M The New York Art World ®"All You Need To Know."
M The New York Art World ®"All You Need To Know."
 

art reviews

 

 

     

    Michael Ashkin
    Andrea Rosen Gallery
    >>
    By Lily Faust

    Audrey Nervi
    Stellan Holm Gallery
    >>
    By Nicollette Ramirez

    Marvin Bileck and Emily Nelligan
    Allexandre Gallery
    >>
    By Joel Simpson

    The Way to China is the Way to America
    Plum Blossoms Gallery
    >>
    By Gu Huihui

    Olga Hubard
    Galeria Ramis Barquet
    >>
    By Mary Hrbacek

    Jo Ellen Van Ouwerkerk
    Woodward Gallery >>

    By Joel Simpson

    Andrea Hersh
    Gallery Boreas
    >>
    By Jessica D. K. PARK

    Art Creates Communities
    Bohen Foundation
    >>
    By Joyce Korotkin

    Variations on Nature
    Alpan Gallery
    >>
    By Lily Faust

    Anja Huwe: Conde Nast Building
    And Other Public Works of Art
    >>
    By Nicollette Ramirez

    Bill Burke
    Howard Greenberg
    >>
    By Joel Simpson


    Jeffrey Hargrave
    The Phatory LLC
    >>
    By Chris Twomey

    The Chicago Art Fair Wars:
    Round One
    >>
    ByMichael MacInnis

                  


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    Michael Ashkin
    Andrea Rosen Gallery

    ByLily Faust

    Before the spread of globalization that we take for granted today, and
    before and during technology and industrialization, there were adjnabis
    roaming the world. Adjnabi, a word derived from the Arabic and used
    throughout the Middle East to mean foreigner or stranger, is a polite way of
    identifying the other. Adjnabistan, whose colloquial use in that part of the
    world implies a distant, usually non-Muslim place, is also the name Michael
    Ashkin gives to a shadow homeland, whose tumbling topography is placed as a
    tableau for the viewer¹s survey.

    In this bird¹s-eye-view of a shantytown, the view is oddly familiar and
    bleak. At first glance, the depopulated, tree-less cluster of geometric
    structures brings to mind satellite images of desolate towns in any luckless
    part of the world. The dust-colored pieces, all within the same narrow range
    of monochrome, punctuate the white gypsum tabletop like shacks in a ghost
    town. The ensemble of vertical, horizontal and diagonal shapes carry a
    chaotic yet sensible, even poetic relationship to each other. Clustered
    around no obvious life force, the rectangular boxes represent the simplest
    of dwellings in a dystopic environment.

    Looking closer, the viewer takes note of mundane items used in this
    panoramic vision: small-size shipping boxes and packaging cartons for
    manufactured goods, (by-products of commerce and industry) and slender
    wooden sticks, scattered around like joists at a construction site.
    Corrugated cardboard pieces mimic corrugated sheet metal, depicting lean-tos
    on shacks, or serving as temporary walls separating households. Here are the
    simplest of dwellings, with a single opening for a window or a door, known
    to mushroom into existence overnight in metropolises in developing nations.
    In approximately the same proportions as actual trailer homes or abandoned
    shipping containers, the homes in Adjnabistan appear to represent a
    fictional ghetto of industrial/urban blight.

    Where Adjnabistan is does not matter as much as that it exists. It is a
    generality, a region where the other lives. On this tabletop of dense
    activity, Adjnabistan could be in the industrial zones, or trailer parks of
    New Jersey, the artist¹s home state and, the focus of his earlier
    exhibitions on the Meadowlands.

    Addressing broad economic and political issues, the work tangentially
    articulates thoughts on wealth and power, housing and community building.
    Pointing to a universal experience of struggle and neglect, Michael Ashkin¹s
    Adjnabistan posits a meditation on a marginal community at the far end of
    exclusion.

    His model town appears to be a metaphor for a level of civilization that is
    stifling, punishing and oppressive. Adjnabistan appears closer than
    Afghanistan, situated on white gypsum board, barren as a desert, in spite of
    the presence of a dry riverbed in its midst.
    Through 6/18. ¶




     


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    Audrey Nervi
    Stellan Holm Gallery

    ByNicollette Ramirez

    Audrey Nervi¹s exhibition, All The Same, suggests a return to socially
    engaged art. She is part of a group of young people called ³Travelers,² that
    travels the world, setting up in government sponsored parks with music,
    dance and art, to protest against the spread of corporations and their
    negative impact on the environment.

