Visual Arts
Artistic Symbiosis
Every second Friday of the month, Pilsen art galleries keep their doors open till 10, but the balmy, tinged-with-summer air of the most recent Second Friday created an especially jaunty and convivial atmosphere. Art enthusiasts roamed Halsted with bottles of craft beer and cups of sangria, some lounging near doorways, either barefoot or in... »
Peace Talks
The intersection of East 87th Street and South Commercial Avenue in South Chicago appears safe, spacious, and lively. Countdown timers usher groups of pedestrians across the wide streets, through an intersection framed by a dollar store, car dealership, and liquor store. The streets are made of solid and unblemished concrete, the buildings of weather-worn... »
Black Magic Women
“Collective Magnetism,” by Sara Mosk, is an appropriate introduction to “Black Arts,” both for the magnetic pull of its sounds and images, and for its place in the collective spirit of this group exhibit at Pilsen’s Roxaboxen Minicastle. »
The Plaster Caster
Cynthia Albritton, a Chicago native and South Side resident better known as “Cynthia Plaster Caster,” has lived the dream of teenage girls around the world. A self-titled “recovering groupie,” she has been making plaster casts of rock stars’ naughty bits since 1968. It all started in her college art class, where she was given... »
Reconceiving Time
In 1988, Adelheid Mers—curator of “Hairy Blob,” currently on view at the Hyde Park Arts Center—received a yearlong grant for graduate study at the University of Chicago’s Committee on the Visual Arts. “I spent all of my time in the Regenstein,” she says, “reading everything I could get my hands on about space.” For... »
Quietly Provocative
The face behind all of the genitalia, racial slurs, vomit, tongues, human feces, urine, breasts, and crude depictions of “Coco River Fudge Street” is a reticent, mild-mannered, and self-critical man in his early thirties. »
Till the Fat Lady Sings
“This is a powerf**k” is an apt tagline for Slow Gallery’s current exhibition. “It ain’t over…” is all about power and how we mess with it—it’s about breaking rules, challenging assumptions, confronting ourselves and our relationship with power of any kind. In the gallery, there’s a telephone pole lying on the floor. Too big... »
Looking Back
The first public showing of a young artist’s work is uniquely electric—the air carries a quiet humility and the hum of potential. The nervous energy is infectious. Multiply this by four and you have the feel of , the senior photography exhibition for Northern Illinois University seniors Jessica Bronge, Laura Fenwick, Sarah Furman, and... »
