April 29, 2007
Take Deep Breaths and Waste Sweet Seconds
The weekend's photos are really starting to backup up in here.
I've only just now had the chance to upload my pics from Thursday night's Bridge Art Fair preview (selections posted below).
Not yet posted: more photos from Art Chicago, selections from New InSight and The Artist Project, and a near-full accounting of the Version 7 exhibits and doings from both the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Zhou B. Center this afternoon.
And, even as I slumber tonight, my laptop should continue to grind away of its own accord, uploading some 255 photos from Friday's Carnival of Art on the River (aka, Art War), which should hopefully all be available on Flickr by morning. [Update: Uploadr choked on the upload overnight, but close to half have made it so far and can be found here, the rest to follow.]
Anyways... For now, a little bit of that Bridgey goodness:
"Take Deep Breaths and Waste Sweet Seconds"
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April 27, 2007
You can't see it all
As 9pm rolled around last night, I found myself hopelessly lost in the maze of Art Chicago.
I'm going to have to consult the map to figure out what I missed.
For the time being, some selections from Art Chicago (see more on Flickr):
"You can't see it all"
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April 26, 2007
Look Upon Me! I'll Show You the Life of the Mind!
In addition to packing the weekend with a variety of performances and concerts (not to mention a modicum of art), ARTropolis organizers have prepared some special programs that will illuminate the mind and dazzle the eye. And they run the gamut.
Holding it down at the Mart will be a range of discussions in concert with both Art Chicago and Intuit's satellite show.
And just a stone's throw across the Loop, something called Symposium C6 (that is: Conversations, Creativity, Collaboration, Culture, Community, Chicago) will find a home in Millennium Park's Pritzker Bandshell.
Over 30 participants will trade turns donning the Moustache of Understanding for a three-day conference, kicking off tomorrow morning (that is, Thursday), entitled "The Art World is Flat."
Originally conceived as an invite-only VIP event, it's since been opened to the plebes at a mere $100 bucks a head per day (or a flat $250 for the full course).
With lunch included, it's a hell of a bargain.
Schedules ho...
Art ChicagoFriday, April 27
1:00—The Next Wave: MFA Production and the Future of Art
Lisa Wainwright, Leslie King-Hammond
New InSight is an exciting opportunity for young artists to meet, present their work, and talk about the contemporary art issues. Join this town meeting-style discussion with the graduate students who were selected to participate in this unprecedented exhibit.
3:00—Public Art: The Collaboration Between Architect and Artist
Dirk Denison, Walter Hood, Mary Jane Jacob, Mary Miss, Edward K. Uhlir
Artists and architects have had creative and contentious relationships over the years as they struggle to bring new buildings, parks and art to the public. These panelists will talk about the new models that are emerging and the public’s reception to them.
5:00—Stolen Art and the Experts Who Retrieve It
Robert K. Whitman
From raids on the treasures of cultural heritage sites internationally, to repatriation of works taken as war’s plunder, to ingenious thefts at well-secured museums, the traffic in stolen art, and the challenges of locating and returning it to its rightful owners, continues to frustrate and fascinate.
Saturday, April 28
1:00—On the Cutting the Edge: Young Curators on Young Contemporary Artists and the Art Market
Courtney J. Martin, Dominic Molon, Sara Reisman, Franklin Sirmans
Young curators are often on the cutting edge when it comes to identifying talented young artists. Dr. Isolde Brielmaier, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College and Director and Chief Curator of The Rotunda Gallery, moderates this discussion with a dynamic group of young curators. Each of whom will share their experiences and thoughts on working with highly popular young artists.
3:00—Painting Protest: Art in a Time of War
Leo J. O’Donovan
Over the centuries artists have responded vigorously to the destructive and dehumanizing effects of war. This lecture will recall some of the most memorable images created in response to the violence of the 20th century, including work by Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Jacob Lawrence, and assess their influence. In conclusion it will pose some questions about painting today in the 21st century and our emerging views of wars.
Sunday, April 29
1:00—Artists in the Current Political Climate
Paul Shambroom, Jeremiah Barber, Mary Patten
Recently there has been a resurgence of contemporary art exploring the questions of if and how cultural practice can affect political change. Adam Brooks, artist, curator and educator at Columbia College Chicago, member of Industry of the Ordinary, moderates this panel discussion on strategies of resistance employed by contemporary artists.
3:00—Art and New Technologies
Erika Dalya Muhammad, Jon Winet, Benton C. Bainbridge
Artists in all disciplines are using new media technologies in unprecedented numbers, and delivering their work to new audiences both inside and outside of the traditional gallery and museum systems. This panel discussion is moderated by Amanda McDonald Crowley, executive director of Eyebeam, an art and technology center in New York.
Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art
Friday, April 27
12:00–1:00—Outsider Art 101
2:00–3:00—The Art of Daniel Watson
Presented by Mary Donaldson, curator of the exhibition Don’t Fence Me In: The Art of Daniel Watson. Admission: $10
Saturday, April 28
12:00–1:00—Outsider Art 101
2:00–3:00—The Art ofJoseph Yoakum
Presented by Carl Hammer, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago. Admission: $10
4:00–5:00—Q&A with Mr. Imagination
Meet the prolific, self-taught Chicago artist known for his bottle cap creations. Admission: $10
Sunday, April 29
12:00–1:00—Outsider Art 101
2:00–3:00—Talking with David Philpot
Visit with Chicagoan David Philpot, creator of elaborately bejeweled wooden staffs. Admission: $10
4:00–5:00—Henry Darger and the Realms of the Unreal
A presentation by Jane Kallir, Galerie St. Etienne, New York, on America’s most well-known outsider artist—Chicago’s own Henry Darger. Admission: $10
Thursday, April 26—9:30–4:15
New Capital(s)
Hegemony and Resistance in the Global Cultural Economy
How do shifts in wealth encourage or limit cultural visibility and diversity? Will new cultural centers emerge, offering new possibilities? What are the new models of interventionist cultural practice? Why are new patrons creating alternative structures and processes for cultural experiences?
Keynote (10:30–11:30): Peter Sellers, "Globalism—Crisis and Opportunity"
Panel Discussion (1:00–2:30): "New Models of Cultural Production and Distribution"
Panel Discussion (2:45–4:15): "Interdisciplinary Artists and Unconventional Interventions"
Friday, April 27—10:00–5:00
No Borders Here?
Cultural Hybrids, Nomads, Refugees
What economic, political and cultural imperatives drive the new nomadism? How is technology erasing traditional hierarchies and boundaries of cultural production, distribution and interpretation? How is the restless peripatetic creative class producing new dislocations, networks and communities?
Panel Discussion (10:00–11:30): "Challenging Cultural, Political and Formal Boundaries"
Conversation (1:00–2:00): Robert Enright interviews Ken Lum
Panel Discussion (2:15–4:00): "Connecting Local to Global/Past to Future"
Keynote (4:15–5:00): Bruce Ferguson
Plus... a private screening of filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson's Strange Culture, a film about the mindblowing (and ongoing) harassment of artist Steve Kurtz at the hands of the FBI. 9 pm at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Saturday, April 28—10:00–4:00
Green World
Art for a Sustainable Ecological Consciousness
What new solutions to the ecological crisis are emerging from collaborations between science, culture and technology? How are green artists, designers and architects using developments in science, genetics and technology? What role does culture play on the brink of environmental catastrophe?
Panel Discussion (10:00–11:30): "Creating a Sustainable Future"
Conversation (1:00–2:00): Lawrence Wechsler interviews David Buckland
Panel Discussion (2:15–3:45): "New Artistic Practices in the Culture of Ecology"
Followed by a performance by Anna Deavere Smith, 5 pm at the Merchandise Mart.
"Look Upon Me! I'll Show You the Life of the Mind!"
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April 21, 2007
Back up in your ass with the Resurrection
Hello.
I suppose it's a probably a couple weeks too late to exploit the full blasphemous polysemy of this title, but I think it remains apt enough, considering.
After all, and my own incipient return to blogospheric glory notwithstanding, there's a certain other resuscitated elephant in this room at the moment: a little upcoming Chi-town to-do, what goes by the name of...
ARTropolis (aka, Art Chicago Premium Edition).
But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
Alternate TakesArt fair fever actually gets its unofficial jumpstart this weekend with the inauguration of Version 7, this year dubbed "The Insurrection Intenationale."
Lumpen's latest international convergence kicked off with video and performance at The Compound on the West Side Thursday evening and the opening of "We're Rollin',They're Hatin'," the fest's flagship exhibition, at the new Public Media Institute/Lumpen Pleasure Dome Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport last night.
Beefed-up (Deanna Isaacs has Edmar claiming a budget of $50,000) and now officially not-for-profit (since last December).
From Isaacs:
Marszewski expects his expenses to rise to as much as $50,000 in '07. "This year we want to make sure we have a budget to build more things, fly in more people from overseas, and also pay for security and cleanup staff," his e-mail said.
