Visual Arts
Do Not Touch
Just before last Sunday’s opening of Cathy Wilkes’s exhibit “I Give You All My Money,” Renaissance Society staff briefly convened to determine where the installation’s borders were supposed to lay. One staff member suggested that gallery-goers should be permitted to step over the small purple roses scattered on the floor. Another staffer agreed, but... »
Digital Enchantment
Clad in sequined jackets, thick-framed glasses, animal prints, and the like, Chicago’s hippest 20-somethings came out for a night of art and beer at the Octagon Gallery’s latest show last Friday. Housed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport, the venue offered an ideal scene for people-watching, which was fitting (and a bit ironic)... »
Domestic Nightmares
There’s a phrase often repeated among surrealists, Dadaists, and those attempting to explain the artistic oddities of those first two groups. Echoing André Breton’s sentiment, the surreal, they say, is “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an ironing board.” By mixing totally disjointed objects and materials, these artists believed... »
Squaring the Circle
If Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edward Munch, and Willem de Kooning were to combine their artistic genes and make a baby, the result would be the work of German artist André Butzer. Or at least, the work he used to make. Fast-forward five years and it seems that this artistic ménage à trois has disbanded. In... »
Paradise Lost
For an Englishman living in Australia, artist Kit Wise has a lot to say about ecology and sprawl in America. In his new piece “Arcadia,” which is on display at the Hyde Park Art Center through April 8, he uses dynamic high-definition digital collages of aerial photos to explore the relationship between ecology and... »
Keeping it Simple, in an Ornate World
Sandwiched between a residential area and the section of the Chicago River called Bubbly Creek (so-named from the bubbles created by the blood and other byproducts of the meat-slaughtering process), Decorators Supply Corporation is easy to miss. The business may fly under the radar of many Chicagoans, but to industry insiders—including those in upscale... »
Stitch in Time
“These two are my favorite,” artist Courtney Weber says, pointing to the back right corner of the small room at ACRE Projects. “I started drawing the pattern for this one at the Residency and to me the symmetry and colors are really beautiful.” The piece in question is untitled, as are all of the... »
Game, Set, Match
Bibiana Suárez’s latest exhibit—an installation piece that combines the voluptuous rear-end of Jennifer Lopez, three glittery cowboys, vintage maps, and hand-painted signage—is an exhibit that attempts to speak for the growing sentiment of latinidad. The notion of a pan-ethnic solidarity amongst people of all Latin American origin became pertinent to Suárez in 2000, when... »
