Lori Waxman

• 

  print November 2021

  Jeffrey Gibson

  Jeffrey Gibson’s “Sweet Bitter Love” no doubt unsettled some viewers’ preconceived notions about Native Americans. The show was part of “Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40,” a multivenue citywide celebration of the anniversary of the “genius grant,” which Gibson won in 2019 (the MacArthur Foundation is headquartered in Chicago). Visitors found a dozen small oil canvases from the Newberry Library’s permanent collection, skillfully painted between 1897 and 1901 by Elbridge Ayer Burbank, that portray indigenous Americans looking exactly as they are

• 

  previews January 2013

  Jason Lazarus

  “As this display of new and recent work should clarify, Jason Lazarus is not a photographer in any conventional sense.”

  In 2006, the MCA Chicago gave Jason Lazarus his first institutional solo exhibition. He was known then as a photographer, and he’s sort of still known as one now, but as this display of new and recent work should clarify, Lazarus is not a photographer in any conventional sense. Re-created protest signs from Occupy Wall Street demonstrations will be available for museumgoers to shoulder during their visit; a music student will learn a Chopin nocturne live on a piano installed in the gallery; photos found in a New Orleans antiques shop after Hurricane Katrina will be

• 

  print March 2011

  Lilly McElroy

  “2009 Was A Rough Year”—that’s both the title of Lilly McElroy’s recent exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery and a statement of fact. It was indeed a rough year. The stock market crashed. The housing bubble burst. Countless retirement incomes, jobs, and homes were lost in the fallout. In response, McElroy created a participatory memorial, asking friends and strangers to contribute their worst memories from those wretched twelve months. Photos and captions were to be submitted via a dedicated website (www.aroughyear.com) established by the artist in advance of the show. With this material,

• print December 2010

  Ben Russell

  Ben Russell picked a fine word when he chose trip as the lexicographical genesis of “Trypps,” the experimental film series he’s been producing since 2005. Though idiosyncratic, the name serves as a catchall for every kind of trip in the dictionary, explored in this startlingly broad but ultimately cohesive series.

  Not all at once, of course. Black and White Trypps Number One (2005) begins like an old-school avant-garde film, with all the formal qualities of cinematic head trips: The now-classic imaging of scratches and dust on celluloid (here augmented by spray paint applied directly to the

• 

  print October 2009

  Clare E. Rojas

  Welcome to the world of Clare E. Rojas, where bunnies with bloodshot eyes sniff flowers, swans sport red stripes, blood runs from ladies’ mouths to the sky, and men brandish flowers like clubs. Spin whatever tales you wish to explain these misshapen flora and fauna—just don’t look to the artist to tell you the whole story.

  What you can expect from Rojas, however, is a consistently idiosyncratic mode of drawing that borrows equally from fairy tales, children’s books, Russian matryoshka dolls, quilting, and Amerindian textiles; a few hippies round out the historical tour of American popular

• 

  print May 2009

  Justin Cooper

  A wheelbarrow balancing on a seashell, giant plastic leis whirling in loops of color, folding chairs and garden hoses flying through the air—it’s a party all right, but frozen in place.

  Such is the paradoxically festive yet static atmosphere of Justin Cooper’s second solo exhibition at moniquemeloche. Cooper—known for edgy, slapstick, and invariably manic performances that put objects acquired at Home Depot, the Party Store, and Offi ceMax to inspired misuse—here distills the animating, tension-building force of his live art into the still form of stand-alone sculpture.

  No small task, that, coaxing

• 

  picks June 16, 2008

  “Portraying Food (and the Absence of It)”

  The common denominator in this multigenerational exhibition of five Chinese artists, curated by Wu Hung, might be food, but there is nothing to eat, much less whet the appetite. On the contrary, the artists make the edible at once banal and fragile, spectacular and disquieting, magic and gross. The bodily, social, and aesthetic satisfaction of a good meal has no place here, among Chen Wenbo’s garish, monumental paintings depicting egg yolks, their advertisement-ready glossiness violently interrupted by their diagonally split canvases and the worrisome series title, “Epidemiology,” 2006. Lui

• 

  picks April 28, 2008

  Shannon Stratton

  Empty brown paper bags, ragged Chinese parasols, popped champagne corks, dirty rubber duckies, vintage school ties, full diaries, and worthless Starbucks gift cards do not a pretty picture make. Shannon Stratton, however, has something of a Midas touch running through her fingers, and in this exhibition, these and other odd objects add up to the most picturesque of interior landscapes, one dotted with grottoes, rolling hills, a garden wall, and a meandering pathway. As founding director and chief curator of programs at the nonprofit ThreeWalls gallery, Stratton organizes some of Chicago’s most

• 

  picks April 02, 2008

  Kendell Carter

  In “Common Ground,” Kendell Carter pushes the conflation of high art, the decorative, and youth culture to its ludicrous if logical conclusion. The resulting display of hip-hop home furnishings and coordinating wall art is both one-liner and a whole lot more, effecting an almost unbearable dialectic between the coolly appealing and the overtly self-critical. Amid graffiti-tag coat racks, a chandelier strung with fat shoelaces, and a casual scattering of metalized milk-crate coffee tables and ottomans, the Tradizzle Chairs, 2006, are a twisted standout. A pair of fussy wingbacks reupholstered in

• 

  print April 2008

  William Cordova

  The title of William Cordova’s exhibition at ThreeWalls, “the house that frank lloyd wright built for atahualpa, fred hampton y mark clark,” was the first clue that I might lack the knowledge necessary to recognize the artist’s varied references. Wright I got, but Atahualpa? Fred Hampton and Mark Clark sounded familiar—but maybe too familiar: They could be any Americans, and my grasp of US history is weak. Further poking around Cordova’s careful arrangement of small found-object sculptures and minimal collages unearthed further doubts: Tupac Shakur is a dead rapper, check, but Tupac Amaru? Who

• 

  picks February 17, 2008

  Caroline Picard

  Artist Caroline Picard is something of a local enigma: By day, she runs the Green Lantern Gallery & Press; by night, she writes endless, loopy novels, doodles awkward comix, and fashions fabulously hued assemblages from cut paper and gouache. Then, when no one’s looking, she dons a flowing cape, little gold shorts, white face paint, and a red mask, and off she goes as Fortuna. WORLD’S GREATEST SUPER HERO. COME SEE HER FOR 25¢ trumpets a retro playbill hanging in “Bygone(s),” Picard’s solo exhibition, which brings these personalities and projects together into a weirdly charming whole that gives

• 

  picks January 31, 2008

  Anne Wilson

  The fineness of thread belies its functionality. In Anne Wilson’s practice, though, the strength of thread is paramount, but not for its ability to bind other objects. Here, thread, and sometimes wire filament, is knit, crocheted, and wound to create independent structures that sometimes struggle to hold themselves up and other times fall down with grace. In Portable City (all works 2008), the resulting forms are displayed in a series of Plexiglas cases mounted on spindly metal legs and clustered, mazelike, around the main gallery. The work’s title, mode of display, and domed forms bring to mind