Pocket pix
Chicago-based photogs use iPhone camera, applications for art
by HermineBloom

During 24-year-old photographer Jeremy Edward’s walk to the El, he will likely identify a graffitied, abandoned storefront in the city, snap a quick photo, manipulate the image using an iPhone application or two and upload it to his online portfolio—all within the five to 10 minutes before the Red Line appears.

Chicago-based iPhone photographers, much like Edwards, are embracing their point-and-shoot, three megapixel camera phones for a desired aesthetic—one that is akin to a Polaroid—in order to create art with intention, which is then showcased in galleries around the country, as opposed to frivolous party pictures.

While living in rural Kentucky, Edwards discovered peculiar subjects for photographs and began shooting regularly at age 15. But it wasn’t until 2003 that Edwards graduated from college and experimented with digital photography. Though he describes himself as always being “a photographer at heart,” he pursued international development work in both Japan and China after college.

Edwards, now an Edgewater neighborhood resident, launched the “From the Pocket” project in 2008 as a series of pictures taken exclusively with an iPhone camera and edited with iPhone applications. He generally documents fragile parts of the city that have character, he said.

“I think there’s something organically beautiful about the limitations of the iPhone,” Edwards said. “It’s just a simple point and shoot and there’s not that much you can do. What’s unique about it is that all your post-imaging processing is all done in the same place.”

A strong advocate for editing iPhone photography with only one or two applications as opposed to handfuls, Edwards insists that people who wish to take iPhone photography shouldn’t “push the limits of what a camera can and can’t do,” which is one of many tips he listed on his “From the Pocket” Web site blog.

Shake It, an application that transforms an iPhone picture into a Polaroid with a white border, and Lo-mob, an application that alters the color scheme to appear warmer and more distorted, are among five applications that Edwards said he uses regularly to edit his photography.

About 100 of Edwards’ photographs will be featured in a book that he is self-publishing with an expected release date of either April 1 or May 1, he said.

“I wanted to put together something really substantial that gives a good illustration of how something as simple as a phone can actually be artful,” Edwards said.

Chicago-based photographer Sarah Best describes her iPhone photography as an extension of her love for New York poet Frank O’Hara, whose poems were conversational and usually centered around being out around town with his friends, she said.

“I want to make you feel like you know the people who are in my picture,” Best said. “That warmth comes out when the pictures are a little washed out and the colors are distorted with the Polaroid application.”

Trying to create a sense of immediacy is important to Best, which she said adds an element of chance to her art—comparable to any other medium such as ceramics if a pot loses shape in a kiln, for example.

Best, the Web specialist at Chicago Office of Tourism, compiled iPhone photographs for her “Daily Photos, on the Project Wall” exhibit, consisting mostly of portraits of friends. The exhibit is showcasing at Antena Gallery, 1765 S. Laflin St., from Feb. 19 to March 20.

Everyone is invited to bring their cell phones with them to the gallery so that she can send them her work via multimedia message if they’d like to take the image home with them, Best said.

“I like the idea of people being able to own their own art and also experience art while they’re out having dinner or with their friends,” she said.

Whether a photographer can afford an expensive SLR camera is no longer an issue.

Kay Frederick, a 38-year-old accountant, was given a first-generation iPhone as a gift in 2008, which is when she began to take iPhone photography and build a body of work on Flickr, an image and video hosting Web site and online community.

“I can take a picture of those same Marina Towers every single week and how I’m feeling, or what applications I’m into that week will make it totally different each time,” Frederick said.

Though she said she has downloaded about 50 photograph editing applications for her iPhone, she only uses a few applications—occasionally as a layering effect—depending on what the specific picture merits.

Frederick also explained that people are reluctant to change, which is why iPhone photography can be criticized for being amateur.

After submitting her work to a contest, three of her photos were chosen to appear in exhibit at the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley, Calif., called “Pixels at an Exhibition—the Art of the iPhone.” The 200 selected photographs will comprise a book as well.

For more information about Jeremy Edward’s “From the Pocket” project visit, JeremyEdwards.Tumblr.com. To learn more about Sarah Best’s work, visit TryLessHard.com/Sarah/. For more of Kay Frederick’s work visit, Flickr.com/Photos/SparkyLuck/.

original post: http://columbiachronicle.com/pocket-pix/

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Scout’s Horror: Chris Smith’s gruesome survivalist art at antena Gallery
Written by: Ethan Bass

On the ground lies Geoffrey, a cat who has seen better days. His limbs are splayed out and his skin is peeled off. The apparatus that killed Geoffrey is constructed from simple materials: a plastic bag, an air mattress pump, hair, epoxy, and packaging tape. The bag is appended to the twisted form of the animal and can be inflated from underneath in a novel method of torture that only uses household materials. A table, strewn with makeshift construction materials—Styrofoam cups, a plastic fan, clothespins—faces a wall filled with sketches for various other devices. The macabre scene is part of “Inland Architect,” the new installation piece by artist Chris Smith at Pilsen’s antena gallery.

