I think I’ve had it with apartment galleries and alternative spaces, which have been one of the Chicago art scene’s special attractions for so many years. Trust me, I used to run one in the late ‘90s. Chicago has been there, done that, and even reinvented the brand. And as if to prove it, Allison Peters Quinn and Briton Bertran organized "Artist Run Chicago" at the Hyde Park Art Center last spring, a magnificent look back at a decade of such noteworthy hubs as Joymore, NFA Space (which showed Luis Gispert), Dogmatic (where Paul Chan started), Green Lantern, Polvo and Law Office "Artist Run Chicago" also posed one important question: Now what? In New York, young galleries grow into new powers. Chicago has a couple of museums and a couple of good galleries, but they’re stops on the international circuit rather than incubators of local talent. You can have museum shows here and never sell a thing. Let’s be honest, alienation can be depressing.

Well, Chicago can’t exactly fall back on its reputation as a world art center, like New York can. But it wasn’t all bad news. Here’s a brief retrospective of notable 2009 art events in the city.

Michigan Avenue
My top choice is rather predictable: The opening of the Art Institute of Chicago Modern Wing. Renzo Piano’s critically acclaimed, $300-million-plus, 264,000-square-foot addition to the AIC now stands alongside Wrigley Field and the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) as a must-see destination on every tourist list. But what about the locals? At $18 per person, it’s cheaper for a family of four to go to a baseball game than to enjoy a day of culture.

Me, I got my kicks for free (thanks, AICA), especially from Cady Noland’s OOZEWALD (1989), which looks grandiose inside Piano’s glass cathedral. The cut-out newspaper image of Oswald, at the moment of his assassination, peppered with oversized bullet holes, gagged with a U.S. flag, resonates today more than ever, given the Supreme Court’s gut-wrenching decision to turn the election process over to deep-pocketed corporations. It is also a sad reminder of how Barack Obama upholds the Bush Doctrine while the American voter plays the role of captive audience.

Cleverly installed next to Noland was Sue Williams’ early psycho-narrative It’s a new age (1992), a painting that dirties up the place with its beautiful yet aggressive take on misogyny. "I chose fat thighs," it reads, "ass holes, sew ‘em up." The experience is like watching hardcore porn starlet Sasha Grey going mainstream in the Girlfriend Experience. 

Across the street from the Art Institute is the Museum of Contemporary Photography, which did better with Chicago talent with its "Midwest Photographers Project," which featured Stacia Yeapanis, Curtis Mann (selected for the 2010 Whitney Biennial) and John Opera, the stand out, in a show called "MP3." Opera juxtaposes small geometric abstractions with large, sleek and threatening visions of nature.

Close by on Washington Street the Chicago Cultural Center hosted FMEL, a two-day "Festival de Musica Electronica Latina" that ran concurrently at the National Museum of Mexican Art in the neighborhood of Pilsen. Among the participants were the respected sound artist Manrico Montero, founder of net label Mandorla, and the New York-based ambient duo Arturo en el Barco (José Olivares and Angélica Negrón).

The couple -- a sort of adorably geekier version of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon -- played an intimate live set by building sounds digitally using diverse objects (a music box, bubble wrap, toy instruments) to make dreamy and emotional compositions that were quite capable of elating the crowd.


The West Loop
Sarah Hicks proved herself a force to be reckoned in her first solo exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery. Seductive, erotic and borderline decorative, Hicks’ brightly glazed ceramics are small objects suggestive of bits of coral reef, alien life forms and sex toys, were exhibited placed on top of a glass table. It was a strange brew of forms.

Another young artist to make an impact was my good friend Joseph Hardesty at Western Exhibitions (the gallery that represents me). Hardesty’s delicate handmade renderings on paper, almost transparent, of phrases, statements and verses seem to fade in and out, and exude a certain insecurity. The artist, who spent a year in Berlin thanks to a Gelman Travel Fellowship, articulates his feelings through vivid narrative metaphors involving horses, Vikings, gray cobblestones and flying monkeys.

Next door, at Three Walls, the renowned nonprofit cultural platform and residency, the art producer, DJ and all around personality Philip von Zweck had a suite of pretty, clumsy and conceptual figurative paintings that served as backdrop for a series of lectures organized specifically for the occasion.



