Sasha Tycko

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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) for the closing reception of “Society of the Spectacular.” The exhibit takes its name from Guy Debord’s 1967 “Society of the Spectacle,” a Marxist meditation on society’s obsession with illusions. His definition of the spectacle as “not a collection of images,” but “a social relation between people that is mediated by images” was an appropriate theme for the night.

The lively show overwhelmed the small space. Vibrant canvases, television sets, and a video game competed for viewers’ attention. The overload of images and sounds underscored the idea that we live in an overblown, spectacular society. Works made by over nine artists were on display, all of which confronted the tensions of living in a digital world and its effect on our perception of reality. Throughout the night videos playing loud rock music were projected onto the far wall. From 7-9pm, two artists played music from turntable.fm and various Internet DJs, followed by a live broadcast of local band American Draft playing from an Andersonville studio. For the final hours of the event, the band Volcano took the stage in front of a webcam that was hooked up to Chatroulette. The digital element of the music was a consistent motif throughout the exhibit.

“I tried to choose artwork that had a skeptical and curious take on our digitally mediated experiences,” said Octagon Gallery curator Jake Myers.

Myers noted that the exhibit wasn’t meant to be a condemnation of today’s society: “Instead of simply pathologizing these digital trends,” he said, “I just wanted people to step back and think about them in a different light.” In one piece, entitled “Mashup,” Doug Smithenry painted still frames of YouTube videos in which individuals came out of the closet. In his work, the Internet is seen taking on a supportive and protective role, qualities not often attributed to the World Wide Web.

Humor played a role in many of the other works. Eric Fleischauer’s digitally altered photograph “Universal Paramount” replaced Los Angeles’s famed “HOLLYWOOD” sign with the word “YOUTUBE.” Several other artists contributed irreverent MS Paint printouts, one simply of a cat saying “Meow.”

Despite the heavy message of Debord’s book, the light mood suggested that the show intended to disorient rather than attack, illuminate rather than disapprove. It encouraged people to be skeptics of society, not cynics.

One of the highlights of the show was “Marco Solo,” an interactive piece commissioned for the show that rendered a startling intersection between digital and analog life. Created by Aaron Orsini and Adam Rux, two wicker basket-turned headpieces were worn by gallerygoers. Inside these odd helmets the wearers stared at an iPad, which streamed a live feed of their surroundings. Literally forced to experience life through a screen, people stumbled around the space, groping at their friends as they tried to orient themselves.

“You put on the helmets and immediately when you’re with another person the first impulse is to look them in the face and try to touch their hand,” said Rux. “In the digital sphere you don’t have that, you don’t have an obvious person to grab hold of.”

The artists began by putting the iPads inside empty PBR boxes and staggering around Orsini’s apartment. They eventually settled on the wicker baskets because, as they explained, an artisanal craft like basket-weaving was one of the most analog tasks they could think of. The idea of a tangible product is nonexistent in a digital world. By producing something physical, they attempted to resolve the gap between virtual reality and our physical lives. “It’s almost like an homage to real life,” Orsini said. Their work uncovered the inhuman aspect of a society consumed with digital spectacle. “After we spent so much time in these helmets,” Orsini continued, “We were like, I hate digital. I hate it all. I just want to be able to look you in the eye, talk to you straightforward, and touch your hand.”

The exhibition is structured as a narrative beginning in the year 2040. A bright-orange Jeep sits on a lifeless beach, goat carcasses lie in a crevice, and our toxic world is seen through the window of a futuristic rover. From there, the show moves backward in time, finally returning to 2010, where nearly colorless images of the future are replaced by scenes of green plants and smiling faces. It’s a surprising conclusion to an otherwise bleak series of photographs, and by ordering the images this way—moving from dreariness to happiness—the series leaves viewers with a powerful appreciation of the present, and a dose of pessimism about the future.

The creator of this dystopian vision is a bubbly, gregarious woman. An associate professor of photography at Columbia College, Natal is dedicated to art and education, particularly the role both fields can play in fostering ecological awareness. A section of “Future Perfect” is devoted to photographs she took of children’s planet and alien paintings, which were created in an “Imagining the Future” workshop held at the Biosphere 2 facility near Tucson. Natal has served as an artist-in-residence at the artificial ecosystem facility since 2008, and her experiences clearly inform the content of “Future Perfect.”

Among the most striking pieces of the exhibition are Natal’s “steam portraits,” which show people partially obscured on rocky landscapes. One image, dated as 2030, depicts a man walking his dog through a dense fog. In another, a scared woman clutches a teddy bear in the year 2020. Back in the present, a girl smiles and a couple shares a kiss. Other images juxtapose signs of humanity with nature: a cactus is padded and turned into a telephone pole, while an outdated computer sits in the middle of a greenhouse.

While Natal seems to juxtapose the man-made and the natural, she is adamant that there shouldn’t be a distinction between the two. To properly move forward, she proposes, we should be cognizant of our inextricable relationship with the earth.