The latter was mostly a joke, but the costs, which keep increasing, have "been draining," he says. "It's really tough to do two festivals a year just relying on [volunteers]; we have to institutionalize in order to improve." Besides encouraging individual donations, nonprofit status will allow Public Media and its participants to dip into the grant pool. Sixteen years after he started Lumpen in Champaign, Marszewski is supporting his empire by carpentering, designing Web sites, and working at his mother's Bridgeport bar. At 38, he sees the need to "get a base" to sustain people. "I'm going to burn out soon," he says. "We need a structure in place to continue without me."
With some two and a half weeks' worth of programming on tap, Version 7 certainly offers up an imposing schedule. But it also offers a soothing, non-commercial palliative to art fair overexposure and is well worth a visit in the midst of it all.
In addition to the aforementioned "We're Rollin', They're Hatin'" at the Co-Prosperity Sphere (a show organized around the theme of fantasy role-playing games), Version is also presenting two photo shows at the The Zhou B. Center, both opening next Thursday: the 43rd Annual Versionfest Photographic Invitational (works by ten photographers from across the country, curated by Brian Ulrich and Jonathan Gitelson) and UNKRAUT (a selection of current works from nine German photographers).
The Zhou B. Center will also play host to the Version NFO XPO, a science fair-styled expo of artists, spaces and projects from Chicago and beyond.
There will be roving interventionist street art in the form of customized moving trucks, a preemptive May Day celebration on the 29th in the form of a guerrilla history tour departing from the West Loop Haymarket Memorial, plus video, music and workshops galore.
The capper, though, at least in my own fevered imagination, is Version's sponsorship of a spectacle that could easily prove the highlight of this year's art fair weekend if it lives up to its description, as "hundreds of artists, performers and cultural workers of all stripes" lay siege to ARTropolis' capitalist stronghold:
This Year Version will wage an Art War on the existing Art Fair structure of Chicago. We will engage the enemy by land, water and air. Dozens of organisations and groups have organised the alternative art festival: Carnival of Art on the River on April 27, 2007.
(Survivors to adjourn to Sonotheque after the war for the enjoyment of noise rock.)
Some 25 hours before the insurgent art warriors of Version and cohort join their assault on the citadel of art commerce, Merchandise Mart Properties is set to finally raise the curtain on their ambitious relaunch of Art Chicago.
If you missed out on the troubles plaguing last year's edition you could do worse than consulting the various news and blog reports on the topic I distilled at the time. In short, though: when the Merchandise Mart bailed Thomas Blackman Associates' already foundering fair out of an eleventh hour crisis last year (72 hours to show time, give or take), Blackman sold his operation to the Mart, making them the proud producers of the once (and dare we hope future?) King of the American Art Fairs.
Come 2007, the once-venerable Art Chicago is now being relaunched in what was described to Victor Cassidy as "a public-private partnership similar to Art Basel."
Roping in some pretty decent civic, institutional and commercial support (not to mention "the tacit support of Mayor Richard M. Daley," insofar as, I suppose, Hizzoner II hasn't explicitly protested their plans), the Mart is constellating a full complement of social and cultural happenings around the occasion of art fair weekend under the umbrella of ARTropolis.
They're also pulling the Bridge Art Fair (formerly NOVA) into the fold as one of three "satellite shows" alongside the main fair and the Mart's spring antiques fair. Also on tap in the satellites: an outsider/folk art show from Intuit and an exhibition of 48 unrepresented artists dubbed The Artist Project.
Additionally, as a part of the main fair itself they'll be presenting New Insight, a special (and apparently first-of-its-kind) exhibition featuring work from 24 MFA students from major American grad programs curated by the Renaissance Society's Susanne Ghez.
All that with just one ticket to see them all, one place to find them.
The main show will feature 132 exhibitors (including a relatively healthy contingent of 40 dealers from NYC)—still a far cry from the fair in its heyday, but also a marked improvement over the last couple of years.
There will be only 20 hometown representatives (more on which in a moment), but included in the exhibitor rolls are a few Chicago A-listers notably absent from the local fairs in recent years: Rhona Hoffman, Richard Gray, Kavi Gupta and Alan Koppel.
And, if Edward Winkleman is to be believed, the opinions of collectors and gallerists are on the rebound:
We were very pleased to learn we had been accepted, but still remained a little nervous. What if they threw a world-class art fair, but nobody came. The proof is in the total experience, and a big part of that is attendance.
But slowly the excitement has begun to grow, and I'm beginning to hear from collectors near and far that they're curious, impressed (the VIP program for this fair is pretty astounding actually), and increasingly excited. Chicago is rolling out a very comprehensive and enticing red carpet, with a city-wide approach that combines a wide spectrum of arts and culture (learn more about this feast of options at the Artropolis website).
... Do please stop in if you're attending. And consider coming if you hadn't already. From all indications, you'll want to say you were there the night Chicago was reborn.
Rebirth, you say?
Paul Klein, too, dropped these two cents around ABMB time:
Let me preface my remarks about visiting the myriad art fairs in Miami the past few days by saying that I’ve been privy to the Chicago 'Merchandise Mart's presentations about what they have been doing and will do to revitalize ArtChicago. Clearly the Mart has very deep pockets, an army of caring, quality event organizers and a passion for substance. In a nutshell, it would not surprise me to see ArtChicago win a World Series long before the Cubs do.
A bit oblique, perhaps, but no less positive.
So, the upshot is that, with a bit of (apparently) competent management at the helm, the early buzz is (apparently) turning out pretty good.
But, to paraphrase David Byrne, how did we get here?
Let's review to the tape...
As Winkleman notes, a major focus of the Mart's efforts has been to revitalize the fair's VIP offerings.
Charles Storch and Alan Artner highlighted this in a December 3, 2006 Tribune article (now offline), "How the Mart is trying to repair Art Chicago":
On Thursday, Art Basel Miami Beach, the sun-tanned spawn of the great Swiss international art exposition, cuts the ribbon on its latest installment. A-list dealers and collectors from around the world are expected to attend the four-day contemporary art fair—as well as several satellite marts in its orbit—and to party with celebrities in homes of the super-rich or the most exclusive nightspots.
Many may even be lured to a party that is to be given by the Chicago-based Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. The Mart last year bought Art Chicago, the longest-running and once-leading contemporary art fair in the country, from its longtime producer. Its team will be at Art Basel Miami Beach—as it has been at other such fairs around the world—to try to make the contacts and find the elements that could return Art Chicago to international prominence.
"We recognized [after last spring's Art Chicago] that to revitalize the show we had to raise the caliber of the dealer base," said Mark Falanga, Mart senior vice president, in an interview last week. He added, "We're mindful there is damage to repair. That's why we are creating a more broad-based, ambitious show than has been here the last few years."
...
Luring top collectors
Some of the ARTropolis partners have been involved in the Mart's plan to indulge the penthouse tastes of top collectors and other VIPs. Falanga said a three-day symposium on "globalism" would be convened solely for A-listers at Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion. They also will get preferred access to Mart shows and receptions, tickets to concerts, reservations at fine restaurants, use of a car service and other perks.
"We're cognizant of what other shows are offering VIPs, and we will be competitive," he said.
But will parties and other favors be enough to draw prospective buyers should top galleries not be represented at the fair? And would the continued absence of more-prominent Chicago dealers undermine the show's appeal to their counterparts elsewhere?
The notion of "a more broad-based" show bears certain undeniable echoes to the populist designs of Pfingsten Publishing's erstwhile Art Chicago usurper, Chicago Contemporary & Classic. As does the Mart's attempt at some level of art-antique fusion.
But by all indications there's a sense of ambition and wide-angle vision in the Mart's plan that was almost entirely lacking in CC&C's 2005 bid for the art fair crown.
"If somebody were to announce an Art Basel-like show for Chicago, it wouldn't work, because that's such a high sliver of the marketplace that couldn't be pulled off overnight," said Rob Spademan, Pfingsten's marketing director. "Chicago needs to go for the $5,000 to $50,000 price point for collectors."
Mark Lyman of Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc.—whose competing bid to produce an art fair in the same time slot at Navy Pier was rejected—disagrees, adding that he is still in discussions with partners for a Chicago show that would aspire to the very top echelon of art fairs.
"They were probably realizing that they were going to have difficulty filling up the hall with the top-level fine-art dealers, so they're taking a more generalist, lower-level approach to this," Lyman said. "I think this makes it very clear that there's a strong opportunity in Chicago for a top-level art fair that would span contemporary and later modern art."
Incidentally, Lyman (of SOFA) remains a sideline figure in the art fair chronicles. Always seemingly on the brink of dipping his toes in the Chicago fine art fair waters, he again pulled back from doing so this past December:
Looks like the Merchandise Mart and Art Chicago won't have to worry about a competing art fair at Navy Pier in 2007; DMG World Media has pulled the plug on its plan to hire a director and mount what producer Mark Lyman had said would be a "world-class show" at the Pier. Lyman says that after polling a number of key dealers internationally, DMG decided the best thing for Chicago would be to "sit tight a bit and let time take care of some things."