Censorship on the South Side
Controversy is never in shortage when it comes to Chicago’s police and politicians. Such was the case when a mural by Gabriel Villa in the ethnically varied neighborhood of Bridgeport -- a mural, not graffiti -- was erased under the orders of alderman James Balcer. True, the artwork did show Jesus crucified on top of a CPD blue-light camera surveillance box, but it was privately commissioned for private property.

"I believe that was a threat," Balcer told the local news. "The dead deer, the skull, the cross, RIP, rest in peace was in there, that symbolizes death. And I don't know if it will incite gang violence or more trouble." Sad, that Latino religious iconography and customs celebrating the dead, not to mention urban displays of social discomfort on Chicago’s South Side, should provide an excuse to exercise bias and art censorship.

The incident is especially ironic considering the hopeful words from National Endowment for the Arts director Rocco Landesman quoted in the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 27. "Chicago has a mayor who sees the value of art in urban areas," Landesman said. "We have a president who is a writer, an artist, who gets artists. We have a first lady who understands the importance of the arts in education. We have a new era coming. Chicago will be ground zero."

Luckily, Antena, a space in Pilsen run by artist Miguel Cortez and one of the best the city has to offer, did not wait on Rocco’s promises and mounted an impressive survey of Villa’s large-scale drawings, as well as a recreation of the original lost work.

Off the Loop
Honorable mentions go to "This Shadow Is a Bit of Ideology"at UIC 400 and the Davis Langlois show at the Chicago Cultural Center which I wrote about last March; Merchant Adams for his hilariously serious mutations of stuffed animals representing racial mixes produced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas at Prak-sis; and Chelsea Knight’s "I Lay Claim to You"(with Khalia Frazier), a joyous single video projection of a dance loosely based on Margaret Mead’s 1938 description of a Balinese cremation at Julius Caesar.

Also, Deb Sokolow’s site-specific diagram about her Jewish heritage, and the fictitious narratives elaborated over corned beef at the Spertus Museum; and Dann Gunn’s post-minimalist constructions at Lloyd Dobler. In the end, nothing was as exciting as White Sox ace Mark Buehrle’s no-hitter on July 23 against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Twenty-seven batters retired -- a true masterpiece.
"Italics" at the MCA

Last but not least, a show that remains open for the upcoming College Art Association 2010 Annual meeting Feb. 10-13, 2010, is star curator Francesco Bonami’s "Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, 1968–2008," Nov. 14, 2009-Feb. 14, 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Bonami, who during his tenure as MCA senior curator made quite an impression on the local artists by never leaving his office, originally presented this show at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, where it was met by a barrage of negative reviews.

The revisionist survey pretends to make a political statement by salvaging lesser-known artists from the annals of Italian history. Bonami has washed his hands publicly on this issue, claiming that he is not a historian. We couldn’t agree more; he is more like a Sergio Leone of curators, presenting canned Italian culture for American audiences. But for a show that insists in resurfacing underrated or unknown names, it begins curiously with current market favorite Maurizio Cattelan.

Overall, "Italics" is not bad; it’s a dynamic ride, and most viewers could find something amazing in the 75-plus artist lineup. My favorite is Compagni, Compagni (1968) by bad-boy ‘60s painter Mario Schifano (1934-98), a spray-painted monochrome encased in translucent red plastic, depicting three silhouettes of "comrades," in this case seeming to be Vietnamese peasants (typically they hold a hammer and sickle, symbols of the "just solution to social contradictions," as Schifano inscribed other versions of the image).

Schifano, who might be called the Italian Andy Warhol -- which would make him a lover as well as a Pop artist; he supposedly stole Marianne Faithfull from Mick Jagger -- also made art from commercial logotypes, put on music events and made video art, and in 1967 released one great psychedelic recording, The Stars of Mario Schifano. It has an astonishing 17-minute-long jam or freak-out session comparable to the styling of Arthur Brown or the 13th Floor Elevators.

PEDRO VÉLEZ is an artist and critic living in Chicago
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/velez/chicago-build-up1-29-10.asp

Eunjung Hwang, Future Creatures, 2009

Decoding the Cheat Codes: “Lessons in Love” at antena

The turquoise title screen at the beginning of “Cheat Codes: lessons in love” puts love in terms of video games: juxtaposing cheat codes with relationships and comparing players to the viewers of the exhibit. The new video art installation at antena gallery uses this opening statement more as a caution than a credo. This short, playful definition sets the tone for a show whose connection to video games and digital culture is far from obvious, but whose overall meaning is derived from references and influences that are as contemporary and relevant as electronic media themselves.