Courtesy of the Hornswaggler Collection

Rarely does Skittle-infused vodka lead to good choices. But for Graham Hogan and Joseph Rynkiewicz, the candy cocktail led to an innovative new venture in Chicago art commerce. One night two years ago, Hogan explained, he, Rynkiewicz and a group of friends decided to flavor their vodka with Skittle candies. Ed Marszewski, the director of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, liked the concoction so much that he asked them to serve it at his gallery. “We were like, all right, we can do that,” Hogan said.

Suffice it to say, Skittle vodka only lasted two shows before the duo realized they could take any middle-of-the-road liquor and infuse it with various herbs to craft unique and appealing alcoholic potions. And so began the Hornswaggler bar—an entirely mobile cocktail bar serving up craft drinks at Chicago art exhibitions. As Hogan and Rynkiewicz began to turn a profit from their drinks, they entered what, for them, was a new part of the art world: art buying.

Unlike collectors of yore, these two are no cognac-swigging, cravat-wearing John D. Rockefellers or Greek shipping magnates. Hogan works for a doll manufacturer and Rynkiewicz is a freelance photographer and art handler. “That was our first purchase,” Rynkiewicz said, gesturing to an image of a disgruntled-looking Persian cat with daisy eyelashes.

The Hornswaggler Collection made its public debut last Friday night, in the place where it all began—Bridgeport’s Co-Prosperity Sphere. For each event, the couple crafts a new menu of $4 cocktails. Friday night’s list featured four cocktails of various herbal infusions (think lavender and Tarragon vodka) with autumnal additives, like maple syrup and apple cider. A tipsy symbiosis evolves: “You want the drinks; we want the art,” Rynkiewicz said with a smile.

The initial impression given by the exhibit was unsettling; conspicuously naked walls surrounded hordes of cocktail-armed visitors that swarmed around tables of hors d’oeuvres. However, when visitors stepped behind the partitioned room, a single wall presented a visual smorgasbord of artwork.  “All of our efforts have funneled into that wall back there,” Hogan said looking towards the cocktail bar.

The collection includes work by over three dozen Chicago artists, including Stephen Eichorn, Kristen Taylor, and Juan Angel Chavez. The single wall held a seemingly hodgepodge collection, but it was cohesive in its clever subject matter. A framed black splat with neon typeface demands, “Have you made plans for the future?” A solitary wooden potato sits on an outcropping.

“Visually, there really is no cohesiveness; our collection marries a lot of different styles,” Rynkiewicz said, arms folded, scanning the wall of acrylic fruit loops, doodles, and wooden wig-like cutouts. “It’s a time capsule, a glimpse of what’s happening in Chicago art at a certain moment. It’s not about a curatorial vision—it’s meant to be seen together.”

The latest manifestation of the Hornswaggler collection is a public art-lending library. As the collection expanded, the couple realized they had a surfeit of good art on their hands. They came to an epiphany—rather than let art collect dust in storage, they could share it with the community.

The library allows art to live in the homes of aficionados essentially free of charge. Borrowers can keep a piece for three to six months, after paying a refundable security deposit and a small fee for handling and installation.

This program has deep implications—the stuffy Sotheby’s attitude of art patronage is replaced by a vibrant, dynamic collection that is supported and shared by the community. “It’s a much more charming way of doing things,” Hogan noted.

But one question remained unanswered at Friday’s reveal: what is a Hornswaggler, anyway? “It’s a breed of Oompa-Loompa, actually,” Rynkiewicz explained. “It also means ‘to pull wool over your eyes,’ which is in a sense what we are doing—getting you drunk to help us buy art.”

Learn more about the Hornswaggler Collection at www.hornswagglerarts.org

Maggie Sivit

Bridgeport is one of Chicago’s “up-and-coming” neighborhoods. New foodie havens, a booming arts scene, and hopping nightlife beckon twenty-somethings and art types from across the city. While it is certifiably hip, Bridgeport feels strangely isolated from its surrounding communities in terms of geography and character, which gives it a quirky, organic hometown vibe.

Halsted Street, historically Bridgeport’s main drag, is lined with family businesses. One restaurant is cluttered with what looks like the merchandise from a resale shop; down the street, a New Agey specialty store sells love potions. While each shop has its own niche, their respective owners are not afraid to talk up neighboring establishments: listen and you can hear customers and staff chatting about a local bike shop, or spreading word that Godzilla has made a special appearance at a nearby toy store.

Like many South Side neighborhoods, Bridgeport—originally called Hardscrabble—has a long history of racial tensions and gang wars mirroring its arc of ethnic change. Remnants of Bridgeport’s Eastern European roots can be seen in the architecture: steeples from countless Catholic and Orthodox churches rise above Bridgeport’s streets, though the church-goers are a few generations removed from those Irish, Lithuanian, and Polish immigrants. More recently, the neighborhood has seen a large influx of Chinese and Mexicans. The neighborhood’s ethnic diversity contrasts starkly with that of the surrounding communities, which has perhaps insulated it further from change and strengthened its strong sense of identity.