Still waiting-and-seeing, then?
Hard to blame him, quite honestly. In their December Trib report, Storch and Artner found Rhona Hoffman and Paul Gray still withholding their blessings:
"There are well over 100 fairs. In New York alone, there are at least a couple a month," said Paul Gray, a director of the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago and New York.
His gallery has been absent from Art Chicago for some years but is represented in four other large fairs. He said each takes up "a better part of a month" in preparation and execution and the four combined cause a "strain on the availability of inventory."
Although he believes the Mart is trying to "bring the fair to a higher level," he doubts that it can "put together a roster of exceptional galleries that would motivate me" to be represented there in 2007.
Not committing yet
Like Gray's, Rhona Hoffman's gallery here had been a mainstay of Art Chicago until recent years. Like many others, she is adopting a wait-and-see attitude to joining the fair.
"I support my city. People in the greater Midwest would love to have a good art fair here," she said. "If [Mart people] get together a group of first-rate galleries—I don't care if it's 10 or 200—I will sign on."
Roy Boyd, president of the Chicago Art Dealers Association, said he is "very impressed" with the actions being taken by the Mart and is among those who want to have their galleries at the show. One of them is Stephen Daiter, a local dealer in photography who long has been an advocate for the fair.
"I think it will be a lot, lot better than in the last two years," Daiter said, adding, "It sounds to me a very good, at least, regional fair."
Art Chicago expects to draw up to 150 exhibitors. Falanga said the Mart has received 125 applications, with booth deposits, from galleries. He said many of those galleries were not here last spring, and a number of them are of high caliber.
Falanga said the Mart already has brought together dozens of collectors, art administrators and business people for a host committee to assist in planning the fair and ARTropolis. It will seek to recruit about 12 dealers from around the world for a gallery selection committee.
As we've noted already, however, both Hoffman and Gray have since signed on the proverbial dotted lines. Deanna Isaacs fleshed out some of the intervening happenings (and a bit of controversy thereof) in March:
Kennedy said the first thing the Mart did to get this year's show off the ground was solicit the support of the Art Dealers Association of Chicago (CADA). CADA members recall that Mart representatives held a series of enthusiastic meetings with them last fall, turning on the PowerPoint charm and enlisting them as ambassadors to recruit dealers nationally and internationally. A few remember a warning voiced by one of their own: "They might mount a show we can't get into." But at least some felt the Mart was focused on creating a fair with a distinctive Chicago identity. "We were very excited," says Flatfile’s Susan Aurinko. "I was the biggest cheerleader in the city for what they were doing. We were calling people and saying, 'You have to apply.'"
Art Chicago appointed a ten-member gallery-selection committee that included three Chicago representatives: CADA president Roy Boyd, photography dealer Stephen Daiter, and—in a coup—the queen of the city’s tiny A-list, Rhona Hoffman. All three will have booths at the show, and even A-lister Richard Gray was lured back. But only 20 Chicago galleries made the list, which was released last month. Flatfile was out, as was Jean Albano (which would have been showing Karl Wirsum and Gladys Nilsson). Thomas Masters, whose gallery was also turned down, says CADA members realized they'd been "spun off the wheel" in an event striving to be elite rather than inclusive. "Without the Art Dealers Association of Chicago, I'm not sure Art Chicago could have happened this year," Masters says. "The fair was floundering. They came to us and said, 'What should we do? We cannot get this fair off the ground without you.'"
Masters says the Mart abandoned a core group of half a dozen dealers who gave their time and support to the fair with the tacit understanding that they were "forging their way into it." He says "the selection committee was not made aware of their contribution."...
Hoffman, who was in Telluride the day the selection committee met (when it reportedly reviewed 300 applications in about ten hours), says she participated by FedEx and phone. "The goal was to be an international fair," she says. "Sour grapes" notwithstanding, "not everyone should be in it."
Paul Klein, again parenthetically sharing his optimism for the coming extravaganza, also emphasizes Hoffman's role:
There are three world-class galleries in Chicago: Rhona Hoffman, Richard Gray and Donald Young, and quite a few contenders. Rhona Hoffman and Paul Gray (of Richard Gray Gallery) have been major players in contributing to the culture of Chicago and deserve significant credit for supporting ArtChicago in its meteoric rise from the ashes to the celebratory showcase we’re about to see in two weeks. Rhona particularly has been front and center in cajoling her peers to come to town.
Could helping bring a once-proud art fair back from the brink turn out to be the crowning jewel in Hoffman's 30th anniversary year as a Chicago art dealer?
There seems to be hope for the moment at least. So... watch out, Utica: Art Chicago is an art fair on the... grow.
Long as this post has grown, I find it necessary to append a postscript; if possible, a short one.
A check of Thomas Blackman's old domain reveals yet more unpaid bills. It's something that's really neither here nor there at this point, but interesting nonetheless:
ThomasBlackmanAssociates.com is Unavailable
This site has been disabled due to issues of non-payment by Thomas Blackman for a period of over 15 months. Thomas, please contact your hosting company to resolve these billing issues soon. Thanks.
Good luck with that.
According to Google's cache, this notice was posted at some point after Mar 30, 2007 13:03:58 GMT, placing the start of the as-yet-unresolved 15-plus-month delinquency squarely in the heart of the run-up to Debacle 2006.
Hardly shocking, I know, but...
"Back up in your ass with the Resurrection"
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May 1, 2006
The Final Countdown
We're leaving together,
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back,
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown...
Beaten, bruised and badly blistered, I still soldiered on yesterday for my final visit to NOVA before everyone closed up shop. So, for those of you just dying for a look at some highlights in situ, you've got it.
Before we get going, though, a quick visit with unofficial NOVA crown prince and Chicago poster boy (so to speak) Tony Fitzpatrick at Pierogi, where he poses with Brooklyn artist Jim Torok's "Everybody Loves Tony" (the genesis of which was detailed in Bad at Sports' third fair weekend podcast):
And as he was so very gratious in indulging me this pose, I'd imagine a plug for Tony's book, The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 1, is probably in order. Seemed like everyone had a copy in hand throughout the run of the fair. Hot, hot, hot. (And everybody apparently does love Tony.)
But, anyways, onwards and upwards (and so forth). I'd really wanted to get these posted yesterday, but had to quit processing the images when my new MacBook Pro started to burn my lap (speaking of hot). It was after 2 am, anyways, so I didn't mind too terribly putting them off until today.
(Needless to say, if any artists or galleries pictured here want full resolution version of any of these images, I'd be more than happy to email them.)
In the spirit of subversive egalitarianism fostered by a late-afternoon visit to Version Fest yesterday, we are presenting them in reverse alphabetical order...
Thomas Robertello Gallery, Chicago
At Thomas Robertello: West Loop newcomer Robertello himself, flanked by paintings by Jason Robert Bell; a trio of paintings by Jorin Bossen; more Bell
Projects Gallery, Philadelphia
A selection of Peter Gourfain woodblock prints as hung at Projects Gallery
Barbara Koenen's mandala-style Afghan war rug at outlaw A
McCaig–Welles Gallery, Brooklyn
At McCaig–Welles: a wall full of Nick Kuszyk's robot paintings; five mixed media works by Shepard Fairey (including a partially-obscured Lenin)
Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, Brooklyn
Alex Dodge's "The Most Beautiful Dreams" at Klaus Von Nichtssagend
Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, New York
At Kathleen Cullen: Patrick Shaw's varnished bar napkin drawings (1, 2, 3) and Mark Chamberlain's notorious take on the dynamic duo (4)
At gescheidle: left to right, Marci Rae McDade, Eric Gibbons and Whitney Lee
At Dorsch: a Brian Reedy woodcut greets visitors at the door; Dorsch himself below an array of Kyle Trowbridge drawings; a pair of poorly-lit Franklin Einspruch originals; a Brian Reedy print
Eric Doeringer's full bootleg spread
Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn
A couple heavily art historical paintings by Loren Munk at Dam, Stuhltrager
Creative Thrift Shop, Brooklyn
Sculpture by Guerra de la Paz (if that is their real name) seen at Creative Thrift Shop
At Clapham: paintings by Emma Bennet (top) and Cathy Lomax (bottom)
At Bucket Rider: wall text by Amanda Ross-Ho; photocollage by Josh Mannis
Bucheon Gallery, San Francisco
Two works on paper by Steve MacDonald at Bucheon
The scene at Big Cat Press: viewing prints by Michael Pajon; left to right, prints by Michael Pajon and Silas Dilworth
Bert Green Fine Art, Los Angeles
Photo sculture and photos by David Meanix (seated at the Mac above, if memory serves) at Bert Green Fine Art
Plus... A very special bonus round
Security takes out the riff-raff (Chris Reilly's "Everything I Do Is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference, Part II or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Gallery" at the Network of Visual Art)
"The Final Countdown"
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April 30, 2006
At the business end of the weekend
Fate AccompliDeanna Isaac's rundown on The Business (oi!) in this week's Reader (online in PDF form) gives us a bit more detail than we've seen previously on the run up to Art Show Fiasco 2006:
Last Friday, six days before Art Chicago was due to open at Butler Field, director Thomas Blackman placed an urgent call to local business phenom and Kendall College president Howard Tullman... Blackman was out of money, unable to pay union laborers to install the floor, electricity, plumbing, and walls in the tent’s interior, and the union, testy because nonunion labor had been used to get the tent up, had walked off the job. Blackman told Tullman a loan he’d been counting on had failed to come through, and he needed $250,000 to bridge the gap.
