Exhibits springing back into top form

Product: CTBroadsheet PubDate: 03-12-2010 Zone: C Edition: FRI Page: OTTADVP10-18 User: cci
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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ON THE TOWN
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SECTION 5
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FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010
Time: 03-10-2010 19:03 Color: C
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GALLERIES
Exhibits springing back into top form
By Lauren Viera
TRIBUNE REPORTER
Spring is nearly here, and with
slightly warmer temperatures
and the chirping of birds, we’re
happy to welcome the return to
regularly scheduled gallery exhibitions and lots of art, both old and
new, well worth seeing.
Can you feel it?
The intimate West Loop space
shared by EC Gallery and Kasia
Kay Art Projects (215 N. Aberdeen St., 312-944-0408; kasiakay
gallery.com) is quickly winning a
place in my heart as a go-to space
for interesting, well-curated exhibitions of up-and-coming artists.
Following EC’s lovely introductory show for Polish painter Justyna
Adamczyk, her first in the U.S.,
Kasia Kay is showing new work by
one of its resident artists, Tennessee-by-way-of-Chicago artist
Duncan R. Anderson.
To call Anderson a sculptor
would be a bit misleading, so let’s
call him a miniaturist. His media
is mixed: figurines, plastic animals, pin-size beads, tiny toy
daggers, log cabins and campfires
painstakingly constructed from
twigs and shellac. Walking into
the exhibit is like walking into a
quixotic little world of models and
curios where fantastical creatures
crawl up the walls and knights in
shining armor meet their ends at
the edge of imaginary forests.
Anderson creates three-dimensional work fabricated mostly by
other hands: he repurposes everything from princess dolls to toy
shotguns, sometimes in the same
piece, to achieve his desired effect.
They’re successful because of the
one immaterial object that brings
them to life: narrative.
That knight in shining armor,
for example, is leaning a bit too
heavily, almost painfully, over the
limbs of a crippled fir tree dusted
with snow, positioned neatly on
the edge of the platform that supports them both. This piece’s title:
“ ‘It’s not supposed to end like
this. It doesn’t end like this.’
(blacking out at edge of Winter
Teutonic forest.)” Pretentious?
Perhaps. But it works: These
words so poignantly describe
what Anderson’s characters are
going through, what we all go
through. Through March 20
Nnenna Okore
On the other end of the sculpture spectrum is Nigerian-born
Chicago artist Nnenna Okore,
whose weaves and patterns of
recycled and reused materials are
on display at Northeastern Illinois University’s Fine Arts
Center Gallery (5500 N. St. Louis
Ave., 773-442-4944; neiu.edu
/̃gallery) in an exhibit dubbed
“Absurd Beauty.”
In one corner, tied neatly into a
series of knots forming a star are
yellow and black plastic bags
(Camouflage); down the wall is an
impressive network of faded yellow newsprint — all ripped from
phonebooks — arranged in a
sculpture called Fiber. Elsewhere
are sculptures that incorporate
paper made by her hand, stained a
gorgeous eggplant color, floating
in circular orbs.
The largest of these works is
Mbembe, a vast network of plastic
shopping bags woven into what
could be an enormous fishing net.
Poking through the mix are visible red circles advertising Target;
leftover shopping bags from Bed
Bath & Beyond; a discarded grocery sack from Dominick’s. Imagine the possibilities, were all of us
as talented as Okore in turning
trash into treasure. Through
March 19
Laura Letinsky
If you haven’t yet visited resident contemporary art gallerist
Monique Meloche’s new space
on the Division Strip (2154 W.
Division St., 773-252-0299; moni
quemeloche.com), currently
exhibiting “The Dog and the
Wolf,” a handful of recent prints
by local photographer Laura
Letinsky, you might want to wait
for a cloudy day. The afternoon I
stopped by, that glorious earlyspring sunshine venting through
this greenhouse of a venue left
particularly unsightly glares all
over Letinsky’s delicate compositions.
Especially because Letinsky is
an aesthetic minimalist of sorts
(her interior photographs are
almost exclusively still lifes arranged on tabletops), they beg for
unobtrusive lighting that refuses
to steal from the subtle nuances
she introduces via her lens. This
latest collection is especially severe: dead animals are worked
into the mix of Letinsky’s usual
vocabulary of morning-after table
scenes: wine-stained tablecloths,
dead flowers muddying their
vases, etc. Unfortunately, our stark
Midwestern sunlight is unforgiv-
Duncan R. Anderson’s “Cornered Tribulation Plague Abomination with broken wing” at Kasia Kay Art Projects.
ing, managing to sneak around
Meloche’s movable gallery walls.
Through March 13
Laura
Letinsky’s
“Untitled
#24” at
Monique
Meloche’s
new space.
American prints
Out with the new, in with the
old: Russell Bowman Art Advisory (311 W. Superior St., Suite 115,
312 751-9500; bowmanart.com)
continues to exhibit museumquality collectors’ pieces with its
newest show, “American Prints.”
We’re immediately struck with a
lovely drypoint-style nude by
Milton Avery, so free in its lines it
almost looks like charcoal. Next to
it is a 25-year-old Richard Diebenkorn etching and a gorgeous
Robert Motherwell screenprint
(marked 86 in a series of 150).
Elsewhere: a colorful Alex Katz
self-portrait, a perfectly penciled
“Lipstick“ lithograph by Claes
Oldenburg, a startlingly dark
prints this diverse would mean an
$18, several-hour trip to the Art
Institute, as opposed to a springy
breeze through Bowman, for free.
Through March 20
lithograph by Kerry James Marshall, a half-dozen silkscreens by
Roger Brown. All hung at eye
level, all incredibly inviting, all for
sale.
To happen upon an equally
satisfying collection of American
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