Land and Sea: Watercolors and Pastels                        PAINTINGS

Old Town Art Center

1763 N. North Park

 

November 8 – December 12, 2009                                Recommended

 

The current group show of watercolors and pastels at the Old Town Art Center, ‘Land and Sea’, evokes a smile and provides a pleasant glimpse of the work of several local artists. This group, not a crew which holds the company of curators, and reviewers as the norm, have approached their vision as producers of artworks as a sideline and fused it to their daily lives.

 

Among these artists, Reven Fellers, a fan of Sargent, presents a series of pastels which leans from the representational to the near abstract. Her, “Monroe Harbor” captures sailboats at rest with blues and surfy grays and fluid line and plane. “I love pastels,” she says, “In watercolors you have a paint brush between you and the paper. Pastel allows you to connect…directly.” There’s a sense of play in her works accompanying  traces of abstractness.

 

Of course there is no pattern or trend in such a show, only the fluidity and transparency which watercolor and pastel provide, and each artist comments on. “I love how the colors flow, how, the watercolor moves,” shared Maureen Carr, who’s, “Tuscan Café” presents primal, beige and tans with a virtuosic realism. She credits Tom Francesconi, of the Old Town Art Center with influencing her style.

 

Gerri Kaye’s vibrant colors punch out in a work, “Misty Colors”, a pastel, autumn street scene with two figures centered as if walking away, drenched in burnished orange. “The couple came last”, she says, “I love vibrant colors, they speak from the heart, and it’s a major part of me. Each season”, she concludes, “is rich in color,” as is reflected in her other works.

 

Cynthia Johnson’s animated, broken strokes and rhythm produce in “Afternoon in the Dunes”

 

As the viewer moves through the room, the exhibition presents an atmosphere of the exteriors and open spaces. There are carful delineations and simple expressive styles. There is no philosophical exploration in this exhibition, no difficulty in recognizing subject matter. Whatever this show lacks in technical background is trumped by passion.

(Jeffery McNary)  Posted November 20, 2009
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Brigitte Riesebrodt, Metamorphoses                        PAINTINGS

Roy Boyd Gallery
739 N. Wells Street

October 30, 2009- January 5, 2010

The current exhibition at the Roy Boyd Gallery, Brigitte Riesebrodt Metamorphoses, holds narrative, perception, and traces of faith. Here the artist spreads paint, literally and figuratively with her hands on canvas, and distinctively on the waxed staves of curved, weathered oak from barrels once filled with Italian wine which she has chosen to use.

There is no randomness in her use of color, many earth shades of greens and copper. She employs a fluidity of mediums. The artist has spent nearly a decade painting in Tuscany, and has drawn upon the early frescos of that region in and around Arezzo, particularly those of de Giavanni and Pieve, both 15th century renaissance artists of the region. At times contradictions appear, and the work can appear shrill. After all, the commissioned frescos of the mid-1400s were deigned to reflect the triumphs of Christianity. Ms. Risesebrodt's works are abstracts, not representational, with both connections and interpretations requiring a broad reach. In comparison, they are near pop.

Her Leonardo's Last Supper, oil and wax on wood, appeared in the Art Institute of Chicago's recent exhibition,  A Case for Wine, but was not held as permanent. ?FraAngelico's St. John, oil and wax on wood presents another series of barrel staves, again in attractive earth tones.

The artist holds an appreciation for the work of Twombly and that of the Danish expressionist, Per Kirkeby, and express the ease with which the genesis of her work unfolds for her.

"The only works I've struggled with are the collages," the artist shares. Those works, on canvas, take the viewer through varying pastel shades, with other shades peeping through. At times the viewer wonders where the exhibition is going, other than its vertical movement. ?"This", shares the artist, "is because most of my previous work has been horizontal."

Riesebrodt's work gracefully vaults her into an arena of technically skilled painters, and the viewer notices she's clearly over that bar early on. But there is little else to explain, only to understand and only to hope for more in a different performance.

(Jeffery McNary)    Posted November 14, 2009 
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John and Shawn Slavik, Common Layers      MIXED MEDIA

Ogilvie/Pertl Gallery
435 E. Illinois St.