Despite the wave of redevelopment that has landed Bridgeport the “it-thing” tag, the new is not incongruous with the old. Those dedicated to the burgeoning art and restaurant scene are also committed to preserving Bridgeport’s historic architecture and culture. Instead of competing with one another, the new and old combine to create an atmosphere where it seems everyone is your neighbor, even if they live miles away.

Best Place to Drown in Marinara
Ricobene’s
In the shadow of the Dan Ryan-I55 interchange, the cars create a draft to flap a White Sox flag beside a neon sign calling out, “Eat At Ricobene’s.” Founded in 1946, Ribocene’s was in the neighborhood decades before the highway was built, and it still draws deep from these roots. Inside, the walls are filled with faded black-and-white photos of family portraits, children beaming on bicycles, and newlyweds. From back in the kitchen, ’50s R&B drifts out, a bit distorted by the sounds of the grill and fryer. Based on the quality of the food, the restaurant may well be there long after the soaring overpass has crumbled away. Offering truly classic Chicago fare, from deep-dish pizza to fat and greasy fries to hotdogs-hold-the-ketchup, this place is authentically Chicago. Yet as the menu suggests, Ricobene’s is most recognized for their “Famous Breaded Steak Sandwich.” Waves of thin-sliced steak, puddles of “red gravy” (similar to a basic marinara) and mounds of mozzarella all barely fit into the thick Italian bread. Decaled in a conservative 1940s font, the drug-store-style window modestly claims, “Good Food.” Yes, my friend, good food.  252 W. 26th St. Monday-Thursday, 9:30am-12:30am; Friday-Saturday, 9:30am-2am; Sunday, 11am-12:30am. (312)225-5555. ricobenespizza.com (Isaac Dalke)

Best Global Grocery
Cermak Fresh Market
If you ever need a quick indication of a neighborhood’s ethnic makeup, take a look within the local grocery store. Bridgeport’s Cermak Fresh Market, part of a local chain, reveals a community that doesn’t quite fit into any single mold. Equal parts standard supermarket fare, Italian cheeses, Asian-style seafood, and Hispanic seasonings, this market stays well-stocked with every culture’s basics. With its reasonable-to-cheap prices and haphazard layout, Cermak seeks to optimize the grocery shopping experience in terms of both amusement and savings. Twenty-five-pound bags of various rices are found beneath peaches and plums, while the baby food is next to olive oil. One aisle begins with Italian fare like dried pasta, transitions via canned tomatoes, and ends with Mexican treats and a floor-to-ceiling display of six-pound hominy cans. Perhaps Cermak Fresh Market also reflects Bridgeporters’ tendency to buy groceries in bulk.  3033 S. Halsted St. Daily, 7am-9pm. (312)460-3460 (Maria Nelson)

Best Geometric Shape
Co-Prosperity Sphere
The 5,000-plus square foot gallery of the Co-Prosperity Sphere acts as classroom, concert space, party floor, and de facto headquarters of post-Marxist bohemian activism. A self-proclaimed “experimental cultural center,” the Sphere is the brick-and-mortar outpost of the Public Media Institute, a non-profit that organizes the annual ten-day long Version Festival, which highlights the cutting edge of art, music, and arts education every spring.  The same folks turn out Lumpen Magazine, a publication that blends the aesthetic with a hard-line political agenda. The main instrument of the group’s cultural activism is the Co-Prosperity Sphere School, a weekly gathering that aims to teach its eager pupils about art in Chicago. By providing a community space that serves art through production, display, and education, the Co-Prosperity Sphere is taking an active role in actualizing their desire to transform Bridgeport into a “Community of the Future.”  3219-21 S. Morgan St. Hours by appointment. (773) 837-0145. coprosperity.org  (Candice Ralph and Tyler Leeds)

Best Traditional Italian
Gio’s Cafe and Deli
Located on the corner of two quiet residential streets, Gio’s Cafe and Deli has the charm and red-checkered tablecloths of a small town pizza parlor without the greasy, half-baked pizza. Instead, Gio’s offers imported and homemade pasta, Italian paninis, fried appetizers, and chicken entrees. Because it is both a cafe and market, you can grab lunch on the go, eat alone at a table, or just stop in to chat with the incredibly friendly staff. The best part of Gio’s, however, isn’t on its plates—it’s on their shelves. Imagine your kindly Italian grandmother’s pantry, multiply each item by five, and put it up for sale, trinkets and all. Stop into Gio’s if you are craving fresh pasta, top-notch bruschetta, or high-quality Italian olive oil, but also if you ever need a two-inch tall cheese grater, a six-pound can of chickpeas, or a pizza cutter whose handle is an Italian chef figurine. 2724 S. Lowe Ave. Monday-Saturday, 8am-9pm. (312)225-6368. gioscafe.com (Maria Nelson)

