For the cover of our last print issue of 2022, we wanted to capture the spirit of the year, as we see it, in our own Reader way. We asked photographer Carolina Sanchez to see if she could find a street musician who was being ignored, a situation which many can relate to as the […]
Tag: visual art
Posted inAgenda
‘Ground Floor,’ movie trivia, and more
Since 2010, the Hyde Park Art Center (5020 S. Cornell) has hosted “Ground Floor,” a biennial exhibition featuring work by “Chicago’s most promising emerging talent.” The show is assembled by an esteemed panel of judges including curators, educators, and artists, and it features work from artists who’ve graduated from one of Chicago’s five MFA programs […]
Posted inArt Review
Patching things up
For International Repair Day on Saturday, October 15, artist and environmental activist Jenny Kendler, 42, hosted “Before and After: Mending a Life” along with artists Catherine Schwalbe and Katie Vota. “Before and After: Mending a Life,” a social practice project initiated by Schwalbe in 2021, was hosted by Kendler next to Mending Wall, Kendler’s interactive installation […]
Posted inArt Feature
Jeanne Dunning looks at what’s left behind
The works in this exhibition radiate death. Roadkill is scattered around on the floor, from the upper level, to the stairs leading down to the exhibition space, to the main gallery. A massive mandala takes up most of that floor, made up of ash sourced from wood effigies the artist made of herself and then […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Abstraction and meaning
It’s rare for me to be surprised by a painting show, but I didn’t see “Taking Shape” coming. The exhibition is a generous survey of abstract art made from the 1950s to the 1980s, drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. “Taking Shape” includes the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Drawing on the past
Most people are lucky to have one act that hits. William Horberg is well into his third. Horberg was born in Chicago and grew up around Belmont and Broadway in the Lakeview neighborhood in the 60s and 70s. He ran a repertory movie theater called the Sandburg at the corner of Division and Dearborn from […]
Posted inAgenda
A Natural Turn, Jessica Bardsley, and Cold Waves
Chicago has no shortage of free museums, and the DePaul Art Museum (935 W. Fullerton) is one stunning example. While it’s never a bad time for a visit (hello, it’s free!), their new exhibition “A Natural Turn” is worth checking out. Artists María Berrío, Joiri Minaya, Rosana Paulino, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary use surrealism to […]
Posted inAgenda
Art on the south side, Dining Out for Life, and more
Through September 11, the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life initiative is celebrating 10 years of their artists-in-residence program (dubbed AIR) with the exhibition “All That Light.” The AIR program was originally conceived by artist Theaster Gates, and is jointly hosted by Arts + Public Life and the university’s Center for the Study of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Recombinations
Editor’s note: Coco Picard’s comic for this issue examines artists Jennie C. Jones and Norman Teague on the occasion of their respective exhibitions this summer at Patron Gallery and Converso Gallery. Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Two summer exhibitions repurposed and remixed materials to make designed objects, furniture, paintings, […]
Posted inCity Life
Agenda: Mon 7/18/22
One of the area’s most underrated art treasures is the Lubeznik Center for the Arts (101 W. Second, Michigan City, Indiana), which is free and open to the public six days a week (closed Tuesdays). On view now is “moniquemeloche presents,” a showcase of artists represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in West Town, which […]
Posted inArts & Culture
What Cézanne saw
“Cézanne, he’s the greatest of us all.”—Claude Monet to Georges Clemenceau in conversation, cited in translation in The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné (trans. John Rewald, Abrams, 1996). There are some entities and influences on our work that we take for granted, as though they were always there and it’s impossible to conceive […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An invitation to listen to survivors
“It’s an invitation,” says Aaron Hughes, cocurator of “Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations,” an exhibition currently on display at the DePaul Art Museum. Marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the exhibit examines the similarities between survivors of torture at the U.S. military prison with survivors of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Down the stairs and into “Dreams & Delusions”
“Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh,” writes Anne Carson in the 1998 novel, Autobiography of Red. Breathing new life, ripping parts apart—it’s the painful, heart-wrenching reality of being alive, of being absolutely anything at all. This is the work of Finnish artist Kristoffer Ala-Ketola, whose first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Loving, repeating, collaborating, and intimacy
In a new exhibition, longtime collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger created an immersive multimedia installation that explores intimacy, distance, and the fluctuations between. The above comic captures their reflections on making together and materials in play. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Our collaboration developed organically. We were both ceramic […]
Posted inCity Life
Style comes back with a vengeance at EXPO
Whoever says people don’t have much style in Chicago has no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve been photographing street style here for over ten years and I know better. When Chicagoans decide to bring it, they bring it with gusto, authenticity, and a very midwestern ease. That’s the kind of style that could be […]