Tullman says he met with Blackman Saturday and agreed to loan him the money, but was later told Blackman’s calls to the union and contractors hadn’t been returned. (A union spokesman says representatives met with Blackman Saturday night and “he didn’t want to come to an agreement.”) “By Monday it was pretty clear time had run out,” Tullman says. “He wasn’t going to be able to get it done.”
At that point SOFA producer Mark Lyman, who’d been a contender to do the Pier fair last year, and his employer, UK-based DMG World Media, began talking about moving the show to Navy Pier. DMG executive vice president Mark Carr says Blackman had approached them on Thursday and asked for a loan: “It was clear he needed it to open the fair. We said we’d look into it and try to do it for him. We then got lawyers to do their due diligence. After they did, we decided we couldn’t go ahead.” Carr says they informed Blackman there’d be no loan on Friday afternoon.
By Monday, however, DMG was considering stepping up if Blackman, along with his contracts and liabilities, was out of the picture. DMG didn’t want to take over, Carr says, “but if Tom canceled his show, we would try to put something up at Navy Pier for the dealers that would be left stranded.” Tullman says Blackman stalled at this point, and later on Monday DMG concluded there wasn’t enough time—even if they delayed the show’s opening by a day—to move it to the Pier. Monday evening DMG issued a statement that they’d determined not to become involved in any capacity.
... Alarmed, a core group of local dealers and members of the Chicago Art Dealers Association who’d been promoting the fair called a hurried series of meetings. “We’ve been trying to see if we can come up with the money or another person who might put the show up,” dealer Carl Hammer said Monday, adding that he’d be out $20,000 if the show were canceled. “The whole city of Chicago takes it on the chin for this.”
That was as of Thursday.
At Fresh Paint yesterday, Cynthia offered a bit of a scoop in regards to just how the fair was saved and certain repercussions thereof:
Blackman is out at Art Chicago. The guy who bailed him out and moved everything to the Merchandise Mart has bought Blackman's company. Blackman has signed an agreement barring him from starting another fair in Chicago. I guess the memory of last year's Fair Wars is still very much with us. He has basically been exiled.
And Erik at Art or Idiocy? backed this up in a post earlier today:
The latest development in the Art Chicago saga is that it Thomas Blackman has sold his business to the Merchandise Mart. The deal was made Friday night but it is not clear if the whole TBA was liquidated, or just the Art Chicago project.
The Mart now own the show, but the monies owed to TBA by galleries for booths and so on are still Blackman's. People have commented this is good because he is easier to pay back than a bottom line businessman. This grace also may be the cause of TBA's money woes, though.
Also in question is what is to become off all the walls and lights TBA owns and makes revenue from renting out to other fairs accross the country.
So, Art Chicago is now under the trade show umbrella of Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. (as reflected in the domain of their new Art Chicago website).
Given their ownership of the Chicago Antiques Fair (and the two fairs' near-integration this weekend) do we now find ourselves a step closer to the achieving the mercantile dream Chicago Contemporary & Classic failed to bring to fruition?
For more regarding Blackman's end of things, Bad at Sports promised to put the microphone to the horse's mouth itself in their fourth and final art fair 'cast, so check back with them for their impending update.
Update: No sooner do I hit "Publish" than Bad at Sports does the same, posting their wrap up podcast. Downloading now...
Update again: Even as I listen to the BaS interview with Blackman, I see this article from Saturday's Tribune:
Blackman said he is continuing to discuss with the mart any future role with the show beyond that of an adviser. Falanga said the mart's usual practice with its shows is to work with an advisory body of experts.
Discussions between the parties began Monday night. Asked why he is selling the show, Blackman said, "I realized it would be a much better thing for the exposition to be involved with a larger structure."
His agreement with the mart precludes Blackman from mounting a rival show here. He said he may continue as an exposition-equipment lessor, but he has not made any decision regarding producing future shows, including one that had been announced for New York next February.
None of Blackman's four or five employees is being hired by the mart.
This weekend's Art Chicago had been slated to take place under a tent in Grant Park and was nearly canceled because of Blackman's financial and labor problems. The mart stepped in and hosted the show, offering it in conjunction with its Chicago Antiques Fair. Falanga said plans are to continue to pair the shows.
In the BaS interview, Blackman is expressing his love for the old Stray Show and seems to suggest that (at least as he sees things) the question is not necessarily settled as to whether a Stray-style alt fair in Chicago, helmed by Blackman, would violate his non-compete agreement with the Mart.
Also worth noting in passing, Isaacs signs off her Reader column with the Art Institute's response to criticism of their recent move toward mandatory admission fees:
It’s not about the money, the Art Institute says of the recent announcement that its $12 suggested admission fee will be mandatory beginning in June. “It’s not a revenue builder,” spokesperson Erin Hogan says, adding that it’ll affect just 10 percent of the museum’s 1.5 million attendees. Hogan says AI is “one of the last Chicago museums” to have a discretionary fee and is trying to bring itself “in line with the other museums in the city.”
But, really, who am I to say that that rationale makes zero sense or that it's not actually entirely true? After all, they're working so hard to hip up the joint, and nothing screams "old guard" like voluntary donation.
"At the business end of the weekend"
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April 29, 2006
Picturing...
With nearly 12 hours of art under my belt yesterday, I awoke this morning to find the heels and balls of my feet a healthy purplish-red. Yet more to come.
Along the way, I managed to snap a photo or two (while making sure to reserve ample memory card space for the decadence to come).
Anyways, here's a look at...
Cop a walk, it's alrightIn the bazaar atmosphere that is the greater Belmont area, it's easy to miss the art on display here and there as a part of NOVA's Artwalk. I witnessed a number of people walk by the Eric Hamilton videos on show outside of Taboo-Tabou virtually unaware, even as a speaker above them pumped out the mastrubatory grunts that accompany a portion of his 6-minute "Family Values":
If you feel like taking a stroll, though, do go check out Hamilton's videos at Taboo-Tabou (854 W. Belmont), Krista Peel's miniatures in the window of Think Small (3209 N. Clark), Joe Compean's stereo photography in the windows at the Hollywood Mirror (812 W. Belmont) and the comic illustrations by Steve Krakow (aka Plastic Crimewave) in a window display at Chicago Comics (3244 N. Clark).
Some shots of a few of the more easily photographed installations...
Jon Lowenstein at Bookworks (3444 N. Clark):
Sayre Gomez at Real Art, Inc. (3173 N. Broadway):
Mike Genovese at Reckless Records (3157 N. Broadway):
And, of course, consult the complete list for even more.
Sorry ladies... I think he's spoken for
Lovely bearded hubbies Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger entertain the onlookers at Western Exhibitions' Art Chicago booth, as they continue their joint crocheting of a pink tube already several fairs in the making.
"Picturing..."
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All Aboard the Decadent Art Fag Express
Some pics from the third and final run of last night's NOVA Fashion Train extravaganza (service from Belmont to Belmont and all points in between).
... Just call me the cobrasnake—though there's at least one shot I couldn't post for the sake of propriety.
At any rate, whoever dreamt up this inspired gimmick deserves some kind of award. Brilliant.
(See Bad at Sports for even more debauchery.)
"All Aboard the Decadent Art Fag Express"
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April 28, 2006
Peeking through the fog
Even with only 40-some exhibitors, NOVA last night was a bit of a blur. Nevertheless, a brief rundown of highlights that stand out in my otherwise foggy memory...
Update: I should also note in passing that Bad at Sports put their first art fair podcast of the weekend up last night. If you haven't already, be sure to check it out.
First off, Tony Fitzpatrick seems to be everywhere, from his own Big Cat Press to Billy Shire Fine Arts (Culver City, CA) to the Chicago Art Project—possibly more, if memory serves.
Every year there seems to be one or two brash and fun, if gimmicky, items that command immediate attention even if you doubt their lasting resonance. Chris Reilly's "Everything I Do Is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference, Part II or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Gallery" in the Network of Visual Art space takes Half-Life 2 into SAIC's Gallery 2 for some aestheticized first-person shooter mayhem. A bit inside baseball, but also probably the ultimate art fair fantasy come to life.
I fell for Emma Bennet's enamel paintings at London's Clapham almost immediately. But, then, I'm always a sucker for a good glaze.