Best Savory Pastries
Pleasant House Bakery
If you’ve ever fancied a hearty meal from the other side of the pond, make a trip to try a royal pie from the Pleasant House Bakery. Despite the name, royal pies are closer to peasant food—hot, and filled with rib-sticking ingredients like steak and ale (or for vegetarians, mushroom and kale). The restaurant is tiny enough that the whole kitchen is visible behind the counter, so you’ll probably get to see Art Jackson, the owner, filling up the pastries while his wife Chelsea takes your order. However, truth be told, it’s not the pies but the little details that make this restaurant stand out: a simple radish salad from the owners’ garden, home-made sodas, delectable deserts, or the Vanilla Ice Pandora radio station in the background. Try visiting on a Friday, when the owners fry up fish-and-chips for a crowd. 964 W. 31st St. Tuesday-Thursday, 11am-9 pm; Friday-Saturday, 11am-10 pm; Sunday, noon-8 pm. (773)523-7437. pleasanthousebakery.com (Sharon Lurye)

Best Watering Hole
Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar
For those weary of trekking north for quality booze, look no further than Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar. A bar in the guise of an ordinary storefront, Maria’s provides two layers of alcoholic inception: the first, a liquor store, and the second, a tavern concealed behind an old freezer door. Boasting one of the largest selections of craft beer in the city, Maria’s has 16 artisan brews on tap and over 300 in bottles. Beers range in price from $2 for a “random shitty beer,” $3 for “bartender’s choice,” and up to $6 for microbrews. If beer isn’t your preferred way to get buzzed, Maria’s concocts mixed drinks rivaling Chicago cocktail heavy-hitters such as The Whistler. Chandeliers crafted from beer bottles cast a ruddy glow indoors, but during the warmer months patrons can bring drinks to a back patio area. Clientele ranges from old Bridgeport regulars to newly transplanted hip-young-things. True to its moniker, this joint is clearly a community watering hole. 960 W. 31st St. Sunday-Friday, 4pm-2am; Saturday, 4pm -3am. (773)890-0588. community-bar.com (Anna Fixsen)

Best Nature Walk
Henry C. Palmisano Nature Preserve
Rededicated last November in honor of the late outdoorsman and local sporting goods store owner Henry C. Palmisano, this 27-acre green space has had many lives. Until 1970, it was Stearns Quarry, a 387-foot-deep limestone mining site. After that, the gaping hole in the ground became an unnamed dump for construction waste. In 2004, the Chicago Park District began taking proposals for renovation, and shortly thereafter the location became Site Design Park, or Park No. 531. Today, in addition to Palmisano Nature Preserve, this natural recluse just south of the Stevenson Expressway is known by some as Mount Bridgeport—named for the man-made hill rising up out of the old quarry to tower over the surrounding houses along Halsted. Navigate around the hill, however, and the park reveals a self-contained water recirculation system replete with a retention pond and vegetation specifically selected to filter road salts in the winter. Meanwhile, a 1.5-mile long elevated walkway and a gravel running track snake through the park. The design also facilitates activities like fishing and kite flying, while preserving historical features such as the quarry’s limestone wall and mining elevators. Walking along the secluded quarry, it’s easy to leave behind the bustle of the city. Yet the top of Mount Bridgeport claims one of the best views of the Chicago skyline. 2700 S. Halsted St. (Maria Nelson)

Best Roast
Bridgeport Coffee Company
Founded in 2004, Bridgeport Coffee Company was the first product of commercial redevelopment along the intersection of 31st and Morgan. Once the old time neighborhood of the Daley political dynasty, this intersection is now known for drawing a crowd of fashion-conscious students and young professionals. Bolstered by Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar and Pleasant House Bakery across the street, Bridgeport Coffee Co. acts as the scene’s focal point. Nonetheless, this coffee shop is also simply a great place to sit all day with a pot of mango black tea, a microbrewed cup of on-site roasted coffee, or a Filbert’s root beer bottled a few blocks west in McKinley Park. The atmosphere is cozy and welcoming with tasteful wood paneling and accents, chalkboard menus, and old photos of Bridgeport landmarks. The staff is chatty and will poke fun at customers while sharing their secret to Chicago’s best cup of coffee (hint: it’s the delicate, light roast). 3101 S. Morgan St. Monday-Friday, 6am-9pm; Saturday, 7am-9pm; Sunday, 8am-7pm. (773)247-9950. bridgeportcoffeecompany.com  (Maria Nelson)

Courtesy of Johanna Wawro/The Co-Prosperity Sphere

Friday night’s opening of “Riders,” Co-Prosperity Sphere’s latest installation, felt a little bit like a family reunion for the family you probably never had. The reception featured live Latin music, tortillas, PBR, and a horse—yes, a horse. Hidalgo (the horse) didn’t seem to know the difference between an Indiana pasture and a makeshift paddock in the middle of a Bridgeport art gallery, placidly munching on hay as city slickers pushed eagerly against the fence to get a look.