Smith is evasive when discussing the details of his project. It is designed to be “nomadic,” he says, as in, “you can pick it up and take it with you.” When pressed, he describes the show as “the story of cast-off materials, told through a haunted tutorial for survival.” The intention is vague, but productive. His method of assembling detritus is well suited to his purpose; the grisly scenes he constructs seem to present a perspective that is consistent with the nature of materials that compose them. The weatherproofed windows and “backpack pandemic ventilator” probably do not function, but they realistically depict what such inventions might look like. The colorful set-up recalls the chambers of a disturbed mind, obsessed by the possibility of world catastrophe, reacting desperately to an onslaught of threats in a disordered surplus of activity.

Smith says he draws inspiration from his years in the Boy Scouts, where he learned how to whittle and build fires, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. It is this formative experience, he says, that first drew him to a philosophy of survivalism. “It runs in my blood,” Smith says. One can’t help but wonder what kind of scouting experience Smith had: his artistic vision, and the significant part that sadomasochism appears to play in it, is distinctly at odds with the traditional ethos of the Boy Scouts. The stark worldview implied in the installation is the antithesis of the scout’s commitment to “providing service” and “reinforcing ethical standards,” and it clashes with nearly all of the values encoded in Scout Law, such as Obedience, Kindness, and Charity. Of the ideals championed in the scout’s code, Thriftiness is the only one supported in the show.

By way of context, the artist provides what he claims is a citation from the literature of the U.S. paramilitary organization the Michigan Militia: “Those that have not will attempt to take from those that have. If you prepare to survive, you deserve to survive…If you have the kind of intellect that’s geared to survival, it may be a matter of genetics.” This Darwinian worldview, which exalts survival as the highest value, is amply represented in the show. Smith says that the Michigan Militia is a “sponsor” of the show, but it is unclear if there is any real connection.

“Inland Architect” is graphic, disturbing, and ultimately ambiguous in its effect. However, it is successful in displaying a lurid sight of the depths to which the will to self-preservation can reach, and continues the series of provocative shows featured at antena.

antena, 1765 S. Laflin St. Opening reception February 19. Friday, 6-10pm. Through March 20. By appointment only. (773)257-3534. antenapilsen.com

From The Chicago Weekly: http://chicagoweekly.net/2010/02/18/scouts-horror-chris-smith%E2%80%99s-gruesome-survivalist-art-at-antena-gallery/

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FA I R
TWO-DAY LOCAL MAKER AND PUBLISHER FAIR
February 26-27 • NOON-6:00 PM BOTH DAYS

Please join us for two days of art, books, talks, things for sale, things for
free, and more from the following people, groups and organizations:

Antena antenapilsen.com
AREA Chicago areachicago.org
Bad At Sports badatsports.com
CAFF “Find us in the real world motherfuckers!”
Gallery 400 gallery400.aa.uic.edu
Esteban Garcia snebtor.chiguiro.org
Golden Age shopgoldenage.com
Green Lantern Press press.thegreenlantern.org
Half Letter Press halfletterpress.com
Terence Hannum terencehannum.com
Harold Arts haroldarts.org
Imperfect Articles imperfectarticles.com
InCUBATE incubate-chicago.org
Clifton Meador & guests cliftonmeador.com
David Moré
No Coast no-coast.org
Onsmith Dog Stew & Monkey Nudd Wine
Pros Arts Studio prosarts.org
Proximity Magazine proximitymagazine.com
Radah & Team
Spudnik Press spudnikpress.com
Bert Stabler bertstabler.com
threewalls three-walls.org
WhiteWalls

Organized by Temporary Services in conjunction with ART WORK: A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT ART, LABOR, AND ECONOMICS • www.artandwork.us
Art & Design Hall • 400 S. Peoria St. • www.gallery400.aa.uic.edu • 312-996-6114

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CHICAGO BUILD UP

by Pedro Vélez

 
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

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Eunjung Hwang, Future Creatures, 2009

Watching curator Amelia Winger-Bearskin's Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love, an hour-long presentation featuring the works of 12 video artists, feels like watching cable access back in the 1980s. The single-channel low-resolution screening at Antena gallery leaves a lot to be desired for the usual HD and Blue Ray viewer — but that's the point. Evocative, ridiculous, and nostalgic, the program progresses in seemingly random order, including Game Boy-inspired animations from Eunjung Hwang, kaleidoscopic video landscapes from Jennie H. Bringaker and David Horwitz's presentation of newly found footage from Bas Jan Ader. The collage of videos proves the lingering influence of cybernetic and analog aesthetics on digital work.

– Beatrice Smigasiewicz

http://flavorpill.com/chicago/events/2010/1/8/cheat-codes-lessons-in-love

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Written by: Tobi Haslett

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

Written by: Tobi Haslett 

 

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

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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

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