At San Francisco's Bucheon, works by David Gremard Romero offer an almost seamless pastiche of baroque art and superhero comics.
LA's Bert Green Fine Art has a number photographs by David Meanix featuring masks and entire bodies constructed from magazine or photo tearings. Some cohere better than others, but when they do, I find the effect rather striking.
Chicago's own Bucket Rider features a host of their usual suspects. I can't say why I never really tire of Nicola Kuperus' photos, but I think it makes me feel vaguely electroclash. Which is to say, strangely dirty.
War and violence make for a minor theme this year (shocking, I know). The most memorable works along these lines were the Afghan war rugs at outlaw A by Barbara Koenen (of the Chicago Artists Resource). These were created, in the manner of Tibetan sand mandalas, with colorful dried spices. Koenen was also showing some nice grenade cozies. (Shades, I think, of Rosemarie Trockel's balaclavas.)
Also of note:
Eric Doeringer's bootlegs. I have a very real urge to buy one:
Jen Davis at 65 GRAND:
Peter Gourfain at Projects Gallery:
Susan Lee-Chun at Red Dot Project:
Marci Rae McDade at gescheidle:
Jorin Bossen at Thomas Robertello Gallery:
On tap for today: NOVA Artwalk, Art Chicago and more...
Update: And tonight... the Fashion Train loops the Loop.
"Peeking through the fog"
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April 27, 2006
Wargaming the Weekend Ahead
As any beleaguered Secretary of Defense will tell you, no war plan survives first contact with the enemy.
And so it goes, too, with any plan for facing down the mighty specter of aesthetic overload that is Any Given Art Fair Weekend. (I can't even begin to imagine what all those suckers down in Miami must go through each December.)
But the least we can do is try to lay out the plan as it currently stands, leaving the necessary wiggle room for all of the various decisions and revisions which the weekend will reverse...
This evening...
What else? NOVA Vernissage (already well underway by this point, I'd imagine), 5–10 pm
After the show, it's the afterparty at SmartBar (which I'm fairly sure I'm not up for) 8 pm–4 am
Friday...
Aside from more quality time at NOVA and a visit to Art Chicago in the Mart (which, really, should be enough on their own), Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid will speak at the Lakeview Ann Sather at 8 pm
Saturday...
Unfortunately, I have the day job calling on Saturday, so will have to miss out on what could be among the highlights of NOVA, a foursome of overlapping video and film programs at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema, noon–4 pm. Three of these programs are devoted to selections of short films from local and international artists, the fourth to one-hour Miranda July retrospective.
Wish they could run them on Sunday as well.
Also, more readings & lectures at Ann Sather, including David Antin at 7 pm and William Pope.L at 8 pm.
Sunday...
Think I'll take a drive down to the Version>06 kunsthalle at Iron Studios, 3636 S Iron St. (noon–10 pm, free until 4) for:
New Trends in Chicago Photography, curated by Greg Stimac and Brian Ulrich (April 29–May 6)
Urban Gardening and Exterior Decorating (April 22–May 7)
The Group Group Show (April 21–May 7)
Version NFO XPO (April 29 & 30)
And, of course, somewhere in the midst of all this, time must be found to get some drinks with this fella I met on the internets.
So, study your schedules, campers, and I'll see you at StacyCon '94 NOVA '06, at the San Diego Airport Hilton Chicago City Suites Hotel. Look for a guy with a weak-ass beard and a look of abject fatigue on his face.
"Wargaming the Weekend Ahead"
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April 26, 2006
Defining 'Debacle' Up
So, I've obviously been out for a spell. Have I missed anything?
Oh:
Yeah. This weekend's forecast calls for "a lingering storm system."
Short story: with Art Chicago's Thursday Vernissage days away, this week found the fair's Grant Park set-up not nearly ready for primetime. From the AP via the Sun-Times:
Some of the 125 gallery owners and artists expected at this year's three-day festival arrived Tuesday to find the large white tents that hold the show empty—with a dirt floor, no walls and no workers.
"We arrived here, see this and ... nothing," said gallery owner Patrick Baer, who traveled from Dresden, Germany, for the show. "I'm not happy."
Rumors flew that it was simply too late to salvage Thomas Blackman Assoicates' fair. Managing an eleventh hour move to the Merchandise Mart, though, they've averted at least total disaster.
Erik Wenzel at Art or Idiocy (who was on top of this story even before Thomas Blackman's mom knew about it) notes that 104 of an original 125 exhibitors remain.
In the blogs:
Art or Idiocy I, Art or Idiocy II, Art or Idiocy III
Fresh Paint I, Fresh Paint II
Sharkforum I, Sharkforum II
Brian Ulrich
Bad at Sports
Edward Winkleman
*Updates:
Metroblogging Chicago I, Metroblogging Chicago II, Metroblogging Chicago III
Gapers Block I, Gapers Block II
The Tribune's Artner and Storch tag-teamed the story late last night, before the change of venue was announced:
Blackman's brief announcement capped a week of frantic attempts by him to retain a grip on the show and reach for a financial lifeline. He put up his Chicago company for sale and even pledged personally owned art works as loan collateral, but negotiations were too rushed and too late, according to two people with whom he dealt.
...
The first obvious sign of trouble came last week, when some unions represented at the site engaged in informational picketing.
Thomas Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council, said non-union floor installers from a Wisconsin firm had been brought in, and the unions demanded the out-of-towners be paid prevailing wages. Villanova said the dispute was resolved, but he didn't elaborate.
Nonetheless, no workers were at the site Tuesday.
For those outside of Chicago, note that accusations of unions gumming up the convention industry works are nothing new in these parts.
But that certainly can't be the whole story, given TBA's financial woes, can it?
Blackman did not return calls seeking comment.
Some in the Chicago art community were embarrassed its premier event was in such flux.
"To the world, this is the face of art in Chicago,'' said Natalie van Straaten of the Chicago Art Dealers Association. "Everyone's reputation is on the line, not just Thomas Blackman's.''
One contractor, who said he received a bad check after paying his employees, complained, "I'm just a little guy. This is earth-shattering for us.'' Work at the site stopped last week, preventing completion of the interior of the tent, another contractor said.
In fact, TBA's reputation has taken a number of hits of late.
Last season's Art Fair War was launched after Art Chicago was essentially booted from Navy Pier over a bounced rent check. And, though it came out looking relatively shiny in the face of the competition, the subsequent 2005 installment was far leaner than past shows (even with the formerly separate Stray Show absorbed into the main event) and boasted its own logistical hang-ups. At the time this was all chalked up to 2005 being a stopgap, rebuilding year.
At the same time, the 7th installment of TBA's San Francisco International Art Exposition foundered for apparent lack of interest, and the show was finally canned completely a mere month out from the scheduled 2006 dates for SFIAE 8.
This past February also saw the firm abandon plans for Art New York, planned to be held concurrent with the ADAA's Art Show. The reason? "We didn’t allow enough time to organize it." (Art New York 2007 remains tentatively scheduled to coincide with next year's Armory Show.)
And now this.
Now I'm far from 'plugged in' or 'in the loop' or whatever cliché you prefer, but complaints regarding TBA's management seem to be legion, as testified to by the harsh words former gallerist Paul Klein shared after a trip down to ABMB '04:
The success of the Basel / Miami Fair is completely attributable to the remarkable competence of the organizers, and the failure of Art Chicago likewise lies solely in the hands of those who put it on. Art Chicago has suffered from a thorough lack of vision and bad manners.
Many are prone to laud Miami and blame Chicago for the fairs’ relative success or lack thereof, but that's not really the truth. It is however safe to say that the Miami extravaganza is easily 4 times larger than Art Chicago in a city less than one quarter the size - so of course it’s going to have a greater impact there.
This is not to say that Chicago blew it, or that we can't have a kick ass fair here. But it damn sure says that none of the existing players are sufficiently competent to pull off a good Chicago show. There are certainly many collectors who want to come back to Chicago, but I'm not sure this country's increasing population of philistines will support 3 fairs (the 2nd being the Armory show in New York).
Next May, at least in theory, we will have two, mediocre at best, "art" fairs. Thomas Blackman Associates is no longer welcome at Navy Pier, for good reasons, and he says he will be putting a show on in tents, but I don't know a single one of his former exhibitors who wants to leap his burnt bridge. And Ilana Vardy's Pfingsten Publishing Group, which does have Navy Pier's endorsement for next May, has a history of a financially viable (for the organizers) show that is neither cutting edge nor innovative, just lucratively bland.
... and in the wake of Art Chicago '05:
Art Chicago has moved from Navy Pier where the quality of the show, number of exhibitors and audience have been atrophying for years. Now located at Butler Field (home of the Petrillo Bandshell) this is a decent fair, despite Thomas Blackman Associates’ best efforts to further ruin what was once the best art fair in the land.