“I like to create an environment,” said photographer Johanna Wawro. “My idea of a fun show is appealing to the five senses, you know, with the taste of the food, the smell of the horse and obviously, the art.” She is only a part of the artistic input behind “Riders,” which includes work by video artist Andy Resek, a performance by installation artist Juan Angel Chavez, and airbrush art by Angel Cruz.

The exhibition focuses on how the beauty of Mexican ranch life can be simultaneously maintained and reinvented in new spaces—from Mexico to Indiana to the white walls of this Chicago art gallery. Wawro and Resek spent a year withmembers of a Mexican-American family, the Gonzalezes, at their home in Bridgeport and on their ranch in Rensselaer, a small community in northwest Indiana – the Gonzalezes became their muses.

Courtesy of Johanna Wawro/The Co-Prosperity Sphere

The concept of “Riders” was born during a walk around Bridgeport. Wawro and Resek happened to wander into an auto body shop on 32nd and Wallace and strike up a conversation with the owners. “The guys told me anytime you want to come to the ranch in Indiana, feel free to give us a call,” Wawro recounts. Wawro decided to take him up on the offer. And so began a yearlong relationship between Wawro, Resek and the Gonzalez family.

The show conjures up a feeling of intimate, domestic space like a Mexican abuelita’s living room. The artists transplanted items from the Gonzalezes’ actual home, including mounted fish, houseplants, sombreros, and even a futon covered by a woven blanket. Wawro’s photographs of the Gonzalez family and their ranch are thumbtacked in neat rows amongst the objects.

An odd mezcla of cultures is present in Wawro’s photographs. In a picture titled “Carlos,” the sitter’s garb is a hybrid of charro and Chicago. In one photo he wears a camo jacket, a black sweatshirt emblazoned with “Chicago,” and a cowboy hat. Wawro’s portraits create an odd familiarity between viewer and subject—indeed, members of the Gonzalez  clan (including Carlos himself) were congregated at the back of the gallery during the opening, wearing crisp button-downs and boots.

Real-life Carlos, equipped with a horseshoe mustache that would make Hulk Hogan envious, proudly gestured toward a picture of his mechanic shop and pointed to a few images of suped-up cars. Needless to say, the importance of these automotive feats was diminished by an adjacent poster of a topless, round-eyed blonde. Carlos’s mustache twitched with a smirk—“that’s my girlfriend.” After a fifteen-minute discussion concerning custom-paint jobs, Carlos took a swig of his PBR and went to join another conversation near Hidalgo.

On the northern wall of the gallery, Resek’s video installation is segmented into three screens depicting the everyday activities of the Gonzales family in both Bridgeport and Rensselaer. Resek is able to use the very un-Mexican scene—snowy winter skies and a rural Midwestern agriscape—to highlight the vibrancy of the Gonzalez heritage. In an artist statement Resek explains, “My desire is to explore the complex emotional lives of individuals, delving into the drama that is present in everyday life but isn’t necessarily visible on the surface.”

“At first we thought about calling it “Urban Cowboy Show.” I thought that sounded like a gay porno,” Wawro explained. “Then we decided on “Riders” in reference to the first time I visited the Gonzalezes. It’s very Carlos-y,” Wawro added. Whatever “Carlos-y” means. As she spoke, Carlos was busy looking at Hidalgo in the corral.

“I gotta find my little sister,” Wawro said, looking around the gallery. “I think those boys are getting too flirty with her.” She temporarily abandoned her role as artist and disappeared into the crowd as a dutiful sister. After all, family does come first.

Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S Morgan St. Through June 10. Hours by appointment only. (773)562-0739. coprosperity.org

Courtesy of Co-Prosperity Sphere

Type is all around us. We see it on billboards, in magazines, and across our computer screens. It’s so ubiquitous that associating its design with any particular city seems a bit odd. But Dawn Hancock, co-curator of Typeforce 2, the Second Annual Showing of Emerging Typographic Allstars, points out that many artists interested in pursuing typography feel obligated to move to New York, which has long been a center for the craft. Typeforce 2, which opened last Friday at Bridgeport’s Co-Prosperity Sphere, makes a strong case for Chicago’s place as the second city of typographic design.

The official poster for the event (designed by Sonnenzimmer, a graphic art and screen printing studio) features the famous Swiss typographer Jan Tschichold. According to Hancock, Tschichold “wanted to do typography that was different for his time.” The work displayed at the Co-Prosperity Sphere largely follows his example. The exhibit emphasizes creative and innovative presentation while taking for granted readability and legibility, two fundamental concepts in typographic design. “Crackle Crack” by Frances MacLeod and Caroline MacLeod displays onomatopoeia in textual form, expressing the sound of words like “ribbit”, “splat”, and “plop” through font work and graphic design. Another piece, “Typefreaks” by Quite Strong, a checkerboard of circus posters, likens typographic oddities such as the semicolon, index/fist, and interrobang to a bearded lady and two-headed marvel.