October 30 –November 30, 2009                                 RECOMMENDED

 

 

There is a rich body of knowledge in the exhibition of John and Shawn Slavik currently at the Ogilvie/Pertl Gallery. The kinship and comparative approaches of these artists, “represent something or some point” in time which transcends the matter of fact. The exhibition, works of father and son, reaches through layers of wood and paint and material and returns with art, without filter. They make book, charmingly, passionately.

 

The exhibition, “Common Layers”, shares two disciplines, taking the viewer upstream in ways which explore the natural world and how we interpret and behave, possibly, beyond it.

 

“When things happen to me, I put it in my back pocket”, shares the senior, John, “And I say, ‘someday I’m gonna do something with that.’” And that he has and does, with his installations and flair and veneration of things natural. With his, ‘Indicator”, a wood carved bird, with protective lead covering its head, bares statements, ‘Sing with me’, ‘Why is there bigotry?’, ‘What goes around comes around’, ‘Pay attention’, and other comments. The sculpture is a social statement providing a stylistic luster to the artist’s manifesto. “An indicator gives a warning”, he says, “like that canary in a coal mine story. We, people”, he continues, “have this attitude that we’re the only things on the planet that feel, that think. This bird’s saying, ‘wait a minute, what about us. Since you’re the guardian of the planet, do something.’”

 

He works in both representative and abstract styles. “They’re both significant he says. I’m the story teller, and here’s a story,” he says pointing to, ‘Good and Evil,’ a stainless sculpture. The piece is in perfect balance when moving and connected when viewed from different perspectives. “Good and evil meet from time to time in life,” he shares.

 

Shawn’s work, ‘Don’t take Advice from Someone You Wouldn’t Trade Places With’, is an esoteric mixed media, skillfully employing wood and metal, color pigment and oil. “Choosing materials is most important”, he says. ‘It’s a very physical thing. I put on layers of paints, oil, pigments, they build up and I sand them down and carve into them.” The naked tree shapes are influences of the modernist architectural photographer, Julius Shuman, whom Shawn holds in high esteem. He adds that since Shuman’s death, he starts, “I’m throwing down trees”, hesitating, “I think I’ll stop….”, and trails off.

 

‘You Were Right About the stairs, Each One is a Setting Sun’, a mixed media on wood, steel and hydrosol, whistles, then smiles with its yellow ochre, to the viewer upon entering the show. It makes its presence known. The work, also Shawn’s, carries a host of black circles burned into the wood, further heightening the experience. “This holds a story of a conversation I had once. It was about planets and stars and galaxies and sun rises and sunsets. If we’re experiencing a sunset here, imagine how many other sunrises and sunsets there must be out there.”

 

Shawn mixes loose pigments with oil to arrive at his colors, and as a result they are seasonal, impacted by the temperature. “Not every thing makes it out of the workshop. Some fight back.”

 

The passion of the exhibition is uplifting. It’s no token affair and the relationship between the two artists is anything but common. “We’re our biggest critics”, says Shawn, “and he’s my best friend.”

 

The exhibition teaches and side steps strict adherence, and in the end is both stirring and stimulating.

(Jeffery McNary)  Posted November 4, 2009

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Igor Kozlovsky and Marina Sharapova                                  PAINTINGS       

Thomas Masters Gallery
245 W. Superior St.

Oct 16- Nov 22, 2009                                                                                          RECOMMENDED 

 

In a unique and quite amazing partnership, Igor Kozlovsky and Marina Sharapova, are artists who paint together, on the same works that is. They are husband and wife, and painting collaboratively and approaching the canvas from different directions with an expanded sense of each others style and talents.

 

Their current exhibition, at the Thomas Masters Gallery, provides a glimpse of the constant supply of delectable compositions produced by this duo. Igor’s sense for color and, “appreciation for the tactile nature of pain, canvas, and wood” compliments Marina’s realistic drawings in poetic fashion. “We divide the duties”, shared Marina. “Igor does backgrounds…color, the dramatic.”