    Despite the pedantic theme, Nervi manages to get her message across without
    being didactic. In her sensitive paintings she offers a window into a youth
    culture that is more provocative and resonant than other young, hyped
    artists such as Ryan McGinley and Elizabeth Peyton.

    Her triptych, Coming From Out Of Space, was developed from Nervi¹s own
    experience in Tchekie. In this work we get a close-up view of life as a
    traveler, we see her tent, it¹s tattered covering flowing in the wind with
    the sky behind it; another canvas shows the alien-reptile painted face and
    torso of one of the travelers standing in front of an RV. The third is a
    panoramic scene of an RV, a tepee set up on the golden grass in the distance
    and the green forest in the background against the grey sky.

    In recording the life of a generation that, in this moment, is still the
    counter-culture, Nervi reaches into the past and conjures up a Warholian
    world of pop, while foreshadowing the future where the counter-culture, more
    attuned to the environment, might one day come to define the mainstream.
    Her watercolors on tracing paper capture the pop (corporate) elements of the
    cultures through which she has traveled. Utilizing tracing paper, she
    outlines the forms of corporate images, and then fills them in with
    watercolor; thereby subverting ads for chocolate, biochemical suits,
    politicians, airplanes and a dissected map of the world. This show works as
    a kind of travel log that allows the viewer to live vicariously through the
    artist, seeing the things she¹s seen and done in the small corners of the
    earth.

    Through 7/2.¶
    Ed Note: The Holm Gallery is located at 524 West 24 Street in Chelsea, New
    Yok. Tel. 212.627.7444

     

     


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    Marvin Bileck and Emily Nelligan
    Allexandre Gallery

    ByJoel Simpson

    Monochromatic gems by the late Marvin Bileck and his wife Emily Nelligan
    present two stunningly complimentary perspectives on nature. Bileck is all
    line and Nelligan is all tone. Taking to the woods, with its infinity of
    shapes, Bileck extracts a few poignant lines, distilling an overabundance of
    form in the natural setting into almost dreamlike evocations. An otherwise
    blank sketchbook page is divided by an irregular pencil scribble, that, on
    closer inspection reveals itself as the exquisite profile of a fallen tree.

    Elsewhere are rocks, grasses, fallen branches, bushes, low-lying plants and
    knots of trees. The drawings offer varying degrees of activity, but his most
    powerful ones are the sparest. As Picasso profiled a satyr, Bileck captures
    a tree trunk. And when he uses ink in a miniature of standing dead pines on
    an island, he reveals the similarity between tree branches and the paths the
    ink follows along the capillarity of the paper fibers.

    Nelligan, in contrast to her husband, offers up atmospherics: lowering
    clouds, fogs and gloomy seascapes. Sometimes the viewer cannot quite make
    out the seascape; the fog is too thick, and the work becomes an exercise in
    tonal masses. She captures the light patterns on the water, the cloud
    patterns and the water spilling over rocks. In some you can practically feel
    the rain.
    Through 6/17. ¶

     

     


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    The Way to China is the Way to America
    Plum Blossoms Gallery

    ByGu Huihui

    The Chinese adoption of Western painting ideas and styles goes back to the
    latter part of the Qing Dynasty, when Giuseppe Castiglione worked as a court
    painter, creating the fine, detailed gongbi style that came to represent the
    official court style. During the same time, the Eight Eccentrics (the name
    refers to their artistic style rather than personal attribute) identified
    themselves both politically and artistically as being opposed to the Qing
    court through their highly individualistic, pure ink paintings that depicted
    miscellaneous or banal subject matter. These two styles would combine in the
    Shanghai school, the first truly modern art of China developed in the mid to
    late 19th century. Beijing-based Ji Dachun, one of the two Chinese artists
    featured in this exhibition, The Way to China is the Way to America,
    reconnects with this artistic tradition which had been disrupted by first
    the Western Painting movement and then the social realism imposed by
    Communist China.

