however there’s more life here than just that. Between the history present in the discoloration and wearing of the keys, their obsessive scope in display, and the tightness of the room in which they were installed, I could feel a more claustrophobic, overwhelming blankness.

Sarah Frost, White Wall

Sarah Frost, White Wall

That same disquiet was brought through with White Wall, another floor to ceiling self-supporting construction that seemed to have arranged itself by itself like a magnetic and sentient game of Tetris. I was creeped and glad for it.

Stan Chrisholm

Stan Chisholm, Mobile Homes

In another room, street artist and SAIC graduate Stan Chisholm had installed a three dimensional mural called Mobile Homes made of mostly paint and painted polystyrene foam with clothed strawmen emerging from and interacting with the work. Displaying either a great floor or tornado or stony disaster, the mural had color and graphic thundering along together. I have a feeling Chrisholm is snappable, someone to watch for.

Stan Chrisholm, Mobile Homes

Stan Chrisholm, Mobile Homes

St. Louis outsider artist Chris Norton (who is white) installed in his room a Darfur horror tale through a series of Bic pen and wallpaper drawings. The disjointed portraits stood beside unsettling first person narratives of victims of the civil war, set against harsh red walls and what could either be an unlit pyre or a thin-legger equestrian constructed along one wall and across the floor.

Chris Norton, Genocide in Darfur

Chris Norton, Genocide in Darfur

Probably the most challenging installation in the group, Norton’s Genocide in Darfur came off as a very sincere and earnest and concerned work, but I found the narratives uncomfortably unconvincing. Something in the language seemed off. I couldn’t tell if they were translated directly from the individuals shown beside them, or whether they were invented or imagined to pair with the portraits’ source photographs. Though it presents a whole number of strange conflicts about purpose and invention, I would guess the latter.

Craig Norton, Genocide in Darfur

Craig Norton, Genocide in Darfur

The first room seen on entering the gallery features Michael Behle, with his large flower and speakers audio/visual installation titled Disintegration and a small painting (Your gentleness towards me) across from it.

Michael Mehle, Disintegration

Michael Behle, Disintegration

I like Michael Behle. I think his paintings are great, and am glad we in Chicago are fortunate to have access to them at the Peter Miller Gallery. I thought his sculpture was awful. The construction and execution was just too weak to support an idea – the artist’s function of absorbing nonsense from his audience and vomiting beauty in response – that isn’t interesting or convincing. The painting Behle chose to hang was much more interesting, but it would have looked better alone.

Michael Behle, Your gentleness towards me

Michael Behle, Your gentleness towards me

And finally, the largest installation room was occupied by a very atmospheric collaboration between Cameron Fuller (work buried in Flash here) and Sarah Paulsen. The pairing was too fun, with Fuller’s sculptural stagecraft and Paulsen’s excellent video and animations fitting perfectly together. With colored light and the dancing lines of a Django Reinhardt tune, the installation felt like an arm in arm carnival at terror twilight o’clock. As fun as it was, I bet it was more fun to put together.

Cameron Fuller and Sarah Paulsen

Cameron Fuller and Sarah Paulsen

The whole show was a happy break from the traditional heat and humidity of a middle mid-west August sculpture romp, a well put together, cohesive group show that might not be worth the drive for the average Chicagoan, but which was a great exhibition none the less. If you’re in that corner of the states, you have every reason to stop by and make a day of it.

I give it a:

7.7

Built: Kranzberg Exhibition Series runs June 6th, 2009 to September 6th, 2009 @ The Laumeier Sculpture Park‘s Indoor Galleries, 12580 Rott Road, St. Louis.

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No News is Good News

Unfortunately I’m spending a lot of this month on vacations that I cannot afford and am therefore missing three weeks of art openings in a row and as a result I have nothing to write about because I haven’t seen anything new. I don’t feel too bad about this weekend, considering that many (of my favorite) galleries are taking it off too, but blogs are like very tall people or haunted wine and get creepy when left alone to age.

