Chicago Art Map: Openings Sept 22-25 2011

Ken and Ann Mikolowski founded The Alternative Press in Detroit in 1969. They collaborated with poets Robert Creeley, Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Bill Berkson, Andrei Codrescu, and many others to create one-of-a-kind poetry postcards over the course of 30 years.

Drinks and appetizers will be served, and we will hold a short, Salon-style discussion about the show. This will be less formal than previous Salons (and free!), but no less engaging. There will also be an MSPS tote available silkscreened by me with one of my preparatory sketches (edition of 300). A distillation of my previous, larger black-and-white watercolors, these new paintings present single objects on glossy panel that tweak painterly concerns of volume, transparency, orientation, figure and ground. I’ll tell you about inspirations like Albert Bierstadt, Tiffany & Co., Caspar David Friedrich, electron microscopes, Tahrir Square and the British Royal Navy.

Wood-Worked: A Group Exhibition Wood has a long and diverse connection to the history of art and to our global environment. Utilitarian for its structural purposes and attractive in its ability to be used as a decorative element, wood is a material that artists to this day are highlighting through captivating approaches in contemporary art practices. Presented by the Chicago Urban Art Society, %u201CWood Worked%u201D is a sculptural exhibition mixing the work of artists at varying points in their careers who approach wood both structurally and conceptually with an engaging approach and the thought in mind that we are more or less unconsciously and constantly surrounded by this material. Juan Angel Chavez, Steve Reber, Holly Holmes, Montgomery Kim, Mark Holmes, Micheal Rea, Christina Gonzalez, Dylan Jones, Josue Pellot, Sarah Joseph Belknap, Kazuki Guzman, Hao Ni, and Matthew Sighn Hoffman.

Screening only on Saturdays, 12 – 6pm. This exhibition will feature a 2010 – 2011 video artwork by Australian artist Anthea Behm. The video is an urgent investigation into what happens when the argument for what constitutes high and popular culture becomes institutionalized.

Conor Backman, Magalie Guérin and Matt Nichols

Reduction or Something Less transforms and redefines the viewer experience, playing with one’s predetermined expectations of how we interact with visual art.  Working in a broad variety of media, these artists emphasize the spatial, social and psychological relationships between a work of art and its spectator, creating an active viewing experience.  Backman investigates the separation between painting and object, flat and dynamic, recreating the familiar with illusions and trompe l’oeil.  Nichols delves into psychological experience, using childlike shapes and colors and intermingling fantasy and reality, while Guérin creates paintings using repetition and abstraction of shapes and forms. This grouping of artists will exhibit amongst each other to support and challenge views of the refined.

Please join us this Sunday, September 25, for a talk by Steven Husby on his show RUBICON at Julius Caesar. Soft drinks and snacks will be served.

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven There will be an artist talk with Van Kerckhoven from 5-6pm. Since the mid 1970s, Van Kerckhoven’s artistic output includes a diverse array of mediums including painting, drawing, collage, computer animation, installation, and zines. Van Kerkhoven synthesizes disparate visual and textual elements in her work. Her illustrational technique favors hard-edged flat planes in a neon RGB palette, with her most common imagery being drawn from pre-sexual revolution soft pornography. She appropriates text from a range of discourses, including philosophy, science, poetry, theology. Her work addresses metaphysical reflections on mind, body, universe, and perception. The Renaissance Society will present four new bodies of work, including numerous new works on paper; an interactive computer animation; and a related series of computer generated prints. The new work will be supplemented with selections of work from throughout her career.