With the debut of his “Under:Conscious Drawings” series, 2014, at Gray Warehouse, McArthur Binion asked us, again, what the Minimal surface gives and what it withholds. Each of the works on paper is more than four feet square and features a central pool of crowded marks in colored pencil, charcoal, graphite, or ballpoint pen. Using both hands simultaneously, the artist filled his visual field up to the length of his arm span. His choice of drafting implement affects the density and scale of his marks, yet each roughly circular form is meticulously consistent in its comprehensiveness.

The drawings

The vertical text-based painting Just a Shot Away, 2015, commands the entrance hall to Deborah Kass’s inaugural solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta, a mainstay of Chicago’s West Loop for nearly twenty years. Rendered across a variegated black ground, the stacked cerulean text is culled from the rock anthem “Gimme Shelter,” the opening track on the Rolling Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed. The graphically composed painting and its appropriated stanza set the stage for a scintillating collection of works that graft borrowed language—funny, banal, upbeat, and grim—onto Minimalist-inspired compositions