Curated by Amelia Winger-Bearskin, the show features work by twelve video artists and animators whose styles differ significantly, often to a powerful effect. Bubbling beneath the surface of Eunjung Hwang’s animations is an apt, if hackneyed, commentary on our society’s technology-induced atavism. In Hwang’s piece, two-dimensional figures hump and harm one another with disturbing rapidity, all the while maintaining vapid, expressionless faces that reflect as much on Hwang’s choice of medium as they do on the video’s overall motif of passionless stimulation.

Another standout piece is Amber Swanson’s video, in which a blow-up sex doll is battered and abused in three different settings: a wedding, a park, and a trade show for the adult entertainment industry. In the first circumstance, trendy young Chicagoans point at and joke drunkenly about the eerily lifelike object, all the while remaining acutely aware of the odd nature of its presence. Later, in what is probably the most moving moment in the entire show, two women wearing hot pants and shirts emblazoned with the Girls Gone Wild logo pose suggestively for an off-screen camera. Each time they freeze for a photo, their likeness to the doll is overwhelming. It seems that to Swanson, both the doll and the girls are hollow, disturbing byproducts of the objectifying tendencies of the culture that produced them.

In some ways, “Cheat Codes” benefits from its disjointed arrangement. Although Grant Worth’s psychedelic video collage bears little resemblance to Jason Martin’s green-screened performance art, the pieces hang well together precisely because they lack obvious similarities to each other and to the work’s ostensible theme. The superficial incongruity between the pieces is a reminder to the viewer that the show is devoted to what is unseen or unobvious.

But not all of the works in “Cheat Codes” present these contradictions gracefully. Jennie Brinkager’s piece features a neon-clad belly dancer being raped by and eventually wrestling with men dressed as Vikings in what appears to be a strip mall parking lot. Text detailing the artist’s views on immigration runs along the bottom of the screen, providing an awkward accompaniment to what is already a somewhat questionable subject. Jay Schleidt’s video has a more comfortable setting. His grainy footage of two amateur musicians plucking the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama” is one of the less gripping pieces in the show, but it also has one of its more poignant moments: one of the musicians starts howling incomprehensible lyrics into a microphone and the camera cuts to a dim and cluttered room, with the young performer still wailing off-screen. The haunting image seems to represent the collapse of the hopes of the musicians at the hands of frustration and domesticity.

Cheat Codes is less about game consoles and onscreen avatars than it is about the treacherous nature of identity. The videos that make up the show all provide insight into a culture whose constituents must maintain several personas at once, be they sexual, political, or virtual. While some of the pieces seem to falter in illustrating this idea, there are quite a few jewels embedded in this eclectic collection.
antena, 1765 S. Laflin St. Through February 6. Hours by appointment. (773)257-3534. antenapilsen.com

Opening Friday December 4, from 6pm-10pm
December 4 - January 2, 2010

With performance by Microgig starting at 8:00 p.m.

In the introduction of The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo speaks of “moral geometry” to explain how ‘The Philosophy of Tea,” or “Teaism,” embodies Eastern ideals related to purity, simplicity, and a sense of proportion to nature and the cosmos. “Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence,” says Kakuzo.

Moral Geometry makes sense out of the “sordid facts” of the quotidian: repetition, waste and consumption. Using the components of over 1600 teabags donated by friends and acquaintances, Georgina Valverde creates a body of work exploring the potential for repeated small actions to manifest form, beauty and meaning.

The centerpiece of Moral Geometry is a small building titled Teacage based on the Wardian case, a precursor of the modern terrarium. Working for the British East India Company in 1848, Robert Fortune used Wardian cases to smuggle 20,000 tea plants from Shanghai to start the first plantations in Assam, India. Teacage is a flexible structure that can be broken down into a series of screens or space dividers. As such, Teacage is a forum for performance, workshops and social encounters. The first event is a performance by Microgig. Other events will be announced.

Georgina Valverde was born in Mexico City in 1962. She has a BFA, 1987, in Painting and Printmaking and a BA, 1987, in Modern Languages from James Madison University, Va., and an MFA, 2003, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Georgina’s work has been most recently featured at the Centro Jaime Sabines in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Tamaulipas, México, the University of Texas Pan-American, Edinburg, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. Her work has also been exhibited at the former Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art and the Cullacht Residency program at the Galway City Arts Center, Ireland among other venues.