The theme of elevating type from the everyday to the heights of fine art recurs throughout the exhibit, but one artist, Bill Talsma, takes this idea to a new level. His pieces, “What’s On Your Mind,” “Change,” and “Recent Activity” feature text from Facebook, displayed with authenticity in Lucida Grande as if they were pasted from a screenshot. But this text is not just posted on a wall. Instead, it is displayed conspicuously on a series of lacquered plaques accompanied by a silver-plated trophy, an award given in exchange for a status update. Talsma says he hopes to establish an unconscious connection with the viewer through the familiar display of lettering, mirroring the automatic interrelation between any piece of text and its reader.

One difference that distinguishes this year’s show from Typeforce 1 is the method by which the artists were chosen. In 2010, the curators hand-selected designers based on work they displayed on the streets of Chicago. Once the artists were approved, they were given free reign to create whatever they wanted for the show. “This year,” Hancock states, “we put out an open call for submissions,” and the pieces on display are the best of that pool. But while this year’s artists were not necessarily selected because of their work displayed in Chicago, it’s clear that the emerging Typographic Allstars of 2011 draw their inspiration from the city. One screen print by Sonnenzimmer, for example, takes text from a poster advertising an event at the North Side music venue the Empty Bottle. Designer Matthew Hoffman takes notes on his phone while walking around the city and works these thoughts into his type later. His window display, the most geometrically interesting piece on display at Typeforce, abstractly resembles a city skyline, featuring high-rises made of bass wood with carved-out letters.

The artists’ hometown pride extends beyond inspiration for the exhibit. Nick Adam, whose work at Typeforce spans the length of the back wall, started the Mayor Daley Forever campaign, designing campaign posters and T-shirts as if Daley were running for this year’s election (and every election thereafter). According to a statement on Adam’s website, this campaign commemorates Daley’s “political brilliance [and] acknowledges his personal sacrifice to the people and city of Chicago.” Hancock explains that because she and most of the people who helped put together the exhibit hail from Chicago, it is especially important to her to find a place for the city at the forefront of typographic design. By bringing these artists together, Hancock and the Co-Prosperity Sphere are proving that, in the world of type, Chicago is a force to be reckoned with.

Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S Morgan St. Through March 7. Hours by appointment. Free. (773)837-0145. coprosperity.org

What were advertised as “erotic drawings,” done in black paint on a huge piece of paper, stretched the length of the left side of the room. The subjects, every possible combination of men and women doing unprintable things to one another, were life-size or bigger. Beyond this wall sat whimsical wooden cutouts painted bright colors. One was immediately recognizable as two mermaids kissing. It took a moment to realize the other was a diving penis.

Lumpen’s sex magazine itself, the reason behind all this excitement, was half-ironic and half-old-school, much like the attendees. The fifty or so people in the gallery were usually either hipsters or leftover free lovers. Even though the party advertised free entrance for those who came “EXTRA SEXY,” practically no one did. One woman stood out in heels and barely-there shorts.

Some people giggled over the raunchy artwork, but most were there to listen to music and drink $1 beers. Once in a while a few wandered over to the corner where the sex magazines were sprawled on a table, undifferentiated by year. The photos were of varying graininess, but the articles all had that seriously joking tone: “I was an upper-middle-class escort (good girl gone bad!),” “I screwed up the pill every possible way but the worst,” “I turned gay to get girls.”

The event description had promised “a very sensual and wild evening with all kinds of festivities… [and] every intention of enticing a proper start to your Valentine’s weekend,” but no one seemed to be thinking of Valentine’s Day until the closing group took the stage. Calling the crowd back from the magazines and artwork, the androgynous girls in the audience danced wildly around the lead singer of the band Hotchacha. Perhaps this was in part because she was an air sex champion (air sex: like air guitar, but not). Regardless, Hotchacha took the sexy theme of the evening seriously: strategically repositioning her shirt, the lead singer showed off first her breasts, then her scars—“That’s sexy, riiiight?”

Appearing in multiples, the bodies inhabit bizarre surrealistic landscapes. They seem to wander headless around the canvas, searching for something concrete. But the naked, often distorted figures don’t provide any answers. These topsy-turvy scenes are Tom Torluemke’s creations, now on display at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport.

If you decide to see Torluemke’s exhibition, be prepared for a visceral reaction. With the exclusion of his black and white drawings, looking at his work is a little like riding a rollercoaster—the outlandish nature of the experience is enough to push the viewer outside of his or her comfort zone, strutting the fine line between curiosity and nausea. His paintings and sculptures teem with color—overexcited blues collide with saturated pinks—and when his swirls of color combine on the big canvases and wooden sculptures, the gallery appears a bit like a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Like his favorite artists Tintoretto and Otto Dix, Torluemke is skilled at creating a crude, albeit surrealistic mood via pigment.