    Ji Dachun¹s acrylic on canvas paintings are slightly larger in scale, but
    the same dimensions, as typical easel paintings. In composition, they recall
    traditional Chinese paintings in that the figures are set against a white
    background with no realistic setting; this a Chinese custom dating back to
    3rd century A.D. He handles the paint as though he were using ink instead of
    acrylic, thinning out the paint for his sinuous lines and light washes
    rather than building up the surface. In Turning into a Butterfly, Turning
    into a Crane, a snake-like tree branch dominates the top half of the
    composition, recalling the birds and flower paintings that abounded in the
    Shanghai school ‹ fresh, spontaneous looking, even eccentric. The branch
    sprouts colored pencils, pins, a light, cigarettes, a pen knife ‹ referring
    to the studio practice (think Philip Guston) ‹ and, most unexpectedly,
    teeth. A left hand, presumably the artist¹s, cartoon-like in form but
    meticulously and finely painted, with each hair on the arm visible (gongbi),
    thrusts from the bottom of the canvas and pinches a pencil, as if it had
    just drawn the tree branch. The form of the tree is calligraphic, though in
    style it is more graphic and modern. However, it retains an instantly
    recognizable Eastern sensibility. There are splashes of paint on the
    otherwise highly controlled surface (the Eight Eccentrics utilized splashes,
    drips, accidents ‹ long before Pollack and other Western modernists). The
    subject matter is partly about studio practice, partly autobiographical, and
    all the while relating to Chinese artistic heritage. And yet, the meaning
    remains just out of reach and so, despite its lightness and irreverence, the
    work remains mysterious.

    The hand that appears to have drawn the tree branch forms, together with the
    pencil it holds, the shape of a crane. Cranes are traditionally auspicious
    animals, being the symbol of longevity. Yet, nothing resembling a butterfly
    can be seen in the painting; perhaps the title refers more to a literary
    idea. The tree branch is organic, yet it is also a construct created by the
    artist. There is an old Taoist proverb: a sage dreamt he was a butterfly,
    but upon waking realized he could not be sure he was not a butterfly
    dreaming that he was a man. Here, both the uncertainty of existence and the
    concreteness of art making are captured within a seemingly light-hearted and
    whimsical painting.

    And yet, this type of painting represents only one half of Ji Dachun¹s
    recent body of work.

    The other paintings are more contemporary and Western, although he continues
    with the same set up ‹ a main figure or two isolated against an unpainted
    ground. In these works, the figures are recognizable people from Chinese or
    at least Communist Chinese history. In works such as Sing a Song For You,
    the figures are even more isolated against the white of the canvas;
    formally, the background is less activated and so the figures seem iconic
    and illustrative. The result is that the painting feels more Western than
    Eastern; it has more in common with Pop Art than traditional Chinese art.
    Much of this work is overtly political ‹ hilarious with overtones of moral
    fairy-tales, such as Lenin choking a goose. As such, it may be more easily
    accessible to the visitor who knows some Chinese art history. Nevertheless,
    the paintings: Turning into a Tree, Family Book and the aforementioned
    Turning into a Butterfly, Turning into a Crane reward the determined viewer
    with the artists¹ deep and resonating sense of his historical and spiritual
    underpinnings in the past.
    5/6 through 6/4. ¶

     

     

     


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    Olga Hubard
    Galeria Ramis Barquet

    ByMary Hrbacek

    In a series of subtle organic images informed by strong conceptual
    underpinnings, Olga Hubard allows her choice of delicate materials to convey
    her artistic intentions in gently flowing rhythms. Employing biomorphic
    patterns that are painted on layered, transparent vellum, she evokes a
    convincing visual code for unconscious thoughts, fleeting impressions,
    memories and vague reflections.

    Close scrutiny of the work Untitled, (Reviews), reveals a series of nine
    grided segments of cut-out art reviews that suggest the importance to the
    artist of a meaningful engagement with the world beyond the studio. Hubard
    also uses an expanse of pebbles, repetitions of leaves and blurred
    stick-like marks that are obscured by new fragmentary forms that result from
    the overlapping paper. She expands her metaphors with cryptic mazes and
    round white-capped shapes that resemble human body parts.