 

Still, on occasion they appear to venture and stand on their own. ‘Legend of the Spring’, a graphite on paper, is Marina in full flight with crisply articulated and precise stokes. Here the female figure emerges appearing to wear a bird nest-esque hat, arms folded, with bird perched upon her thumb. In ‘Night of the Carnival’, Igor leads the dance with his bold, Pollock style background of bold strokes and splash. He smiles, “Pollock was my favorite. What I took from him was passion. We were trained classically. Pollock was radical. I was attracted to him. De Kooning is another favorite.”

 

“Wyeth is my favorite”, Marina adds. “You know, the different weather conditions. Sometimes you want something different. Sometimes you just want to try something new.” That they have done in charting and cutting from whole cloth their, ‘Walkers’ series. Here the works reflect the artists’ influence by wall paintings of ancient Egypt and the murals of Pompeii.

 

‘Apples for Helena’ takes the viewer for a wonderful ride. The early sketch reflects the continued development, dents, and quality of Marina’s calisthenics. Igor’s adopted coloring livens the theatre with skin tones and glow.

 

Such exhibitions rarely pop-up and embrace about the place. Viewers should feel really bad only if they’re not enlightened.

(Jeffery McNary)  Posted on October 28, 2009
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Fred Sandback, Solo Exhibit                                                SCULPTURE       

Rhona Hoffman Gallery
118 N. Peoria St.

October 23- December 23, 2009                                        Recommended


The retrospective solo exhibit of Fred Sandback currently showing at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in the West Loop is the last place you want to take a cynical friend who questions whether modern minimalist art is valid--particularly if they tend to mock  the exorbitant prices that artwork  from modern minimalist masters fetch.

Undoubtedly, Fred Sandback is considered a modern minimalist master.  Sandborn committed suicide in his studio in 2003 (age 59) after being a central figure in the international minimalist movement for over three decades.  His uber-minimalist works are in the permanent collections of such prominent museums as The Museum of Modern Art, New York,  Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Pinakothek der Modern, Munich, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.  

His sculptures employ different colors of acrylic yarn to create simple planes in space, often connecting a point on a gallery wall with the floor. According to the gallery press release, Sandback used color as “a way of balancing the relationships that various pieces have as they coexist with each other. There is nothing mathematical or deductive in the artist’s thinking".  In Sandback's own words, “There isn’t an idea which transcends the actuality of the pieces. The actuality is the idea.” The press release explains that this statement from Sandback is a focal point in philosopher John Rajchman’s recent essay “Fred Sandback’s Lines of Thought” in which Rajchman discusses Sandback’s work as reflective of Kant's concepts of external space.

All of this is a very heavy context which greets the viewer when attending the Sandback exhibit.  Over twenty sculptures and drawings very simply and unobtrusively grace the gallery space and make for a very well constructed flow in viewing the exhibit.  One obvious question that presents itself almost immediately when viewing the sculpture is the authenticity of the five installation pieces that employ one or two strands of suspended yarn.  The debate concerning the validity of famous conceptual artists like Jeff Koons using talented craftsmen to create pieces they would otherwise be unable to create on their own has been verbalized thousands of times.  However,  the discussion takes on an entirely new timbre when a sculpture consisting of a piece of yarn originally suspended from a concrete floor to a piece of drywall, conceived by a man forty years ago and who has been dead for six years, is reassembled and sold for $185,000.  One wonders if it is even the original piece of yarn.

More importantly, though, is the question of the concepetual relevance of the work.  Are these drawings of a line on a piece of thick card stock paper truly an esoteric artistic statement  reflective of the primal essence of material existence?  Are these simple strands of yarn installed in a reputable art gallery relevant today?  Were they relevant in the late 60s and early 70s when they were first conceived?  From a critical perspective, arguments will be cast from both sides of the aisle.  If nothing else, clearly this form of minimalist sculpture and drawing spawns debate.  And for many, that is the primary purpose of art.