To create these worlds, Torluemke avoids beginning a painting in the same way twice. “Starting a painting differently forces me to be really pure with everything,” he says. “I have to struggle through it because it’s all new to me.” For some paintings, he draws out the whole design with his eyes closed and then paints within the contours he has created, like a coloring book. Other times, he begins by painting large colored shapes on the canvas. As the shapes start to develop, he’ll turn those forms and colors into imagery of some sort. Oftentimes, this development is accompanied by the creation of a narrative, but Torluemke uses stories only to inform the process of making his art, not to aid the viewer in interpreting it. The result, he says, is that the audience experiences a valuable kind of ambiguity when looking at his paintings.

Torluemke’s drive to create vulgar and often inscrutable paintings might stem from his interest in “[making] you understand how uncomfortable things can be in life.” One of his very small, cut-out pieces is particularly successful at this. It features a cut-out man’s head facing the open, exposed lower body of a woman. You can walk around the piece, as though engaging in the act of looking at the woman’s nether regions yourself. In this piece, Torluemke invites you to involve yourself in some form of confrontation; you are witness to and participant in the vulgarity on display.
Perhaps this act sums up the exhibition as a whole—Torluemke’s paintings are far from being easy to look at and even harder to digest. They are sometimes unsightly, maybe even repulsive, but curious nonetheless. Co-Prosperity Sphere. 3219-21 South Morgan St. Through October 14. Wednesdays, 1-7pm; Friday-Saturday, noon-5pm. (773)837-0145. coprosperitysphere.org

Version festival poster; courtesy of the Co-Prosperity Sphere

“Every year we have the same intention. We want to widen the networks and nodes of various groups so we can grow a multiplicity of milieus in the art world,” explains Ed “Edmar” Marszewski. He’s talking about the Version Festival, an annual eleven-day arts festival that he founded and co-curates, which celebrates social and activist art in Bridgeport and on Chicago’s South Side. The theme of this year’s festival, “Infrastructure and Territories,” is appropriate to the history of the festival and the community that has grown up around it.

First held nine years ago, Version is meant to carve out a territory for rising artists who are often lost in the city’s sprawling cultural landscape. “The art ecology is not too healthy,” says Edmar. He created Version to combat, if only for a few days, the perennial struggle of rising artists. “Version is the first exhibition for a lot of artists. It is the perfect way to introduce different facets of the Chicago art world to larger audiences.”

“The show is invested in artists of a whole variety,” says Dayton Castleman, the co-curator of this year’s festival. “What I’ve been most interested in is the idea that territories take on a wide variety of connotations. It could be everything from real property to intellectual property. It deals with ideas of space, and whether that’s physical space or cerebral space, the term is sufficiently broad.”

The relationship between art and space has become increasingly important in contemporary art practices, and Chicago was an especially important city for movements that took real environments as a space for cognitive experimentation. As artists moved away from the gallery and into alternative spaces, many began to incorporate the dynamics of their surrounding community into their practices, eventually leading to what Edmar calls “social art” and “art activism.” With its vast abandoned industrial spaces and its stigmatized, segregated neighborhoods, Chicago offered a cityscape with widely variant artistic opportunities. It continues to do so today. “When artists move into communities, it opens new horizons,” says Edmar. Among the many community-based artist groups in Chicago, Edmar cites two as model examples. The first is the Stockyard Institute, a Chicago-based artist collective that designs projects and sustainable programs for communities around the city. The second, the Experimental Station, is a Woodlawn-based organization that aims to create local infrastructures for artists and for social change by supporting artists and activists in its community in various ways—including cheap rent, meeting spaces, free technology, communal ovens, and gallery space. For Edmar, these two groups exemplify some of the most important moves in contemporary art, as each have established systems where individuals can engage a community through artistic mediums. “Art plays an everyday part of peoples’ lives, but encountering it in a structured form allows people to enjoy things that they don’t seek out or have forgotten about.”

This year, Version has reached out to new territories. Participants hail from as close as a few blocks away to as far the Netherlands. Among this year’s artists are Chris Larsen, a Minnesotan who’s built a machine-like wooden structure with a hollow interior space where he will sit as a way of manipulating his environment. Jeff Zimmerman, a Chicago local, will show two paintings titled “North Sider” and “South Sider” that will hang across from one another as a way to evoke the gap between Chicago’s latitudinal divide. Thomas Morena will create a large imagined continent from new and burnt matchsticks as a way to evoke the idea of scorched earth in territories of war. Alexa Loftis will do a performance piece where she buries herself in sand in front of a beachscape as she drinks “girly” cocktails. This latter installation is a literalizing of territory, as Loftis will both mark her territory and be subsumed by it.

The festival’s theme is important not only for artists, but for curators, as well. For the exhibition, Castleman marked the floor of the Co-Prosperity Sphere with a grid system that divides the space into fifteen-by-fifteen feet quadrants, and allocated each to an artist. “In a sense, the gallery space is divided into distinct territories,” explains Castleman. “You can move from one territory to another. They’re permeable.” Artists can often be territorial in their desire to have prime space within a gallery; Castleman created the grid in order to allow artists discrete, compartmentalized spaces while also avoiding conflict between individuals. However, Castleman also encouraged artists to imagine new kinds of work that responded to the gallery’s geography. “I asked artists to conceive new work that would emphasize the space. So in that sense, the whole exhibition became a site-specific installation.”