    The depth and complexity of overlaid designs suggest internal subatomic
    forms. When painted, the sheer paper shrinks and wrinkles, yielding a
    fragile hand-made quality. Hubard's use of natural elements indicates an
    affinity with the works of Terry Winters, but her gossamer materials and
    subtly intricate creative methods mirror the processes of nature, enhanced
    by a personal conceptual structure that is both poetic and original.
    5/5 through 6/17. ¶

     

     

     


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    Jo Ellen Van Ouwerkerk
    Woodward Gallery

    ByJoel Simpson

    These strangely evocative works, prints and canvases by Jo Ellen Van
    Ouwerkerk entitled Somewhere in Time, offer pre-Raphaelite photo-realist
    female nudes, many within gently surrealist settings. The images draw the
    viewer¹s eye and hold our attention. Tangibly sculpted monochromatic bodies
    stand out against colored backgrounds. Their vulnerable faces make mute
    appeals, some distracted, some mildly reproachful, all self-contained.

    In Dancing Skeletons, for example, two nude women sitting closely in a brown
    dinghy stranded on the sand, gaze out at the viewer. One wears a straw hat
    with candles around it, and a multi-colored shawl. On the sand skeletons and
    one large spider dance among palm trees, while two segmented worms emerge
    from the side of a boat. The meaning is not immediately apparent, but the
    fascination is unmistakable.

    In Birds Flying Backwards, a purple taffeta-clothed figure with hair like
    Emily Brontë sits hunching over to the right of the frame, while
    backward-flying doves surround her head. In Girl with the Black Mask in the
    Red Room the bare-breasted half-figure tilts her head, covers one eye with
    her left arm, and appeals the other eye. Many of the images, including this
    one, are framed in Mexican style tin with repeating designs and stylized
    skeletons, creating powerful ensembles that seem almost haunting.
    Through 6/30. ¶

     

     


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    Andrea Hersh
    Gallery Boreas

    ByJessica D. K. PARK

    In this solo exhibition of Hersch¹s recent paintings, drawings, and
    collages, we are treated with a welcome respite from the abundance of photo
    realistic paintings that dominate the New York art scene at the moment.
    From the nurturing, graceful arms of Lapael¹s Madonna to the plump legs and
    buttocks of Fra Filippo Lippi¹s cutest baby angels, Hersh utilizes bits and
    pieces from bodies and draperies of Renaissance master paintings, and turns
    them into entirely new anthropomorphic forms; she sometimes uses found
    images for inspiration.

    Her figures, which are lumps of tangled legs, arms and other bizarre
    elements, wobble as if falling apart in any moment, yet the bundle seems
    fairly tight and manages to balance as well. For example, in Self-Posed, the
    figure stands on a tiny ball, by the tip of a toe, supporting lumps of
    dizzying body parts. Yet, it seems at ease, like a baby cupid landing softly
    upon the top of a fountain, ready to shoot an arrow. Of course, there are
    obvious differences. Instead of the lovely face of an angel, a leg sticks
    out from an upper body and a bizarrely arranged arm replaces an angel's
    gracefully lifted leg in order to balance. A fingertip that appears in the
    middle of the torso parodies the angel¹s motion of flipping an arrow, while
    the puffed white fabric which the lifted arm on the left holds parodies the
    angel¹s wing.

    Hersh¹s whimsical imagination is reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosh¹s fantastic
    creation, yet her playful attitude and simple rendering of familiar scenes
    reminds us of Pieter Brueghel¹s peasants. A sugary color scheme adds all the
    more to the innocent, child-like atmosphere, as if displaying the artist¹s
    pure joy and admiration for observing the highest form of paintings; or
    perhaps a jealousy towards these impossible-to-imitate master painters.
    On the other hand, Hersh¹s drawings and preparatory collages evoke a
    different atmosphere. Despite the smaller scale, as compared to the
    paintings, the spontaneity of the artist¹s imagination comes through
    stronger in these works. Especially in her collages, there is a sense of
    vulnerability and uneasiness. It seems that for Hersh, painting is an act of
    meditation whereby everything gets worked out and smoothed over by the time
    it reaches the surface; but in these smaller works we see what¹s really
    going on inside.
    5/6 through 6/12. ¶

     

     


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    Art Creates Communities
    Bohen Foundation

    ByJoyce Korotkin

    In the shadows and on the platform of a curiously clean but otherwise
    seemingly authentic subway station below ground at the Bohen Foundation, a
    performance by numerous adolescents, replete with a guitar-playing
    mendicant, charmed onlookers. Not your usual subway audience of jaded,
    harried commuters during rush hour, these were museum curators, critics,
    collectors and parents who had come to Art Creates Communities: Project in
    Chelsea, the inaugural exhibition of More Art, a non-profit organization
    founded by the exhibition¹s curator, Micaela Martegani.

