Author Archives: Mandy Morrison

HUMAN INTEREST Erika Rothenberg at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, through July 9 Los Angeles-based artist Erika Rothenberg transgresses the norms of the dominant culture to point out established patterns of inequity. Her show “Human Interest,” at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, attacks the white middle class, whose mores are dictated by the Judeo-Christian ethos, and an entrenched patriarchy whose patterns […]

EXTRACTING THE ESSENCE: PAINTINGS BY ESTELLE RICHMAN at the Chicago Cultural Center, through May 8 Estelle Richman in “Extracting the Essence,” a group of paintings on view at the Chicago Cultural Center, brings our attention to modernist aesthetics, which are often eclipsed these days by postmodern practices. Richman, who received her bachelor’s degree from the […]

MARLENE DUMAS: WORKS ON PAPER AND PAINTINGS at the Arts Club of Chicago, through March 5 On view at the Arts Club of Chicago is the work of Marlene Dumas, a South African-born painter in her late 30s who’s lived in Amsterdam since 1976. This haunting body of work, some 20 oil paintings and ink-wash […]

CUTTING BAIT at Randolph Street Gallery, through June 12 “Cutting Bait,” at Randolph Street Gallery, is a show of eight young contemporary artists who play off recognized pop and minimalist idioms. By co-opting the territory of such artists as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, and Frank Stella, they reconstruct the intent of […]

CHARLES MUNCH: FEAR & DESIRE at the Chicago Cultural Center “Storm clouds spiraling over a new moon. The earth jerks twice to the right. Your throat rasps for air. Can I drown on solid land . . . ?” So begins the prose painted in monochromatic tones on the wall that greets us at the […]

EARTH STATEMENTS at ARC Gallery “Earth Statements” at ARC Gallery offers an interesting assortment of installations by young, little known Illinois artists on the sociopolitics of ecology. Lately a number of artists have turned to organic and temporal work that addresses the threat an industrialized society poses to nature. A number of well-known artists have […]

CLEPSYDRAS Jo Hormuth at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery A clepsydra is a water clock: a device for measuring time by marking the gradual flow of liquids through a small opening. And Clepsydras–an installation by Jo Hormuth at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery–is an economical yet stimulating piece that marks the passage of time with objects that speak of the body. […]

DONALD LIPSKI: THE BELLS at the Museum of Contemporary Art In the early 80s Chicago-born sculptor Donald Lipski began creating poetic juxtapositions of found materials. His strategies were simple. He combined such objects as shoes, pails, flags, light bulbs, books, and airplane propellers by tying, wrapping, or gluing them together with incongruous materials–wire, wax, string, […]