Whether or not the viewer agrees with the philosophical and aesthetic relevance of Sandback's artwork, attending this exhibit is the opportunity to experience the vision of a man that spearheaded a worldwide art movement.  That alone makes the exhibit a must see.

(Mai Takahashi)  Posted October 26, 2009

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Rosilene Luduvico, Paintings and Drawings                PAINTINGS     
     
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Ave. Galleries
78 E. Washington St.

October 10 - December 27, 2009 

An exhibition of primarily small-scale, interrelated works of German-based artist Rosilene Luduvicao currently hangs gracefully in the Michigan Avenue Galleries of the Chicago Cultural Center. The works are soft and sparse and subtle, and they beacon a close-up look.

 

The show, co-curated by the City’s outgoing Deputy Commissioner for Visual Arts, Gregory Knight, is titled simply ‘Paintings and Drawings’, rather than the artist’s early suggestion of, ‘Lindomar’ or ‘Beautiful Sea’. There is actually little ‘sea’ to be seen.

 

Luduvico’s paintings and figures are poetical and lyrical, light and airy. They employ soft shades as exemplified in her ‘Ele’ (He), oil on chalk grounded canvas, depicting a lone figure on a seascape. ‘Lotus’ and ‘A New Kind of Water’, both oil on ground canvas, carry an air of mystery, with their pink tints and bird forms in naked trees. They convey a sense of winter, of quiet. The observer can almost hear the crunching snow.

 

At points, some of her figures are playful, and her manner in applying oil to canvass casually mimics watercolor and produces the effect of  “blurring the distinction between painting and drawing.”

 

Born in Brazil, Ms. Ludvico currently lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany. She studied at Espirito Santo University as well as Dusseldorf Acadamie of Art. She has shown primarily in Europe. This being her first U.S. exhibition, Luduvico’s work has been more spoken of, more than viewed, by many.

 

Nine of the, ‘Untitled’ works are inter-changeable, all oil on chalked canvas. One can move rapidly amongst or past them.

 

She goes on to present, ‘Chicago Boy’, color pencil and graphite on paper an entertaining, happy piece with few strokes. Here an elfin, curly haired figure appears napping. There is glitter strategically placed along the drawings bottom.

 

Although Luduvico has not clearly identified with any art movement, her work is said to reflect that of Caspar David Friedrich and the Romantic Period of German/Northern European painting. Her, ‘Dream Traveler’, it is worth noting, harkens similarities to the work of Peter Doig. So far, however, there is no singular spirit which comes across fully in this show. That will take a little more time, and the viewer should eagerly await that announcement.

(Jeffery McNary)  Posted October 18, 2009

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Josue Pellot, New Work                                                MIXED MEDIA    
     
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Ave. Galleries
78 E. Washington St.

October 10 - December 27, 2009                                           Recommended


Central to the art of Josue Pellot is, “Questioning cultural structures would be overall. Then, focusing on political and familial experiences,” he says. This is confidently rolled out in his exhibition of “New Works”, currently in the Michigan Avenue Galleries of the Chicago Cultural Center. Here, the artist utilizes an array of mediums and formats, establishing a kind of ‘ethnic modernism’ and delineating linkages often overlooked. A Chicago artist with Puerto Rican roots, he has clearly found ways, through these works, to connect figuratively and creatively his heritage and the American experience, with both pop culture and consumerism.

Pellot’s installation, “Detail of 1493”, uses neon and argon lights to present a three panel historical tale. It begins with a Taino Indian, an indigenous figure, standing on the shore viewing the arrival of three sailing vessels, and concludes in the third panel with a conquistador thrusting his sword into a prostrate Taino figure. “The neon pieces were fully realized and produced after I re-encountered the facade of a Liquor store (styled like a Spanish fortress)”, he explains. “Each sign hung on its own window at the store next to big orange signs that read things like 'Milk 2.99', RC cola .99, eggs, etc.” One sees more than the obvious in what he refers to as an, “index to a story”. Why the neon? “I thought neon would be a great medium to talk about a consumed history, and when the liquor store came in to play it was a must,” he shares.