I exhibited in fairs organized by Thomas Blackman for over 20 years. Not only do I know most of the galleries and dealers who have stood by him as he implodes his Titanic; and I also know the carpenters, painters and electricians who install his shows. The trades people are complaining about the workload and having to finish their work with the exhibitors already present. They segue smoothly into discussions about Blackman’s bounced checks, being kicked out of Navy Pier for nonpayment and about the many trade companies who won’t work for him because he still owes them money.
Inside the tent yesterday, less than 24 hours before the public gets in, there is 3 days of work to do.
There are two types of exhibitors setting up their booths. They are all True Believers. A positive attitude abounds. There are either newbies who’ve wanted in this show for years and now that Blackman has essentially begged exhibitors to come many are thrilled to be in what was once a really good show. They believe in their art. They love their art and they want to talk to you about it. They are decidedly not commercial. For them it is love, not commerce. And for me that is a wonderful breath of fresh air. (Art fairs have gotten to be a soulless conglomerate of oozing, hustling purveyors pretending to care about snake oil.) The naive newbies’ positive attitude make these show very worth attending.
And then there are the loyalists, the ones somnambulating in their booths, standing by their “captain” as the ship sinks.
But, back to the Trib for more detail on Blackman's "frantic attempts... to retain a grip on the show and reach for a financial lifeline":
Mark Lyman, founder and chief of Expressions of Culture Inc., a producer of sculptural art expositions in Chicago and New York, said he learned last Friday that Blackman seemed to be in need of quick financing. Lyman had been told from officials of his parent company, London-based DMG World Media, that Blackman had contacted them the day before and proposed selling DMG his firm, Thomas Blackman Associates.
According to Lyman, DMG officials were not interested.
"You can't be rushed into doing that kind of a deal," said Lyman, speaking of such transactions in general. "The end result is that you end up buying someone's misery and now it's yours."
Howard Tullman, president of Chicago's Kendall College and a contemporary art collector, said Blackman called him Friday, but the two didn't speak at length until Saturday. Tullman said that he was asked for a short-term loan of $250,000 and that Blackman offered art works he owned as collateral.
"I said I would look at it, but was it feasible?" Tullman said, given the work stoppage at Butler Field. He said that Blackman tried to resolve the labor problems but that "by Monday, it was too late."
Also last weekend, Lyman said some local art dealers discussed with him salvaging the fair, possibly by moving it to the pier under Lyman's direction. Lyman said he broached the idea with the pier and found some interest, but he didn't want to proceed without assurances he wouldn't be accused later of interfering with Blackman's business.
Lyman said he set up a meeting for 9 a.m. Monday in his lawyer's office at which Blackman was expected to attend.
"Tom didn't show up for the meeting," said Lyman.
He added that Blackman called and reset the meeting for later. Lyman said Blackman arrived at 2 p.m., but without legal representation, so proceeding seemed futile to Lyman's side.
"Had we been able to conclude something Monday morning, I could have gotten something built [at the pier] Thursday night," Lyman said.
This Mark Lyman/DMG World Media connection is intriguing.
Last year saw the team of Lyman's Expressions of Culture Inc. (who produce the successful Chicago and New York SOFA expos) and DMG (which has since bought EoC out) losing out on their bid to take over Art Chicago's old spot at Navy Pier, the spot going to the International Art and Framing Group's ill-fated Chicago Contemporary & Classic fair.
Lyman was determined at the time that EoC and DMG would nonetheless establish a 'high class' contemporary art fair of their own in Chicago, but nothing seemed to come of that. Perhaps there remains an opportunity, though, for them to step into this breach.
Meanwhile, we still have NOVA (who've also recently announced plans for a Miami edition at the Catalina Hoten & Beach Club in South Beach this coming December). If the main Chicago fair tanks, though, can the 'satellite' survive?
"Defining 'Debacle' Up"
Posted by Dan at 06:07 PM | Referenced URL's
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January 12, 2006
NOVA News
With offline commitments falling away, I plan to be back at this thing right soon.
In the meantime, let's take a moment for a bit of the old press release regurgitation: This year's NOVA Art Fair (which has wisely shed its gratuitous "young" modifier) finally has a venue lined up.
As Erik Wenzel noted in the run-up to ABMB et alia, fair director Michael Workman has been looking to move the event away from last year's rustic environs (half of which now houses the NOVA Center) into a ~scope-style hotel situation, possibly in closer proximity to the Big Dog in Grant Park:
In local art fair news, Michael Workman announced on the NOVA Advisory listserv that he will be down there too. Networking, handing out business cards and so on, as we are all wont to do, could any of us afford to go down there.
Workman also touched on NOVA’s current plans for next year’s venue. NOVA is still searching. They are looking into Michigan Avenue hotels, which would put it closer to Art Chicago in the Park.
Well, the announcement came today that NOVA has settled plans to take over the City Suites Hotel for the fair weekend, right in the heart of the hustle and bustle of the Belmont strip in Lakeview.
(In spite of their stated hopes of moving Art Chicago from the spring chill to the summer swelter, TBA will again be pitching their Butler Field tent during the last weekend in April, NOVA following suit. Hopefully it'll be a bit warmer this year, though.)
Given the run of the entire hotel, NOVA will have 45 rooms at their disposal (30 standard sized "suites" and 15 smaller singles, priced at $3000 and $2000 respectively). According to their press release, they anticipate stepping it up to 30–40 galleries this time around. There's no indication whether this will include exhibits from individual artists, though the NOVA exhibitors page (currently in draft form) seems to suggest some sort of participation by individuals in the form of "environmental projects."
[Update... Lord knows, one of these days I'll learn to read: "Besides exhibiting galleries, Nova will continue its tradition of offering space to individual artists and collectives, both within available space at the City Suites Hotel, area businesses, and outdoors."]
Relocating the fair from the West Loop to Belmont trades real estate in the youngsters' art district for the visibility and potential foot traffic of the youngsters' retail thoroughfare. And, though it's much further away from the main event than last year, with the Belmont L stop a block away, transit between NOVA and Art Chicago should actually prove far easier. Having a bevy of amenities and distractions in arm's reach doesn't hurt, either. (Last year found me, post-NOVA, making a late dinner of a sticky bun and some Cheetos from a Loop 7-11 as I hoofed it to the Red Line. I would've killed for a Clarke's at the time—even Dunkin' Donuts would've been a blessing.)
This all sounds pretty good to me (as if anyone cares), just so long as the general ambience of the neighborhood doesn't lead things to a degeneration into Williamsburg-style scenester art ridiculousness.
Provided revelers aren't drawn in by the siren-song öonce-öonce and sideshow freakiness of Berlin across the street, a vernissage after-party featuring DJ Spooky bumps into the small hours just one L stop north at Smart Bar.
"NOVA News"
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November 30, 2005
Blatant Local Chauvinism
For all of the poor suckers who'll be stuck in the torrid heat of sweltering Miami Beach this coming weekend while I kick back in comfort in balmy Chicago, IL... a list of Chicago and vicinity exhibitors at this year's big shows:
At ABMB...
Valerie Carberry (booth G9)
Rhona Hoffman (booth F4)
Donald Young (booth C8)
At Aqua...
Bodybuilder & Sportsman
Lisa Boyle
Bucket Rider
At NADA...
Shane Campbell
General Store (Milwaukee)
Kavi Gupta (NADA member)
Imperfect Articles (publications)
At PULSE...
monique meloche (PULSE invitational)
At ~scopeMiami...
Wendy Cooper
Carl Hammer
Kasia Kay
Karen Lennox
At Frisbee...
gescheidle
(plus... current Brooklynite and ex-Chicagoan Siebren Versteeg as one half of the Spirit Tours 2005 team)
So, though a number are participating, Chicago's galleries aren't exactly showing up in force in the sunshine spotlight of Miami Beach.
And, while I couldn't say how many applied to and were rejected by the various blossoming fairs (or, for that matter, how many opted out altogether), I think I'm beginning to appreciate Art Expo/Art Chicago's erstwhile value to the local art community as, at the very least, a foot in the door for worthy local spaces that might not otherwise light up the international radar.
But, what the hell: here's to the Sunshine State anyways. And here's to all that gorgeous scratch in FLA.
"Blatant Local Chauvinism"
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July 18, 2005
Art Fair Fallout
I stopped looking out for news on the art fair front after the big weekend hit back in May (though somewhere I still have a half-written post on NOVA I ought to spew out one of these days...). So I can't say how long this has been out there but, via a post to the Other Group, I see that—their seven-year contract at Navy Pier and "participants' enthusiasm" notwithstanding—Chicago Contemporary & Classic looks to be officially throwing in the towel.
Given barely even tepid support from local galleries, totally anemic attendence (by all accounts) and generally dismal reviews all around, this is entirely unsurprising. And, really, it just wasn't a great show.
