Minutes in Heaven
the Undersphere exhibition catalog / November 3, 2017
Like objects, spaces accrue meaning and shape our (re)actions according to the qualities we attribute to them. A room is not a backdrop against which events occur, but a player fully embroiled in the action at hand. From the moment of first descent, the perceiver forms a relationship with the Undersphere. Qualities begin to crystalize. Someone off-put by its spooky sci-fi lighting might proceed with caution. Others might adopt a playful posture in response to the futuristic vibe. The room could also be called soft, shifting, inviting, awkward, astral, cozy, post-rave. I say the Undersphere is a disco womb. It swaddles, cushions bodies, constricts movement, dampens sound. It activates proprioception (the body’s ability to sense itself), melting optic and haptic together. We don’t see the work so much as feel ourselves positioned inside it, absorbing its diffuse neons. The Underspere is an atmosphere. Read more from the exhibition catalog…
Let Them Eat Cake: Kanye, SAIC, and the High Price of Graduation
Art F City / March 31, 2015
Rosalia Marzulio wants to bake Kanye West’s honorary doctorate in a cake. That is, the artist and freshman at School of the Art Institute (SAIC) is requesting that SAIC President Walter Massey pass this proposal on to West. She started a Facebook event and Twitter feed so the project could gain some momentum. When I spoke to her on the phone last Saturday, she’d landed a meeting with President Massey, and was excited to pass on her idea to the administration. In order to understand the logic behind Marzulio’s project, it helps to know that this isn’t the first authoritative piece of paper she’s turned into a dessert. Read more at Art F City...
Two Hours with a Room Full of Strangers: Miranda July and the Awkward Encounter
The Green Room, performing arts blog for the Walker Art Center / October 28, 2014
No matter the project, Miranda July’s work tends to focus on the quiet messiness that characterizes human lives. Whether it’s a sculpture that compels strangers to stand on a pedestal and hug or a short story that inserts a naive first-person narrator into a sex scene, one thing audiences can expect from July is an awkward scenario. Her latest performance piece, New Society, capitalizes on this very thing. Read more at The Green Room...
Julie Wills, 'The Hunt'
Rapid Pulse International Performance Festival / June 22, 2013
Among the many charges leveled at Marie Antoinette at the cusp of the French Revolution was that she callously parodied the hardships of peasant life. The queen did indeed use state funds to erect a mock peasant village, complete with a fully operational farm, on Versailles property. Marie Antoinette’s most bitter critics spread rumors that she went so far as to don the costume of a milkmaid or shepherdess, “playing peasant” the way young children often “play house.” No reliable record of such behavior exists. Opulent Versailles demanded rigorous daily rituals and exposed the royal family to intense public scrutiny, and historians widely agree that the queen retreated to her humble hameau to escape the pressures of courtly life. Read More...
Dolores Wilber + Sarah Wilber's Walking Tour
Rapid Pulse International Performance Festival / June 9, 2013
A self-described collaborative artist, Dolores Wilber gave the creative reins to Sarah, her niece, who came to live with her three years ago in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Their joint venture took the form of a walking tour, led and narrated by Sarah, who treated the audience to favorite local haunts, insider knowledge, and concise histories of the neighborhood shaping her young adulthood. The piece is a part of Wilber the elder’s “Dear Chicago” series, a succession of site-specific happenings meant to activate and commemorate their respective sites, invoking equal parts “longing and memory” and “the evasive joy of the moment;” things intrinsic to beloved places and their ordinary histories. Read more...
Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kinna/Chicago Cultural Center
Newcity Art / February 22, 2013
Applied to a contemporary art exhibition, the saying about a tree falling in a forest might go something like this: If an artwork’s political or ideological import isn’t palpable in the work itself, does it have any repercussions? If the viewer can’t sense it, is it really there at all? Such questions have become increasingly important as artists who engage global capitalism and its discontents make the ethical dimensions and political ramifications of artistic production integral to their work, as do Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina. Read more at Newcity Art...
The Wanderer: Looking at the Art of Life
Newcity Art / November 29, 2012
A friend once told me that the best way to look at art is to show up at a gallery after a forty-eight-hour stint of not sleeping. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to anyone as a method, but I get what he meant: sometimes deep looking requires that we take measures to adjust our sensitivity and attentiveness to things. And while screwing with real-world psychosomatic feedback loops can have an effect on how a person experiences art, I think the opposite is also true. Have you ever spent time with a Rothko painting, only to wander outside and find that, somehow, the sky looked different? That the vastness and intensity of that giant blue swatch suspended above you threw the nuances of various cloud densities into sharp relief? Read more at Newcity Art...
Remix, the Remix
F Newsmagazine / November 19, 2012
Appropriate to its postindustrial framework, the edition of “Two Histories of the World” on view at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) isn’t about reviving defunct art installations so much as exploring possibilities posed by the remix — the twenty-first century’s pervading creative gesture. For its first iteration, curator Karsten Lund invited artists to make work from objects found at William H. Cooper, a dilapidated factory-turned-resale warehouse on Chicago’s West Side. Read more at F Newsmagazine...
Art on Track
Newcity Art / September 25, 2012
Transforming six El cars into interactive art installations, the annual mobile pop-up exhibition “Art on Track” turned the scramble to find a spot on the train into an elaborate game of musical chairs, wherein rushing from car to car was both part of the fun and the project’s prime hazard. This year’s fare included an ambient summer-camp-themed installation starring a giant Lite-Brite sunset, a walk-in cabinet of curiosities complete with palm reader, and a live fashion shoot. Read more at Newcity Art...
Paige Cunningham and Anna Kunz/Chicago Cultural Center
Newcity Art / February 9, 2012
Watching Paige Cunningham and Anna Kunz’s performance, “One Careless Gesture Away From Destruction,” was like getting a six-course dinner when you’re expecting just an entrée. It was a feast of varied cultural forms that held together as a kind of conversation about creative production. There were essentially three distinct shows on view: a sculptural tableau with a video component, situated right in the middle of Industry of the Ordinary’s (IOTO) retrospective exhibition; a vogue-ballet mash-up choreographed by Cunningham... Read more at Newcity Art...
Contributions
Art 50: Chicago's Artists' Artists
Newcity Art / September 19, 2012
Barbara Jones-Hogu
Even if you’ve never heard of Barbara Jones-Hogu, you can feel the effects of her legacy. A founding member of AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) and contributing muralist to the “Wall of Respect,” a 1967 South Side mural featuring fifty heroes of the black-power movement, Jones-Hogu used art as a tool for rousing ethnic and civic pride, and rattling Chicago’s political establishment. Read more at Newcity Art...
Richard Hunt
One of the most prolific producers of public art in the United States, sculptor Richard Hunt has been hard at work crafting his signature metal fabrications since 1955. Although his work is exhibited and collected at major institutions across the country, it’s likely that you’ve seen his work right here—strolling past the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago or hailing a cab at Midway Airport. Read more at Newcity Art...
Best of Chicago 2012
Newcity Magazine / November 7, 2012
Best place not to stand on the El
So one day not long ago, a friend of a friend (visiting from Florida) was riding around town on the El, minding his own business, keeping to himself in one of those little cubbies at the ends of certain train cars, when the inevitable happened... Read more at Newcity.com.
Best place to get your pyromaniacal hippie on Read...
Best way to relive the terrors of your daily commute Read...
Best place for children of the nineties to reminisce Read...
Best indicator(s) that America still needs a new healthcare policy Read...