Another Friday night of gallery openings in Chicago
Excursion: Friday, June 13
I dashed/dallied through six gallery openings on Friday night, seeing a lot of new work, but giving myself time to linger where warranted. Speed-learning about contemporary art through the gusher of the Internet has taught me the value of being exposed to new works at volume, it tends to challenge my preconceptions, tear down my defenses to the new, and open me up to insights.
Western Exhibitions opened Folk Methods with Spatial Problems in their Gallery One, a group show curated by Shannon Rae Stratton featuring quilts and ceramics by Henry Crissman, Chris Edwards, Lauren Gregory, Virginia Rose Torrence.
But my eye was really caught by the work in Gallery Two, Doublespeak by Nanako Kono. This show made me think the evening could go in any direction, and sort of introduced a theme, though I didn’t realize it just then…
What’s with the bulbous foody shapes, I’m thinking, the pop art references, with a little Hairy Who thrown in. It’s a good sign when an artist gives you the sense that they’re taking you somewhere, but you don’t know where.
Volume Gallery opened The Crystal Chain, a 15-year anniversary show.
What are those bulbous organic things in the corner? Ceramics by Jennefer Hoffmann.
Document opened Lather Cactus Drape by Victoria Fu, “a new series of glass artworks that are at once sculptures, paintings, photographs, and prints.”
The works are glassine and iridescent, and had people wiggling in front of them to catch the shimmering effects. They stand on their own but also quote art history in oblique ways. Extreme close-ups keep revealing new stories.
Oliva Gallery opened Offering, featuring Laura Peterson and Nikki Renee Anderson. They know how to bring out a crowd for an opening here.
Oh, what’s this?
A ceramic by Anderson. At Oliva, the phrase “organic confection” finally popped into my mind. The concept feels of a piece with works I’ve seen recently on other days in other places, like recent ceramics by Lynn Basa:
Are these works a collective vision of the present moment? Over-indulgence, pathology and spontaneous regeneration all at once?
Space & Time Gallery opened At Land, a solo show by Corey Antis. Antis takes rubbings and impressions from various environmental surfaces and features, revealing unexpected patterns, paths, whorls, and stories in the places that are usually overlooked as background.
The most intriguing and involving experience of the evening was at Color Club, an event space/tavern/gallery complex in the building of the former Latvian Community Center. Friday was the opening of A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science, featuring the work of Annabelle Lee Dehm, Raine Yung, Yao Dong, Eldon Stephan, Eli Zeng, Kate Hasset, and Nao Goldstein.
The evening featured a collective performance with the attendees, an orchestrated series of moans, yelps, cries, raps, sighs, and foot stamps that increasingly insisted on their demands until at the crescendo we finally drowned out the band playing downstairs, then called enough.