This project is partially supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

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Also this month's Project Wall Space: Chris Wood

Recomposition:
The project, Recomposition, is the culmination of a five year long process. The first four years involved building the collection. It started off rather casual, but became more serious as time went on. The very initial collecting of the foods happened more out of a general aloofness toward the state of my refrigerator, but soon developed into a curiosity: What will grow next? Why are these milks aging differently? Hummus... really? In time, I grew attached to certain items of interest and refused to part with them, even at the prodding of friends, roommates and those who helped move them to a new apartment. Though the final product carries with it a touch of absurdity, it is an earnest representation of a set of objects I find interest in, particularly when viewed as a set. Through documentation and presentation, the characters are presented in a slightly more permanent, though still liminal condition.

Chris Wood, a native of Pittsburgh, earned a BFA in Illustration from the University of Dayton in 2001 and an MFA in Painting from Northern Illinois University in 2005. His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions nationally. Currently he lives and works in Chicago, where he runs his studio and teaches at the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago. His recent work uses a diverse range of materials, from graphite, charcoal and acrylic to digital, photography, foil and food.

Opening Friday December 4, from 6pm-10pm
December 4 - January 2, 2010


ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only

On the state of the zombie:
Antena Gallery offers an introspective.
By by Stan Golovchuk

Walking through Zombie: A Mindless Affair, I couldn’t help but feel alive. The exhibit is an ambitious sprawl of mixed media art whose ideas on death and the unnatural manage to stand out in the onslaught of Halloween-themed entertainment offered in Chicago. Zombie could even be this season’s best kept secret, so it’s a good thing the Antena Gallery is keeping it active until Nov. 21.

Antena is a wing of Miguel Cortez’s studio apartment. Part zombie gallery exhibit, part living space surely sounds like an unnatural creation, but it’s actually less weird than it may seem.

The gallery is located in the heart of Pilsen, around the corner from the Jumping Bean Café and behind a green metal door. After knocking on the door thrice (because that seemed appropriate) I was welcomed by the smiling, laid back owner. Inside, I was led to the gallery and let loose on the exhibit. The grotesque, peculiar and chilling creations immediately absorb the viewer’s attention.

Zombie consists of 35 different works done by 32 artists. Practically every medium and material imaginable went into creating this exhibit, from oil on canvas, to film, meat, prose, leather and music, just to name a few. Every work is somehow unique and brilliant in its own way, but all together, the collection is mesmerizing.

A piece that I thought quite frightening was Andrea Jablonski’s “Clare and the Captured Moonlight.” Half of the piece is a painting of a tortured baby doll with torn hair and a gouged eye, adjacent to a bright crescent moon behind a railed window. This installation is accompanied by a clever poem that tells the story of how a doll named Clare was tormented by her owner and the revenge that followed suit.

A few feet down lies Jacob C. Hammes’ “Meat Phone.” This creation looks just like it sounds, and is vaguely reminiscent of a rejected prop from David Cronenberg’s movie, Videodrome.

On a few occasions, small or seemingly more discreet installations can startle, ones that jump out at the viewer when seen from the right angle.

Bert Stubler’s “Anabaptism” serves as a perfect example. It’s made from fimo, paint and wire, but it basically looks like an androgynous figurine sliding down the wall with a trail of blood. Its simplicity and small size might make it incongruous at first glance, but it becomes unforgettable once seen.

Some of the work is for sale, including a painting called “The Pure Harmony.” This oil on canvas painting by Vladimir Kharitonsky is priced at $3,000. If not for the cost, I would have bought it immediately. The 28” x 34” painting shows a man with a cabbage head posing next to his wife, who has a rabbit head. The work looks like a photo of an old sideshow act, both odd and intriguing. The subtle commentary on gender roles makes me wonder if it was painted after a break up.

On the opposite side of the room is a wall with two portable DVD players. At these stations, viewers can see short zombie films made by local filmmakers.

Organ Factory, which can be bought on DVD for $25, is a six-minute homage to the gore and conventions of traditional zombie cinema. Lots of organs are eaten in this short film, and the make-up looks as though legendary horror makeup artist Tom Savini might have designed it.