Among this year’s newcomers is the b(ART)er collective from Denver, Colorado. The collective is a group of six individuals who set up systems of exchange from their van. “We have a bunch of different modes of exchange,” explains Alex Erskine, one of the members of the collective. “Each one is adaptable given changes in demographics and culture. This is as much inquiry-based as it is performative and relational. The really important part is figuring out what questions should be asked and generating these questions for ourselves as well as for the community.” The b(ART)er collective is making their first cross-country trek to Version at the recommendation of the group’s leader, Nikki Pike, who first visited Version as a graduate student several years ago. “At Version, I was exposed to ideas I couldn’t have imagined. It really exposed me to outside-of-the-academy art making. Anyone I get to take to the festival would have a similar experience. Some of the best thinkers are there.”

The b(ART)er collective has been assigned the space right outside of the entrance of the festival. There, they will park their truck and let the process unfold. “In the spirit of inquiries, we can have fun and experiment and see how Chicago responds to us. We like to remain really fluid. A lot of the time, the space dictates how the performance unfolds. That’s the most exciting part,” explains Erskine.

Over the past nine years, as Version has grown in breadth and size, it has created a distinct place for itself in Chicago’s art scene. The significance of this positions is up for grabs. Chicago is not New York, and Version Festival is not the Whitney, and this is something that Edmar is only too aware of. “It’s not like we’re reaching a general audience of Cubs fans,” he reflects. “But if people didn’t care, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

The two hundred paintings, drawings, photographs, and videos that comprise “Dialogue” are the culmination of a year of communication and collaboration between twenty artists from Iran and the United States. The exhibition was initiated and coordinated by Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari, who came to the United States after completing a B.A. in Communications and Media Studies in Tehran. As an art student at Denver University she devoted herself to clarifying common misconceptions about her home country. After she gave a talk on Tehran’s underground art scene in 2008, students from the Denver artist cooperative Kinda Collective (now called Creative Pockets) approached her about “the possibility of working around the concept of underground art in Iran to confront the misconceptions between our cultures,” according to the exhibition’s website. Soon after, the IRUS (Iran-United States) Intercultural Collaborative Art Project was founded in order to create dialogue through collaboratively produced works of art.

“It is so weird that anytime the name of Iran comes up, many people in America think political not cultural,” Allahyari wrote on the IRUS project blog. “I started IRUS project because I was frustrated with the one-sided, dark image of Iran that American media continues to promote. I wanted to break down the cultural barriers and help to give a more balanced view to Iran.”

In the spring of 2008, Allahyari assembled a team of ten American artists, musicians, and performers, and contracted illustrator Negin Ethesabian, a friend from her studies in Tehran, to head the Iranian team. Thus began the year-long collaboration. Each artist started a work of art and then shipped it to a co-artist in the other country for completion. The exhibit debuted in Denver at the end of March 2009.

While the internet allowed for easy communication between the two teams to coordinate and plan the pieces, physically transporting them was difficult. Because no mail service exists between the U.S. and Iran, works had to be shipped via Istanbul. Allahyari relied on friends and relatives living in Iran to move works across borders, and artists in Iran had to deal with customs scrutiny and avoid attracting attention from Iranian authorities.

Although “Dialogue” seeks to unseat stereotypes, the works that comprise the collection skirt issues of religion and politics, focusing instead on cultural similarities. Andrew Blanton worked with M. Moin Samadi to create a sound sculpture blending Persian and American folk music and poetry, and Richard Burges worked with Vana Nabipour and Shabnam Khoshdel to create a pop-up book illustrating the games and social activities that are popular in each country. In addition to pair-works addressing a variety of cultural themes, the exhibit includes a wall with visual comparisons of Scheherazade and Mark Twain. Early in the project, the Iranian team suggested producing works in response to Scheherazade because the story is a “symbol of peaceful dialogue in Persian culture,” Allahyari said in an email. The American team came up with Mark Twain as the American voice of peace and dialogue.

The works in “Dialogue” also testify to differences in the meaning and practice of art in each country. “In the process of the collaboration, I think Iranian artists were more collectivist and the American artist were more individualist,” says Allahyari, adding that “most of the artworks of the Iranian artists are very symbolic, and that’s not necessarily the case in the West. Artists in Iran are much more limited to express themselves.” But if Iranian artists are more restricted in what they can convey, citizens in both countries are limited in what they can see, hear, feel, and understand about the world. “Dialogue” is a step towards loosening those limits.
Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 S. Morgan St. January 29-February 4. Opening reception Friday, January 29, 7-10pm. Discussion panel Saturday, January 30, 5-7pm. irusart.org