They do leave the door open for a return in the event of finding new dates at a new location, but it doesn't appear that they expect any such news to be terribly imminent:
The directors wish to thank everyone who supported Chicago Contemporary & Classic from April 29–May 2, 2005. In spite of the show's success and the participants' enthusiasm, our supporters have advised us to suspend production of the second edition of CC&C. We had hoped to find ourselves in a scenario where two shows could co-exist and collaborate where necessary, but the galleries have made it clear that only one show should take place at a time. We sought a different time of year that would work for everyone involved, but, unfortunately, no other dates are currently available.
We are researching other venues in other locations, so please contact us if you wish to be apprised of any new developments.
To be fair to CC&C, this spring didn't exactly present ideal conditions for launching a new fair in Chicago. Though treading water themselves (Thomas Blackman has called this year's fair a mere "prototype" for its future), Art Chicago still had the clear leg up in terms of location and track record (such that it is).
And you may recall that late April/early May wasn't really Thomas Blackman Associates' top choice in dates either. They had originally hoped to hold their revamped fair mid-summer, but had to settle for the icy side of spring for lack of available dates. (Staging it in Grant Park at the height of festival season is bound to be the sort of thing that requires the 'support' of some civic sponsor, not to mention a bit of lead time.)
Both fairs, then, were held as the spring auction season was getting ready to launch out east and, although some expected the prospect of all-out war to garner Chicago a surfeit of art world attention, it looked to me like the weekend passed almost without notice.
CC&C also felt the squeeze on the antiques side of things (and their promised antiques component barely materialized in the end), facing competition from the Chicago Antiques Fair down the road at the Merchandise Mart, while a major concurrent antiques fair on the west coast was the stated reason for Leslie Hindman's parting ways with the production.
Ultimately, should Pfingsten Publishing try to mount a revival of CC&C at a new location, in 2007 or whenever, more power to them. But here's hoping that 2005 will at least prove to have been the final nail in the coffin of McPier's plans for an art fair in the tourist circus that Navy Pier has become.
"Art Fair Fallout"
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May 3, 2005
Fair Thee Well
[cross-posted at Grammar.police]
Reviews of art fairs tend toward the scattershot. By nature too large and unfocused to be amenable to easy summary, fairs invariably lend themselves to unfocused lists that lose the forest for the trees on the one hand or impossibly general blanket assessments leveled against often incommensurable variety on the other.
Having already attempted the former, at least thus far for the two main Chicago fairs (here and here), allow me to try my hand at the latter, with the added advantage of being pretty well uninformed and lacking anything truly substantial to say. Couple these virtues with some arch metaphors and tedious word play and there's only one name for what I'm shoveling: pure blogging gold!
So without further ado...
Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair...
Just as there are a multitude of critical approaches to assessing a fair, there are a plethora of gauges of a fair's success. At the end of the day, though, only one matters: art fairs are largely economic affairs, with the bottom line of success ultimately being the bottom lines of organizers' and gallerists' ledgers.
In this sense at least, an art fair's goals can run directly counter to those of its public (its non-art-buying public, that is). Perhaps Chicago Contemporary & Classic's Ilana Vardy is right when she suggests, though not in so many words, that the cutting edge of international contemporary art and the catholic tastes of the cultivated don't ultimately make for the most salable commodities or lucrative enterprises in a more conservative greater-Midwestern market. Maybe competing at the level of Art Basel Miami Beach is a pipe dream and maybe a re-imagining of a Chicago fair requires us to lower our sights and lower our price points. And perhaps art fair success must come with a certain amount of bruising to our collective cosmopolitan ego.
That said, Wednesday's opening night preview—the earliest thing on offer all week and competing, as such, against no one—was incredibly sedate for such an event. And, according to a mid-fair report on Art Letter's message board, the fair had "no attendance and the gallerists [were] openly griping in front of the few people who [did] attend." And this is not to mention how profoundly Navy Pier sucks as an art fair destination.
So, how did CC&C's exhibitors fare sales-wise? I have no idea myself, and am in no position to find out, but it would be interesting to see, as it might help us approach the ultimate question here: namely, will CC&C be returning next year to continue its bid for the mantle of Chicago art fair king? Cited everywhere toward an answer to this is the seven-year contract Pfingsten Publishing signed with McPier when taking the reigns of the pier expo (in what I have to imagine was an attempt to pressure Art Chicago out of the game early in the going) and the certitude this implies. But then Fred Camper wrote in last week's Reader:
Chicago Contemporary & Classic has a seven-year contract at Navy Pier, but when I queried Vardy about next year she replied, "Ask me in two weeks."
So things seem a bit less than certain.
"Rebuilding."
It's a phrase that bears a ringing familiarity to the ears of any Chicago sports fan.
The Cubs, the Bears, the post-nineties Bulls, the White Sox and the Hawks (wait, the who?) have all made such an art of the "rebuilding phase" that they now seem to delight in bringing us rebuilding year after rebuilding year, in perpetuity.
And now we find Thomas Blackman seeming to take a similar tack in his view of his latterly suffering Art Chicago. From the most recent Time Out Chicago:
"I promised that when I left the pier, I was going to try to pull off a show that was so spectacular it would help keep the fair at a very high level, and I would start with the help of the city and Park District. I think we have an interesting group of dealers." Blackman calls Art Chicago in the Park "a prototype" for the future. "This is my year off," he says, gesturing at Butler Field. For him, it's a small show, and all of the work put into it was done early. In previous years, confronted with the challenge of staging another behemoth fair, he would still be busy painting walls.
So even Thomas Blackman Associates is willing to recognize that this year's installment was sub-par. It's certainly understandable given a shortened time-frame (having only announced the rebirth of Art Chicago as late as November) and dramatic change of venue. And what was presented this past weekend may well have exceeded the expectations of those who wrote off Blackman's fair as all but dead, if simply by getting off the ground at all.
Yet, as many have been wont to point out over the past weeks, the fair's roster of exhibitors lacks any number of heavy-hitters (so necessary to reliably draw out the collectors) be they from New York, overseas or even home-grown (oft cited, as here, were the absences of blue-chip locals Rhona Hoffman, Donald Young and Richard Gray). In this fickle and fashionable art world, can Art Chicago really ever recover such lost cache?
From my own perspective, Art Chicago, though it left very much to be desired, had the vastly more successful go of the two competing fairs this year, and a casual survey of press and internet reactions suggests that I'm far from alone in this sentiment. But all this opinion amounts to a whole lot of jack without black ink on that pesky bottom line. And again, I know not a thing of sales returns and other such vulgar figures, and so cannot weigh in on this most important of matters. At any rate, the big question is not so narrowly local as all that anyways, as TBA's biggest competition comes not from the pier, but from places like the Swiss bankers' playground down in Miami.
Art Chicago's fundamentals seem to give them the leg up on CC&C in most respects (e.g.; location, should they again secure their spot in Grant Park; experience in their market; continued gallery support, especially locally; and a brand name, however diluted) but are they strong enough to give the fair national (let alone international) staying power? Ultimately only time will tell whether we're catching a last glimpse of a sinking ship or just waiting for our hardy, tempest-tossed vessel to return safely to port.
Cautious uncertainty.
"Fair Thee Well"
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May 2, 2005
Art Chicago 2005 Highlights
(Finally.)
As previously mentioned, Thursday brought my art fair week to a head with Art Chicago and NOVA openings back to back. Friday was supposed to be my day at the Version>05 Kunsthalle and evening at the Pier Walk preview party, but turned into little more than a day of napping on the couch followed by some beers and some epic baseball at the Globe. (Friday night West Loop gallery openings never even entered consideration.) Saturday, then, was lost to work, Sunday to the Version Kunsthalle and a Bach Week concert.
(And if I can indulge in a bit more housekeeping: so far I've been doing my damnedest to avoid reading anyone's assessments of the fairs, trying to keep my eyes as fresh and innocent as is possible until I at least get these initial run-downs out of the way. Nevertheless, it looks like artnet has Victor Cassidy's take on Art Chicago fronted and Paul Klein has his perspective up at Art Letter. (Again, I haven't read Klein's piece yet myself, but he hasn't had too many kind words to share in the past regarding the organizers of the big fairs.) As for the dailies, I know I saw a Tribune headline heralding Alan G. Artner's score card and I'm sure the Sun-Times has Margaret Hawkins on the beat somewhere in their browser-busting pop-up hell. And, of course, never forget the bloggers: Fresh Paint, Houndstooth, Art or Idiocy?, Folding Chair (if Rowley can offer us anything from the midst of the academic crunch), and JMG Artblog.
But anyways, and all that aside, my round-up of some of the goods that caught my eye under the Art Chicago tent last week...
I'm always an absolute sucker for Laurie Hogin's bestiaries, and both Koplin Del Rio (West Hollywood) and Tory Folliard (Milwaukee) were showing some of her work. Folliard had a suite of five pairs of her small Field Guide bird paintings. Koplin Del Rio boasted two large canvases, one of which, the stunning Law of Unintended Consequences, I feel compelled to declare (though it may, when checked against my Best in Show choice from CC&C, suggest a shocking consistency of taste) the highlight of my night.