Another such “index” emerges in,‘Temporary Allegiance’, an amalgamation of U.S. and Puerto Rican flags almost creeping from a large plastic garbage bag. “The floor piece is the end result of a site specific installation project. The 15x25 foot flag was hung 70 feet high on a light post that divided the highway in Puerto Rico. It lasted about 12 hours before city officials castrated the seam of the flag and put a few extra holes in it for me,” says Pellot. “I waited every day at city officials offices till I finally got the flag back, cut up and stuffed into a black trash bag. And the castrated seam now wraps around that post to this date.”

Both installations secrete the artist’s aesthetic argument inviting the viewer to digest the connections of colonialism and consumerism as being more than just inconsequential. A story is being told here.

Pellot’s oeuvre has been influenced by that of Felix Gonzalez Torres, David Hammons and Tom Friedman. “These would be 3 artists who have had an impact on me. A mixture of humor, politics and unquestionable creativity,” he says.

In his large photograph, ‘Dama a Caballo’, the artist demonstrates his broad range of skills and technique. Here he builds upon a classical work of another Puerto Rican artist, Jose Campeche. Yet true to his internal coherence, Pellot updates his work via a Puerto Rican background rather than the European landscape of the original.

How then, does an artist with such deep political convictions brace for the difficulty of rendering art which does more than lecture? Does the ‘work’ fight back? “More often than not I run with a 'bad' piece to the end. I've spent hours on pieces that will decorate my studio”, he says. Concluding, “The end result can either surprise me or lead to work that does feel right.”

(Jeffery McNary)  Posted October 17, 2009
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Amy Casey, Uncertain Times: New Paintings                      PAINTINGS
             
ZG Gallery
300 W. Superior St.

October 1 - October 31, 2009                                      Recommended

 

When it comes to the art of Amy Casey, ‘House Casey’ is probably not a brand the artist wants for her themed work. Nonetheless she had to know what she was getting into and how viewers would react. She stems from a new, noisy generation of painters full of journal entries. She breaks from that crowd with exercised, vivid authority, hardly detached from events, the show is a cautionary tale.

 

“Uncertain Times”, Casey’s current exhibition at the Zg Gallery consist of works driven by her recurring dreams of a world calamity. Here the artist captures bad dreams, recurring sessions of buildings collapsing, ecological catastrophes, reflections of the current nervous state of affairs of society.

 

“Composition is something very intuitive for me, and I usually lightly sketch out a piece with that first plan and keep it around to look at in my studio while I am forming the painting in my mind, then I block forms in very lightly and work the composition out-usually over a few days or even weeks, by taping bits of paper to the painting and trying different shapes and movements,” she says.

 

There is amazing detail and sensitivity in Casey’s work. With shades of rust, browns and deep reds and precision, the artist lays out an almost surreal landscape of urban landscapes in decay. Casey applies acrylic to paper, a technique allowing for exacting detail. With her “BigCity, Small Town”, a large work, she exhaust every house used in previous works. She references houses and buildings from her native Cleveland. Structures appear strapped together in absurd attempts to save themselves. “I focused on something that has bothered me for some time about my little communities and networks- that no matter how many group together it must be impossible to get from building to building and actually interact in some real way, which seems absurd since connection seems an important part of the idea,” Casey shares.

 

In other works stilts are used as a survival strategy for the houses and in others lines have snapped leaving the structures in a state of collapse. In her, “Stragglers” some structures are washed, producing an effect of dust rising, a fog.

 

There is no debate in Casey’s work. Here is a non-negotiable exhibit of failed fixers and engineers. Her environmentalist aesthetic is translated in a distinctly dramatic fashion. “My biggest struggle with individual pieces is wanting to make every tiny bit of the painting detailed and real to the best degree I can,” she concludes, “but being up against the reality of time and also not overworking something to death.  Probably my next biggest struggle when working with a piece is dealing with accidents and having to rethink something that I felt I knew so well.”

(Jeffery McNary) Posted October 5, 2009

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Jeremy Long,  Painters Painting                                     PAINTINGS   

Linda Warren Gallery
1052 W. Fulton Market St.