    Martegani invited seven prominent contemporary artists to work with the
    ethnically and economically diverse student population from the Clinton
    Middle School for Writers and Artists (PS260) in New York. Each one worked
    with a group of students using a contemporary medium in modern artistic
    expression that includes painting, photography, video, comic book and
    performance art. Anna Gaskell¹s group made a video loosely based on the
    children¹s game "telephone," that examined the role individual
    interpretation plays in miscommunications. Luca Buvoli¹s students created
    comic books with original characters; the students own invented alter egos
    enacting virtual dramas.

    Also engaged in the workings of the imagination was Matthew Waldman¹s group,
    whose young participants photographed local sites in a mythical search for
    the hiding places of urban "fairies." The resulting digitized photograph was
    altered with the students drawings of fairies, and printed as duratrans on
    illuminated plexi. Other groups drew upon the grittier realities of urban
    life. Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset¹s group created the live performance
    played out on the subway platform of their installation, End Station, that
    explored the excitement and fear engendered by a typical experience in a New
    York City subway while waiting for a train that never arrived. Gary Simmons¹
    students worked with his well-known medium of erasure, creating a layered
    message produced as a billboard displayed in the Chelsea streets; a poignant
    work that echoes the way in which the home-grown Chelsea neighborhood has
    been erased by the gentrification of its freshly minted art world status.
    Acting as advisor for the project, Tim Rollins, an artist-educator widely
    respected in both the art world and in educational circles worked with
    students to create watercolors based on William Shakespeare¹s magical flower
    from A Midsummer Night¹s Dream. The students¹ watercolors were painted over
    Shakespeare¹s text, torn from books and transformed into painting surfaces.
    Those who work with young students are well aware of the stunningly
    perceptive and professional quality work they can produce. This exhibition
    gets everything right in this regard.

    The Clinton Middle School is located in the heart of the Chelsea art
    district. This project fosters an important link between the relatively new
    art community and the young people who actually live here.
    5/19 through 6/11. ¶

    Ed Note: the Bohen Foundation is located at 415 West 13 street. Hrs Tue-Sat
    12-6. For info please contact: micaela@moreart.com


     

     

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    Variations on Nature
    Alpan Gallery

    ByLily Faust

    The three artists in this show conjure unique interpretations of nature,
    examining particulars within the logic and formal mass of organic bounty. In
    Greg Martin¹s photography, as in his C-print, High Point Mountains, the raw
    energy of tangled, leafless branches are portrayed against the tight,
    vertical geometry of tree trunks. With the lines of branches slashing in
    every direction, Martin¹s image captures the fluid chaos of nature; yet the
    viewer gets the sense that the artist is equally interested in depicting the
    grand patterns of a natural order that is difficult to decipher due to its
    scale and complexity.

    Taking up a large section of the gallery is Lucy Hodgson¹s sculptural
    installation, titled Mitochondrial Drift. It rises from the floor like a
    hybrid plant, entailing twin forms of contiguous ess-shapes encased in clear
    vinyl, the work bears an odd resemblance to natural forms. Lengths of
    tendril-like shapes, cut out of wood, reach the ceiling and the walls,
    recalling cell structures that endlessly link and replicate. The work can be
    interpreted as a drawing in space, defined by tenuous lines that generate
    overlapping configurations. Animating its surrounding space, the
    installation brings to mind cyclical and incremental movements found in
    nature.

    Anne Raymond¹s painterly abstractions are based on formal components of the
    natural landscape. There is something tender about these depictions of
    place, painted as if the landscape is an intangible process, a memory rather
    than a fact. In Point, the earth¹s density is felt through the weighty ochre
    tones that blend into the light of the water and the sky. Through
    atmospheric color that heightens the landscape¹s formal elements, the
    composition evokes a mood akin to being there. This focused group show
    reminds us, once more, that interpretations of nature can yield
    extraordinary results.
    Through 8/2. ¶


     


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    Anja Huwe: Conde Nast Building
    And Other Public Works of Art

    ByNicollette Ramirez

    In the Lobby of the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square, Anja Huwe¹s
    exhibition of dot paintings breaths life into the otherwise grey, tomb-like
    interior of the giant office tower, designed by architect David Childs and
    company, that signaled a corporate ³clean up² of the once chaotic
    crossroads of the world. Working with the meticulous precision of a surgeon,
    Huwe paints a layered spectrum of color that is at once jarring and pleasing
    to the eye. Coming from a musical background, she seems to have
    unconsciously imbued these works with a a harmonious rhythm.