Here are images from artists I like right now. Click on images for links.

Scott Dickson, I Smile When it Looks Like Rain

Scott Dickson, I Smile When it Looks Like Rain

Carsten Höller, Amethist, Garnets, Saphires, Aquamarine, Quartz, Topaz, Rubies, and Turmaline Inside of an Owl

Jason Dodge, Amethist, Garnets, Saphires, Aquamarine, Quartz, Topaz, Rubies, and Turmaline Inside of an Owl

(removed at artist’s request)

Mark Freedman, Crybaby

Mark Freedman, Crybaby

Shaun O’Dell, Oracle Falcon (video still)

Shaun O’Dell, Oracle Falcon (video still)

Enjoy the hot eats and cool tweets of summer.

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Weekend Preview (Romance)

Lots of cool stuff happening this weekend and I’ll miss all of it; so enjoy it twice over, I’ll be somewhere else.

Chris Silva & Lauren Feece @ Believe Inn

Believe Inn opens a new show this weekend titled Mating Call and featuring the kinda adorable collaborative work of husband and wife team Chris Silva (dope tunes) & Lauren Feece (dopest strokes). I had such a good time with Believe Inn’s last show, I’ll recommend this one sight unseen. Show opens Friday July 31st (with reception 6-10 PM) and will run through August 23rd @ Believe Inn, 2043 N Winchester.

Chris Silva & Lauren Feece, Couples Meditation Party

Chris Silva & Lauren Feece, Couples Meditation Party

Joanna Goss @ Dovetail

Speaking of adorable, Noble Square’s plushest vintage shop is showing brand new work by Joanna Goss. Probably the best match of art and calender ever, with summer camp summer tans summer vans cookout sleepover craft craft. Show opens Friday, July 31st with reception from 8-11 PM @Dovetail, 1452 W Chicago Ave.

Joanna Goss

Joanna Goss

Megan Plunkett @ Golden Age

Like Kingsboro Press? Then you already like Megan Plunkett! Her installation’s been up all month, but I’ll plug now because it closes Saturday. Catch Megan Plunkett’s I don’t care about the rest of the yearGolden Age, 1744 W. 18th Street.

(click the dog)

(click the dog)

Justin Cooper @ The Museum of Contemporary Art

Local SAIC professor and all around good guy Justin Cooper will be performing Vay Kay, another clutch of very wacked summer-centric vacation art, all weekend at the MCA. His first performance, Crater, actually started this last Tuesday, but you can catch some kind of video of it here and see the other three today (Noon – 5 PM), tomorrow (all day), and saturday (Noon – 5 PM) @ The Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Avenue.

Justin Cooper, Untitled (Pumpkin)

Justin Cooper, Untitled (Pumpkin)

Happy summer.

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Keil Borrman & David G.A. Stephenson @ The Suburban

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 ten space, is a multimedia installation by David G.A. Stephenson entitled Songs for Suburbanites, an art rock display shipped in from the United Kingdom along with the charming artist himself.

@ The Suburban

Amelia Saddington, Notes

I thought Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo represented interesting work from interesting artists, but casually presented. Borrman‘s four paintings were good but scrappy (all were suggestively entitled November 3rd, 2008), Divya Mehra‘s photograph was also enjoyable but was only a selection of a series, and Malika Green & Alex Jovanovitch‘s piece was a funny one-off exquisite corpse. The Virginia Poundstone/Bel Canto design pairing was smart,  and the Amelia Saddington was beautiful.

Keil Borrman

Keil Borrman

What I mean is that it’d be impossible to complain about the work or the quality of the work, but the whole show together felt like it was curated by way of “So, what have you been up to?”. I’m okay with that. These shows are one of the benefits of having alternative spaces. And it led me to watch Divya Mehra‘s holy shit, insane videos like this one.

Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo

Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo

While the outbuilding was still done up as it was when Konsortium installed their “Eurostyle” show last month, Sebastian Freytrag‘s wallpaper fit perfectly (and ironically) with David G.A. Stephenson’s installation. I really enjoyed the three pronged iconoclastic combination of Americana (though limited specifically to the overlap between artists and musicians) by way of English fascination laid on a background of German design.

The show featured clips and collages of music and art history from art reviews to raisin boxes to magazine spreads pinned to the walls or spread on the ground before a television which played videos accompanying musical pieces by Stephenson and about, well, art.

David G.A. Stephenson, Songs for Suburbanites

David G.A. Stephenson, Songs for Suburbanites

Stephenson’s tunes were great, both poetic and funny in an appropriately Lou Reed-y way, and I liked being reminded of the history of (and crossover between) art and music and appreciated Stephenson’s enthusiasm in pointing out all the polymathic artists who made it happen.

Here’s his song, I Want Paint a Joke Like Richard Prince:

And another, I Want To Hang Out With Ed Ruscha:

The Suburban has an extensive description of his life and work here. For now, at least.

Dave Muller (Untitled)

Dave Muller (Untitled)

Not a new show, but one that I saw for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed, was a show of xerox prints put together by (and with the proceeds benefiting) the long-time, longest-time running New York alt space White Columns. With each piece in editions of 50 and priced at or around $150, it makes for a really smart, affordable show, and a great way of fund-raising with excellent art on a relative dime.

Xerox Show @ The Suburban

Xerox Show @ The Suburban

Pretty cool stuff all around. I’ll mash both shows together and give the whole experience a:

7.6

Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo & David G.A. Stephenson’s Songs for Suburbanites both run July 26th to September 5th @ The Suburban, 125 N. Harvey, Oak Park. Hours by appointment.

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Signs of the Apocalypse / Rapture @ Hyde Park Art Center

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 of local and international artists curated by Front 40 Press, who publish the critical survey book of the same name and from which is born this exhibition.

Eduardo De Soignie, Saint Child of Atocha

Eduardo De Soignie, Saint Child of Atocha

Signs of the Apocalypse / Rapture immediately brought up place and time as contributory issues. However foreboding the subject matter of this show, the HPAC’s main gallery space is so beautiful that the imagery of ruin and whirlwind destruction echo like hellfire in a megachurch. Whats even stranger is that the content of the show seemed five years old and politically unsynced, as if some time around the re-election of George W. Bush would have been the more appropriate moment for this show, the peak of doom, back when we were fucked for sure whether it was the terrorists or the neocons or the fags or the devil who would push the button.

Jon Elliott, Continental Drift

Jon Elliott, Continental Drift

Back then I could stare at a Julie Mehretu and imagine myself exploding.

Back then if someone asked me how I expected to die, I would have said “violently.”

Today, I’d say “broke.” Its a different kind of horror.

Ricky Allman, Apocolyzer

Ricky Allman, Apocolyzer

Emilio Perez (detail)

Emilio Perez (detail)

But while the horrible specter of poverty might be overlooked in the content of the artwork shown in Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture, the quality of artwork does invoke it. Putting an Emilio Perez next to a Julie Mehretu is enough to make any collector ache, and that pairing represents only two of the many top shelf artists who are represented. Though there are plenty of scenes of chaos and collapse, they’re matched with more somber images (David Opdyke‘s Undisclosed Location and Richard Misrach’s Swamp and Pipeline, Geismar, Louisiana) along with a few pictorial, appropriately scaled rapturous paintings (Nicola Verlato‘s Mothers 2, John Prianca‘s Autumn).

Caleb Weintraub

Caleb Weintraub (detail)

The only piece to actually disturb me was from Caleb Weintraub. I think. His painting is hung on the ominous black object in the middle of the gallery and, like the other pieces on that object, whether for misfortune or mystery or mistake, isn’t tagged so far as I could see. Hopefully they are by now.

