This week the Friday Night Army brings you:
The Underground Railroad Project at Twelve Galleries
by Jeriah Hildwine
Run, Blago, Run! at the Creative Rescue Organization
By Lee Ann Norman
The Dandelions are Over at Zg Gallery
by MK Meador
Tom Torluemke, Nicole Gordon & Nnenna Okore at the Cultural Center
by Monica LaBelle
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The Underground Railroad Project at Twelve Galleries
by Jeriah Hildwine
Meg Onli’s Underground Railroad Project is currently on display at the JULY Gallery, the eleventh of twelve temporary galleries each with a lifespan of one month. Not previously familiar with Meg’s work, I had no idea what to expect when I entered the temporary apartment gallery. One wall was covered with maps, brochures, and handwritten notes; an explanatory brochure explained that these were artifacts from and pertaining to a performance piece in which Meg walked 440 miles, from Rockville, Maryland to Dresen, Ontario. Her walk followed the route of the Underground Railroad, and is described by Meg as being “in search of her blackness.”
A side room features a slideshow of photographic documentation of the walk. As both an avid hiker and a history buff, I found the both documentation and my discussions with the artist very rewarding. Like any performance piece experienced through documentation, a viewer in the gallery can only taste a fraction of the real work.
The exhibition was not without its aesthetic component. In the main room were displayed three 8”x10” inkjet prints of drawings, depicting a runaway slave, a graveyard haunted by a “mammy” figure, and a monument to the escaped slaves. A larger print, 33” x 40”, was displayed with its frame leaned into a corner of the room. The drawing was of Meg, kneeling as in prayer, in a re-creation of a plate from an early edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The apparently casual installation worked well with the humility of the pose, and I also learned that the orientation of the drawing was such that the figure faced north as she prayed.
Meg Onli’s walk (and its accompanying exhibition) deftly sidestep the usual limitations of performance and its documentation. The walk itself is clear evidence that Meg takes her ideas seriously enough to put real work into them. Coupled with this, she’s done her research, and the inclusion of the drawings shows that, like the best conceptual performance artists, she hasn’t lost touch with the aesthetic.Twelve Galleries is located (this month) at 2156 West 21st Place. For more information, visit www.twelvegalleries.com
Run, Blago, Run! at the Creative Rescue Organization
By Lee Ann Norman
You may not have realized it, but you are probably familiar with the signature piece in the latest show at Creative Rescue Organization. Perhaps you’ve seen the infamous stenciled figure of the former governor in a tracksuit on the run around town. It is a well-known fact that Rod Blagojevich is an avid runner who could often be seen on the streets training for his next PR. Even though the media coverage surrounding his federal investigation and subsequent impeachment has died down, we still think of him as this shadowy, underworld figure for whom running may have actually have been good strategy.
In this show, artists explored this concept of running literally (re-imagining the original street image) and figuratively (exploring how one who is “on the run” might feel, act, or what activities he would need to do). Through his personal and curatorial practices, Ray Noland (Run, Blago, Run! curator) not only explores the hard places in life – the things that we may not like talking about, and the issues that are difficult to solve – but also works to create avenues for dialogue and conversation. For him, sometimes it’s more about the life an artwork takes on once that idea is released into the world. Run, Blago, Run! was not meant to be a statement on the former governor’s guilt or innocence, but to provide a platform to encourage conversation about a series of sensational events, to engender a response and find an answer to the question of what this saga may look like in a visual context.
Participating artists were found through various means including an open call via Kickstarter as well as relationships Noland made while working on the Obama campaign and themed show, Go Tell Mama. He presented this idea and didn’t give the artists many parameters, but encouraged them to add their own voices to the conversation. With work ranging from photography, graffiti art, mixed media, painting and drawing, and wood, it certainly gives us plenty more to talk about.The Creative Rescue Organization is located at 1925 N. Milwaukee Ave. For more information, visit www.creativerescue.org
The Dandelions are Over at Zg Gallery
by MK Meador
The solo extravaganza at Zg Gallery was an extensive gathering of the works of Anna Jóelsdóttir, titled "the dandelions are over." With her tried-and-true toolkit of acrylic, flashe, and colored pencil, she works wonders in general and scores vistas that are colorful and engaging. The process must take its sweet time, because the sides of the larger unframed paintings reveal a tally-mark column of dates, not unlike a kid's hatch-marked height in a doorway.
Coming from a former museum worker, the installation "Flood" looked forbidding at first. It is most aptly named, yet with closer look, I was reminded of what a fickle temptress mylar can be. This is the stuff of old school design and is mind-blowingly unforgiving when working with ink of any kind. Jóelsdóttir navigates the medium with wild and sharp strikes of pigment and ink and the result is supple, colorful and deftly accomplished. When I overheard a fellow viewer mumble that the works looked like an "exploded parrot”, and as it turns out, its not too far off the mark - in the best possible way.Zg Gallery is located at 300 W. Superior St. For more information, visit www.zggallery.com
Tom Torluemke, Nicole Gordon & Nnenna Okore at the Cultural Center
by Monica LaBelle
If a visit to the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago leaves you wondering what the city’s artists are making lately, head two blocks north the Cultural Center’s Michigan Avenue Galleries.
Tom Torluemke’s mind-bending collages, Nicole Gordon’s fanciful paintings and a large-scale sculpture by Nnenna Okore are there this summer.
Torluemke’s show, “After-Glow,” has the most pieces of the three, and there is no shortage of variation among them. The artist has taken grade-school art-supply standbys like watercolors, construction paper and contact paper and formed them into alternately haunting and positively fantastical images. In “Leafless” (2001), multiple colors of construction paper appear to layer each other to create Rorschach-blot faces matched above corresponding genitals. The skillfully rendered forms contrast with their medium—one typically associated with Elmer’s Glue and safety scissors. In works such as “Struck” (2002), inlaid painted pieces of paper appear to interweave and swirl amid striking color combinations such as royal purple, pitch black and fleshy yellow.
Next door is “Stateless: New Work by Nicole Gordon.” Her two oil paintings remain consistent with her body of work thus far: epic fantasy scenes containing deftly rendered symbols. Here we have monkeys. Each scene has the little guys staring out at us from either a droll scene (“Goodbye Cruel World, I’m Off to Join the Circus,” 2008) or one of fiery horror (“Absolutely Curtains,” 2009). The drapey, tent-like forms in each one are rendered so accurately they make the viewer question whether that is actually fabric on the canvas (it isn’t—she’s just skilled like that). Gordon’s sculpture, a totem pole, features the paintings’ theme. Together, the works have a blatantly allegorical quality about our effect on the environment.
Finally, the one-sculpture exhibition, “Twisted Ambience: An installation by Nnenna Okore,” gives viewers an opportunity to walk right into (and through) the art. The room-consuming, hut-like structure appears to float in space, each curved semblance of a wall holding on to the next for invisible support. Newspaper is twisted, looped and braided with bits of rope and sticks to make these walls. The effect reminds one of Faith Wilding’s room-encompassing, crocheted “Womb Room” (1972). However, the sheer size and shape of it compels the viewer to want to gaze at it from the outside rather than from within it.The Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington St. For more information, visit www.chicagoculturalcenter.org
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