    Several of Huwe¹s paintings are grouped in diptychs and triptychs. One of
    these triptychs, entitled Camou Red, Camou Yellow and Camou Green, is
    painted on a black background with the red, yellow and green dominating the
    clustering of dots on each self-titled canvas. Umlaut, one of the larger
    works in the show, alternates the dots to create a range of patterns that
    suggest galaxies, or perhaps strands of DNA on the background of black.
    This show is good example of a trend underway to bring art out to the
    public; moving it beyond its traditionally sanctioned home in galleries and
    museums. Before this show, Huwe exhibited in the Gallery Lobby of another
    Durst building in New York, located on Sixth Avenue between 44th and 45th
    Streets. This democratization of public art is welcome, not only to the
    artist who gets a different and wider audience, but also to an audience that
    may not have been exposed to the idea of art for art¹s sake.

    Other examples of public art which can be seen this summer in New york
    include Julian Opie¹s LED rendition of a man and woman walking, located near
    City Hall on Chambers Street; the colorful cartoon-like elephants on Fifth
    Avenue and 60th Street by Chinatsu Ban, which will be on view through
    September, 2005. For a full list of public exhibitions sponsored by NYC
    Parks and Recreation go to
    http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/attractions/public_art/public_ar
    t_list.htm.
    Through 6/6. ¶

    Ed Note: The Condé Nast Building is located at 4 Times Square, on 42nd
    Street and Broadway. For more information, please visit ww.anjahuwe.com

     


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    Bill Burke
    Howard Greenberg

    ByJoel Simpson

    During the 1980s and 1990s, photographer Bill Burke took it upon himself to
    visit the once war-torn regions of southeast Asia, having escaped the
    military draft of a previous generation himself. What he found were
    societies still undergoing the pain of recovery, with visible scars of war
    in the former colonial buildings, and psychological scars evident in the
    faces people today.

    The colonial architecture presents a particularly poignant case. Decaying
    corniced French villas, crumbling and boarded up art nouveau style auto
    dealerships, an abandoned United States consulate, slated for demolition,
    seen presciently through a piquantly damaged negative; these are the
    settings for the preoccupied survivors, piecing together a recovering
    normality. Cyclists rush by, as gordian tangles of telephone and electrical
    wires frame the cityscape. In the Cambodian countryside, adolescent Khmer
    Rouge soldiers display their AK-47s and tattoos.

    Burke made the images on large format Polaroid negatives, which he prints in
    their entirety, with protruding paper edges. He writes the titles directly
    on the prints, giving the works a rough hand-made look, analogous to the
    hastily improvised cultures he was photographing. The images constitute
    tributes to the determination of people whom they show, who reconstruct
    their lives against the imposing backdrop of decaying monuments to ³the
    powers that be² ‹ no more. Some of these buildings are slated to be razed,
    some have been recycled and others are simply left as part of the landscape
    to complete their decay in the sub-tropical climate. In this regard, we are
    not far from Clarence John Laughlin¹s Ghosts Along the Mississippi, the
    somewhat romanticized depiction of the ruins of ante-bellum plantation
    houses. There, though, the style was neo-classical. In Burke¹s photographs
    the style is more Renaissance/19th Century and on through Art Deco.
    Ironically, the building he presents that is in the best condition is a
    1960¹s monstrosity, with cantilevered proboscis: a lighting shop in Phnom
    Pehn.
    Through 6/18.

     


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    Jeffrey Hargrave
    The Phatory LLC

    ByChris Twomey

    The raw underbelly of racism in America is given an un-sanitized treatment
    by Jeffery Hargrave, whose provocatively titled The Nigger Inside Me, an
    exhibition of self-portraits in paint, effigies and a photo installation,
    takes on ghosts from the past as well as lingering, menacing demons.
    Unlike his black contemporaries such as Ellen Gallagher and David Hammons,
    whose social commentary is derived from controlled elegance, Hargrave¹s work
    speaks without the filter of sanitized refinement, and this gives this show
    its punch.