Andrew Shoultz

Andrew Shoultz

Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Hisham Akira Bharoocha

In addition to the artwork in the main gallery, two wall pieces are included, both stellar and massive. The first is a boggling, visually ecstatic wall painting by Hisham Akira Bharoocha (who also has work in control c, control v), and directly across from it Andrew Schoultz‘ mural rampages down the hallway in a flaming ticker-tape parade. Both are excellent installations, and Schoultz’ piece is an especially appropriate up-sized companion to his painting in the main space.

Andrew Schoultz, Running with Chaos, Nature, War, & Power

Andrew Schoultz, Running with Chaos, Nature, War, & Power

I wish I had greater access to Front 40 Press’ Signs of the Apocalypse / Rapture book, whether at the show or online, as without the critical writing that informed the show I feel like I’m only getting one half the experience. I’m curious. However, when considering the quality and work on display, even my partial slice of the curatorial team’s complete vision may be enough. Signs of the Apocalypse / Rapture is simply an excellent show, a highly appreciated opportunity to see top flight work, and yet another excuse to get down to Hyde Park.

I give it a:

9.3

Signs of the Apocalypse / Rapture runs from July 19th to September 20th, 2009 @ the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave.

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Weekend Preview (i dont know what to dooo)

This weekend is pretty light for openings, but here’s what I’d see if I were you:

NAH POP NO CAT

NAH POP NO CAT @ Roots and Culture

SAMAD @ Nightingale Theater

Shirin Mazaffari and Ehsan Ghoreishi have curated an exhibition of short underground Iranian videos which, due to political or otherwise controversial content, have never been screened publically in Iran. Very cool event that I will definitely miss, so here’s hoping it plays again somewhere. SAMAD will be shown @ the Nightingale Theater, 1084 N Milwaukee Ave tonight, Friday, July 24th at 7:00 PM. $5 at the door.

Meg Onli @ Twelve Galleries

More than just a travelogue, more than just an art show, Meg Onli‘s Underground Railway Project is a multimedia exhibit which traces her journey from Montgomery County, Maryland, to Dresden, Ontario,  following the path of Josiah Henson, the man who inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Identity pilgrimage, very highway cool of course. Check out this more in-depth article (from Bad at Sports) and check out the show itself @ Twelve Galleries, 2156 West 21st Place (2nd Floor apartment) this Saturday, July 25th, 7:00 – 10:00 PM.

Keil Borrman @ The Suburban

Our friendly Oak Park ultra-alternative art space will be hosting a multi-media group show entitled Keil Borrman: I have not painted in a year. I have been listening to my stereo, with a bonus six-song presentation/wall installation from americana altrocker David G. A. Stephenson, and a triple double bonus of having bar-b-que for the opening. Check it out @ The Suburban, 125 N. Harvey Ave, Oak Park this Sunday, July 26th, from 2:00-4:00 PM.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, get down to the Hyde Park Art Center for their on-going show, Signs of the Apocolypse/Rapture. Say Hi to the Emilio Perez for me, I miss it already.

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Claire Rojas, Last Chance Weekend

One of the shows I enjoyed but never wrote about was Claire Rojas’ Believe MeKavi Gupta. A folk fantasy on massive and micro scales, Believe Me is a blender trip through imagination and culture with narratives as endearing and bizzare as any real folk lore. As a kicker, their second space features the show Variations on a Theme, worth seeing for more than just the Angel Otero pieces.

Recognize the Lights?

Recognize the Lights?

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

Claire Rojas @ Kavi Gupta

If you haven’t made it up to Kavi Gupta yet, this weekend is your last chance for a bit – the shows go down on the 25th, and the next exhibition (Melanie Schiff) isn’t scheduled until September 11th. Some other shows to catch before they close: SAIC’s Making Modern closes this Saturday, Tony Wight will be taking down his two shows next Friday until the Robyn O’Neil show on 9/11, and Western Exhibitions will close out its two shows show next Saturday, with their 9/11 openening featuring Paul Nudd and Dan Attoe. Lots of stuff to see.

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