Sept 11-Oct 10, 2009                                                   Recommended


In this three-artist exhibit entitled Painters Painting, legendary artists Don Southard and Stanley Lewis are showing their  latest work alongside the much younger and less accomplished Jeremy Long, an assistant professor at Ithaca College in New York.  Southard and Lewis are arguably two of the more notable American artists living today, both whom have taught at such acclaimed institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago and American University, all the while earning Guggenheim Fellowships for good measure.  And while the talent of Southard and Lewis is evident in Painters Painting, it is the vision and execution of Long's pieces that steal the show.

In this exhibit Long takes his latest creations, two massive oil on canvas pieces entitled "The Delivery" and "Ithaca Home", and creates two even more dramatic overall productions surrounding both by including five to seven much smaller derivative paintings of the enormous originals and displaying them tastefully adjacent to the two.  The smaller derivative studies are cubist and abstract interpretations of the massive originals, which are modern realist figurative in genre.  The overall effect of the smaller studies flanking the originals is both visually stunning and intellectually stimulating.  The subject matter of the originals are the artist himself with his wife and child,  in settings that span centuries of everyday occurrences, like cooking at the fireplace and reading a book in a chair.  The overall impact of these mundane activities locked in a different time interposed with the eerie presence of the artist is a remarkably challenging visual study in itself.  However, the inclusion of the smaller study pieces alongside the massive originals take the overall production to an entirely higher level of accomplishment.  The slight deviations from the studies to the original along with the different treatment of perspective, scale, and color clearly confront the enigma of perspective in the quest of formulating meaning from reality.

The impact of Long's work in this exhibit,  particularly being displayed next to and outshining the work of such giants as Southard and Lewis, reveal that Jeremy Long may well be on his way to the pinnacle of the American Art establishment , possibly without peer.

(Jonathan Taylor)  Posted September 19, 2009

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Karen Savage, Growing Up                                          PHOTOGRAMS   

Packer Schopf Gallery
942 Lake St.

Sept 11- Oct 10, 2009

Karen Savage is a Chicago artist working int the photo-based process known as the photogram. It is a type of  photography that doesn't utilize a traditional camera, where the end result looks something similar to an x-ray.  Her current exhibit at Packer Schopf Gallery is entitled Growing Up and all the pieces in the exhibit are a photogram of either a little girl dress or a doll dress.  According to the press release, "Children's dresses are grounded in culture, garments which symbolize innocence, promise, optimism, and hope for the future; especially a cherished christening dress, representing a state of grace, milestone, and a ritualistic event. These translucent and empty dresses express loss and growth. The series of photograms is in large part autobiographical for Savage, but also touches upon the traditional female collective in our culture."

All the pieces of this exhibit are haunting to look at and the metaphor as expressed in the press release is easy enough to understand.  However, it is this predictability and complete absence of nuance and fresh expression of an otherwise overdone cliché that unfortunately renders Growing Up a bit  sophomoric and underwhelming.  The medium itself is intriguing but without a more stimulating metaphor, the exhibit is stale.   

(Jonathan Taylor)  Posted September 19, 2009

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Keiko Hara, Framework                                              PAINTINGS      

Perimeter Gallery
210 W. Superior St.

Sept 11- Oct 10, 2009    

One might experience a sort of calming effect as they explore Keiko Hara’s current exhibit at Perimeter Gallery.  Painting in oils with an acutely expansive range both on canvas and paper, I was immediately pleased with texture of the paintings in this exhibit, along with the smaller than usual scale of each.  Each one is hypnotic and fluid--there is a lot to absorb here, particularly with the pieces done on paper, which I found abundantly stimulating.  My favorite piece in the show, a small painting measuring only 16” x 26” called “Verse Space in the Distance”, from far away appears to be an all violet surface when, upon colser examination, it’s similar to a George Seurat pointillism piece, only without the representation.  In addition to the ambitious, physical elements of her work, I did get a sense of what the aritist claims her work is about, “the tactility of things, their reference to nature, and how we percieve, feel and understand the universe we inhabit.”  Hara currently resides in Walla Walla, Washington.     