The other film is a funny commentary on the frustrations of dating zombie men. I’m SOOO over Zombies tells the stories of two girls and the challenges they face dating the undead. But to be honest, the women in this movie sound awfully shrewish: It’s surprising that their boyfriends haven’t eaten them yet.

The entire exhibit was put together by Cortez’s friend and contributing artist, Edra Soto. Visits are by appointment only, contact information for the artist and information on the exhibit is available at www.antenapilsen.com

Original post: http://www.loyolaphoenix.com/2.541/diversions/on-the-state-of-the-zombie-1.858989

Artists:
Catherine Forster
Amanda Gutierrez
Patrick Lichty
Shane Mecklenburger
Mari Ortiz
Rob Ray
Sara Schnadt
Michael Una

Opening Friday May 15 from 6pm-10pm
May 15 - June 13, 2009

New media art is an art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.). This show is a small portion of what some artists have created in Chicago.

ANTENA
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
www.antenapilsen.com
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
Saturdays noon-5pm or by appointment

Primal Dildo

Paul Nudd and Nick Black at Antena
February 20 - March 21, 2009

A myth within a myth spoke to us unconsciously of a time before history in which a group of ape-people, known as the “primal horde,” cowered in fear before the arbitrary but absolute brutality of a male who neither shared nor gave away anything, but ate, penetrated, defiled, and pummeled anything and anyone he pleased. Eventually the feared male is killed, and the guilt causes the group to project reverence onto a “totem,” an animal or other such image that serves as a common ancestor and protector of the group, while the horror at communal castration causes the totem to be represented in magical erotic objects, or fetishes. Just as Freud’s archetypal birth of perversion was declared obsolete by the evolving consensus of the supposedly scientific psychoanalytic community, it became apparent that the anxiety caused by the desire to kill the violent, cruel, jealous, animalistic “primal father” was a strikingly appropriate motif for the denuded manhood of a sedentary, rootless, commodity-worshipping modern culture.

In their show at Antena, “The Pour Rubber,” Paul Nudd and Nick Black have created a cabinet of curiosities that indexes every form of phobic jizz dripping from the hindbrain of modern masculinity. Among Nick Black’s frisky Frankensteined toy automata, a suspicious duck-billed Santa Claus farts loudly while bouncing a naked Chinese baby doll on his knee. In another, a brown-skinned baby dominatrix yanks the chain leash for a half-naked smiling white anchorman type on all fours in a little “Pet Shop” set, accompanied by the immortal strains of House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” Evil smoke pours from sundry openings in Paul Nudd’s large black sculptural heads. Nudd’s pieces also feature large drawings advertising unseemly balms, salves, and chutneys, and video screens portraying colorful fluids and solids emerging from and retreating within frantically quivering orifices. The ideas could be partially summarized as tongue-in-cheek dioramas of implied profanation, but Black’s delicate DIY engineering and Nudd’s effortless repurposing of graphic design and video production are so ruggedly handsome in their presentation than they elevate pubescent naughtiness to a level of Baroque grandeur.

This installation could be considered as a museum of triggers for anxieties linked to buried traumas and/or violations of deeply instilled boundaries. A museum, rather than a chamber of horrors, because the artists put their visual provocations into a well-lit space and abstract them beyond any clear depictions of brutality or obscenity. This taxonomically impersonal defanging of psychological and moral strictures recalls the analytical, affectless cruelty of the Marquis de Sade, a “primal father” for modernity if there ever was one.

But what the show celebrates is hilarity, playing off the letter against the spirit of laws around taboo. Black and Nudd express their mischief through imaginative fetishistic props that create erotic drama, a practice Gilles Deleuze associates with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, namesake of sadism’s partner syndrome, masochism. Deleuze claims, opposing him to Sade, that “Masoch aspires to a world of suspense and waiting, and thus aestheticizes the real as a series of tableaux vivants.” These fetishes erase the “lack” of the mother’s phallus, and so this immersively titillating show leaves us with the secret truth of our era: the “primal father” is a dominant mother, an amazon lurking in the scat-fantasies of a few dozen generations with no fatherhood ideal. But through the corrosive power of office humor, the male employee of the MILF CEO secretly retains control. Without apology or vulgarity, Black and Nudd’s elegantly crafted work portray dilemnas at the heart of the modern gender divide with tenderness and some uncanny awe.

by Bert Stabler

http://proximitymagazine.com/2009/04/primal-dildo/