    Forceful brush strokes seem to tear through a handful of small canvases,
    creating the artist¹s likeness as a pickaninny, contorted into a caricature
    of a caricature. This alter ego, with its black silhouette cartoon
    treatment, complete with bulbous nose, and shining orb-like eyes, becomes
    the player upon which we witness the forced social paradigm of "nigger."
    Psycho-sexual self-loathing is concurrent in Hargrave¹s identification with
    the aggressor in paintings of supplicating black men fornicating with white
    men. Huge black penises thrust through the canvas frame and through the red,
    raw, bloated "nigger" lips of his alter ego; the collective stereotype of
    black sexual prowess is brought front and center. Conversely, the bloated
    red lips also become the defining ³v² mark of the vagina, and the main color
    splashed onto the splayed silhouette of a prone women, ready for the
    ravaging. The rough hewn painting style works like a racial slur.

    In a wall installation, which is comprised of snapshots, drawings, and
    paintings on paper, Hargrave presents a kind of free-form visual diary; this
    work notes the artist¹s friends, current events, and personal details.
    Images are montaged in a loose but smartly ironic style. The black face of
    the artist (presumably), stares out at us, and we are startled to see that
    his face has been painted in black face paint, darker than his original
    color. Photographs are pinned over drawings, and visa versa, some depicting
    a confident white adolescent which may be super imposed over a throbbing
    black phallus, or the same individual, now with his own huge and imposing
    erection.

    The push and pull of attraction, hate, and the sexualization of power
    parlayed between black and white, becomes more poignant as we view pictures
    of what appear to be the artist as a child, his innocence intact, juxtaposed
    with the uneasy reality of the same grown-up self, caught between these
    definitions.

    Riveted by the repulsion of stereotypes and not-so-tired clichés that
    Hargrave excavates and examines, this edgy show serves up a cathartic
    experience for both viewer and artist alike.
    Through 6/4. ¶

     


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    The Chicago Art Fair Wars:
    Round One

    ByMichael MacInnis

    How could it be that one of the most talked about fairs in the art world,
    Art Chicago, appeared poised for extinction this year? The short answer is ‹
    appearances can be deceiving.

    A surprisingly effective disinformation campaign driven by the fair¹s rivals
    and fueled by the personal animosity of a small cadre of Thomas Blackman
    haters managed to dupe even those whose who should know better than to
    follow rumors that Art Chicago was finished.

    Indeed, a freshly minted replacement, Chicago Contemporary & Classic (CC&C),
    had been rushed to the fore ³to fill the gap² and an unfortunate, scandalous
    rip-off called Nova (Young Art Fair) was briefly touted as an answer to Art
    Chicago¹s alternative Stray Show. Initially embraced by CC&C, the Nova fair
    quickly became an embarrassment when it was learned that its organizers,
    Michael Workman and Tom Burtonwood, accepted exhibitor payments for booths
    in a building venue that never materialized. Likewise, the fair¹s
    ³Professional Preview Day² never happened; instead, exhibitors were
    re-directed to an improvised tent that would eventually (after permits were
    secured) serve as little more than an after-party venue for CC&C.
    The two fairs that did take place, however, Art Chicago and CC&C, had their
    own strengths and weaknesses. After interviewing exhibitors from both fairs,
    some of whom had booths in both venues concurrently, it is clear that the
    revamped Art Chicago won the first round in this hopefully short-lived
    Chicago art fair war. While the CC&C fair looked nice, the energy and
    attendance buzzed through Art Chicago.

    And what about round two? Don¹t count on it. The success of CC&C presumes
    the demise of Art Chicago. ³We submitted a proposal [for CC&C] under the
    assumption that Art Chicago was no longer in existence...² ‹ explains CC&C
    Director, Ilana Vardy, to Ruth Lopez, in an interview published a week
    before the fair in Time Out Chicago. Looks like that assumption proved to be
    somewhat off the mark. Art Chicago is already accepting applications for
    next year¹s show, scheduled for April 28 - May 1, 2006.

     

 


 
 

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