                               

(Tracy Ostmann-Haschke) Posted  September 19, 2009     

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David Weinberg and Bob Emser, Framework         SCULPTURE      

David Weinberg Gallery
300 W. Superior St.

July 17- Aug 29, 2009    

Framework at David Weinberg gallery is a duo show showcasing the work of sculptors Bob Emser and David Weinberg that runs through the end of August.  In this exhibit, Emser presents wall mounted metal “shadow” works, while Weinberg displays archival digital prints.

Bob Emser, a very successful artist, has an extensive resume and biography that, in many art circles, makes him the equivalent of a movie star. And why shouldn’t he be? After all, he is the director of Sculpture Chicago, has had “exhibits in four continents” and “exhibits in seven countries” according to his CV.   And with this in mind, I was excited to be dazzled by his latest exhibit of free-formed, abstract, tubular steel projections upon which dramatic overhead lighting  creates a shadow creating the illusion that the sculpture is longer than it appears. 

Unfortunately, and despite my excitement, I was left disappointed.  Every one of the pieces in this exhibit could be mistaken for maquettes for sterile decorative entrance awnings. Structurally, the welds are messy and unpolished, not fitting with the sleek concept of the work. Furthermore, wood is also unnecessarily incorporated into the unconvincing structures. After studying the first three sculptures in this exhibit, I realized, unbelievably, that what I had just observed was more representative of an art student’s work than that of an art movie star.  The works were dull, the concepts dated, and the execution sophomoric.  The remainder of the sculptures were no different.

I continued into the next room to see David Weinberg’s digital prints. A statement regarding Weinberg’s visits to Wisconsin green houses presents itself nicely near the entrance.  The overall presentation of all the digital prints in this portion of the exhibit left me appreciating his eye and ability to translate what one might normally see as a common object—a greenhouse-- into beautiful art by adeptly depicting fragments of the actual structure close-up. What I find even more interesting is that his vision and process makes the images become more black and white (both literally and symbolically) rather than “green”.  Overall, I enjoyed Weinberg’s part of the exhibit and considered his work much more engaging and thought-provoking than Emser’s work. 


(Tracy Ostmann-Haschke) Posted August 24, 2009     
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Robert Wayner, The Pan Within                                     SCULPTURE

Black Walnut/Robert Wayner Gallery
220 N. Aberdeen St.

June 6- July 31, 2009                          Recommended

Gallery owner Robert Wayner's compelling solo sculpture exhibit   The Pan Within is a juxtaposition of the beauty of organic, live-edge naturally felled wood with the impersonal character of prefabricated stainless steel machine parts.  In bringing these two oft-described "contradictory" materials together in such a  captivating fashion, Wayner is clearly bringing to the fore the question of whether the warm, unpredictable beauty of nature
can be reconciled with the cold calculated functionality of industrialization, technology, and design. 

The ten sculpture have a very personal, almost intimate spirit inherent to them that give the exhibit a serene yet strangely sad aura.  Indeed, in the press release for the exhibit  Wayner is quoted as saying all the sculpture were born from  “an ever-increasing mysterious force within me, pulling me away from civilization, the art world, my gallery and the life I know in Chicago and pushing me back into the solitude of the wild.”   In the piece Nature Cradling Technology, two perfectly round stainless steel orbs rest atop a piece of live-edge black walnut while a long, paper-thin slice of oak gently holds another stainless steel machine part, that would otherwise fall to the ground.  The sculpture conotates an alternate view of technology and nature, so rarely seen, where the two easily coexist innocently.  And yet it is this unrealistic idealism  that ultimately emits a sad, unrealistic hope from this tranquil sculpture.

The Pan Within is the best of what minimalistic sculpture has to offer: straight forward and strong, rich in metaphorical meaning, and visually stunning.  And while some of the sculpture stray from the minimalistic theme (the piece Rapid Reflection is a complicated sphere of thin light colored maple slats revolving around a dark black structural center) the exhibit is coherent, bold, and touching.  

(Mai Takahashi)  posted June 30, 2009
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