Antonio Murado's quartet of contemporized aristocratic portraits at Galeria Metta (Madrid), though not too far off standard post-Richter photo realism, were interesting nonetheless, and Robert Kelly's Thicket series at Linda Durham managed to overcome my general aversion to Santa Fe.
Weinstein Gallery from Minneapolis had a slew of mildly abject photography by Alec Soth.
Highlights from Apex Fine Art (LA) include Anderson and Low's fantastic sepia c-print of London's Battersea Power Station and various images from National Geographic photographer Jodi Cobb (a photo of Lake Thun, Switzerland alongside documentary work from Japan and Armenia).
Halsted Gallery (Bloomfield Hills, MI) had a few of James Balog's digitally collaged photos of some of the "largest, oldest, strongest trees in America," composed so to allow us to see them from an idealized vantage without the distortions of perspective.
In prints and editions, Arion Press featured an edition of Milton's Paradise Lost with a portfolio of thirteen 17 x 22 Iris prints of William Blake's watercolor illustrations from 1807. Shark's Ink (from Colorado's Front Range and whom I always have a soft spot for) featured a couple decent John Buck woodcuts (The Preserve and The Mechanic) as well as tatto artist Don Ed Hardy's fantastic homage to Hokusai, a lithograph called Surf or Die. And John Szoke Editions from NYC offered some nice prints by Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt, as well as several copies of Jeff Koons' porcelain Puppy (complete with custom cardboard box).
Also definitely worth mentioning was a Duane Hanson Custodian at OK Harris (New York), who also had some nice works on paper by Ben Matthews.
Hometown photo dealer Stephen Daiter had a suite of photos from Magnum photographer Martin Parr's The Last Resort documenting the run-down English resort town of New Brighton.
West Looper Carrie Secrist appeared again (they were pulling double-duty between here and CC&C), featuring more Bill Henson. Also putting in an appearance: Todd Hido's atmospheric landsapes and Liliana Porter's clever bric-a-brac still lifes.
River North's Zg, at Art Chicago as part of this year's International Invitational, had work from just about their full stable in tow, including Ben Butler's rule-based tea drawings and pine constructions, a few gouaches by Saya Woolfalk and a couple of Molly Briggs' hot pink flashe and silver paint on panel pieces from her recent solo show. (Butler also showed up with an ink drawing at New York's Plane Space.)
Zg was joined by 6 other spaces in the Invitational, my highlights from which were Lumas Gallery for Editions form Berlin (Julie Christie and Stefanie Schneider), Perugi artecontemporanea from Padua (Alvise Bittente) and Liquid Blue from Miami (Sara Stites and Juan Doe).
International Invitational lowlight: the loud, loud, loud Jack the Pelican Presents hailing from Williamsburg. To be fair, though, they did tone it down a bit for Art Chicago, saving Peter Caine's animatronic Nazi pope and fully-engorged Michael Jackson/dirty Santa with child for their booth at NOVA.
As far as the Stray Show was concerned, I was glad to see TBA abandon the conceit of it as a separate enterprise, ghettoized in the warehouse on Kingsbury, as they instead integrating the Strays into this year's main fair and catalogue (no doubt for lack of space elsewhere, and one could imagine for a surplus of it under the big top). The Stray invitees (and there were a dozen) joined the International Invitational spaces in the southwest corner, but bore no scarlet 'S's or other differentiating marks beyond an indescript dingbat beside each gallery's name on the Art Chicago pocket maps.
Nonetheless, the Stray spaces remained easily identifiable by the unsurprising preponderance of works on paper, hung in push-pin salon format. It's a style I find as familiar as I find it grating (and it's a style Van Harrison will soon be riding off into the Chelsea sunrise), but once I can get past that aversion I can usually find something to like. To wit: Dogmatic's installation of Paul Nudd's "worm drawings" and the rather conspicuously-hung photo of a craftsman carving a wooden penis by John Neff at Western Exhibitions—not to mention Milwaukee's Hotcakes (Jeremiah Ketner and Nate Page), Houston's Rudolph Projects/ArtScan Gallery (a nice Marcel Dzama triptych), Chicago's own Drawing Project and Dallas' Plush.
"Art Chicago 2005 Highlights"
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April 28, 2005
Chicago Contemporary & Classic Highlights
I scrambled down to Navy Pier after work yesterday for opening night at Chicago Contemporary & Classic. Art Chicago and NOVA both hit tonight so, for the time being (and for lack of time), just a brief rundown of some CC&C highlights...
Foley Gallery, a nearly brand new Chelsea photo space, featured several images from Jona Frank's High School series (which appear almost too cinematic to be believed) and a couple of large prints from Bart Michiels' The Course of History (featuring expansive, pastoral landscapes from historic European battle sites). Also quite good were Thomas Allen's pulp tableaux still lifes and Stephen Aldrich's collages of 19th century illustrations.
New York's J. Cacciola had some nice figurative oils from Linda Christensen and Alex Kanevsky. Galerie de Bellefeuille, from Montréal, had several large canvases by John MacDonald that I was less enthusiastic about, but which I grew to like after a bit of time with them.
Also from Canada, Michael Gibson Gallery offered a few nice works by Shari Hatt, including an integrated wall-grouping of her dog portraits and four large photographs of what I can only assume to be (after a look at Hatt's collections listing) constumes from Liberace's personal collection. Also of note at Gibson: Dominique Rey.
Among local galleries at CC&C, Carrie Secrist was by far the most impressive. Best of all were photos (by now rather familiar) from Bill Henson and paintings by Matthew Brown (who it looks is also being featured in Secrist's current gallery show).
Miami's Carol Jazzar had a number of large and bright photo-based acrylic-tape-on-canvas works by Brad Kuhl and Monique Leyton that, though incredibly gimmicky, did register an impressively executed illusionism.
As is often the case at art fairs (particularly those focusing on Modern work and earlier), prints new and old were plentiful: A Leonora Carrington silkscreen titled Bird Bath caught my eye at The Gallery of Surrealism, Worthington Gallery had several great Käthe Kollwitz prints, and Jason Jacques featured heliogravures of Gustav Klimt (including The Kiss, Judith I and Water Serpents I and II) and collotype gravures of a few poses by Egon Schiele.
Better yet were a Lucien Freud dog etching at Browse & Darby and a Vija Celmins ocean lithograph at Nikola Rukaj (Rukaj also had some Josef Albers screen prints, but these were more miss than hit)
Other spaces of interest... StART from London (George Forsyth's Mandy), Galerie Egelund from Copenhagen (Marianne Lipschitz Jørgensen and Anders W. Ø. Larsen), lorch+seidel galerie from Berlin (Marta Klonowska), Galerie Lélia Mordoch from Paris (Imamura), Mixographica from LA (Donald Sultan) and Chiaroscuro from Santa Fe and Scottsdale (Tasha Ostrander's Deer Portrait I and one uncannily purple painting by David Hirschi).
Highlight of the CC&C project spaces: Michelle Brody's installation of papyrus plants growing in vertically-suspended plastic tubes.
Biggest guilty pleasure of the evening: 19th century painting at Julian Beck.
Best in show (a personal, idiosyncratic pick at best, a tedious pun at worst): an 18th century British dog portrait (described here*) hung at Finch & Co. (who also feature a few of the other more unexpected pieces in the fair, including a small Russian icon of Christ on the cross).
*Update: well, that Google cache disappeared awfully quick. Here's what the Sunday Business Post had to say about Finch & Co. back on April 10:
Extraordinary art finds at Finch & Co
An interesting sporting picture appears in he catalogue of London dealer Finch & Co, purveyor of all things extraordinary. It is a mid-18th century English oil portrait of a pointer dog, whose collar is inscribed Thynne Worthy ± Chilton Candover 1749.
The pointer is a breed of gun dog rained to find and "point'" at game so he gun can take aim and shoot. Chilton Candover is a Hampshire village, probably that depicted in the painting. Acquired from the estate of an Irish amily, the painting has a price tag of tgŁ42,000.
Anybody seeking something with disinct pizzazz should sign up to Finch & Co's mailing list. This year's stock ncludes a table made from the ear of an African elephant, bound at the edges with he skin of a boa constrictor (stgŁ3,750), and a mid-19th century, highly ornate burr oak and vine wood table in the cottage orne style, similar to the furniture designed by John Nash for the Swiss Cottage at Cahir (stgŁ3,250).
There is also a relic from the Boer War, a chair of a style ripe for the global potlight, called South African Cape Dutch. Made from stinkwood with a rawhide thong, it would have been created mid-19th century by a joiner who probably doubled as a wagon maker in he days of the Great Trek. It has a small brass plaque reading "Taken from a armhouse near Ermelo SA 1901. By John Disney 1st Essex Regt'".
Other unique items include a Roman solid gold and carved cornelian intaglio ring from the 1st century AD (stgŁ1,750), a pair of 19th century Canadian Mukluks, and the perfect gift for your personal trainer, a pair of 17th century (Ming dynasty) ivory massage balls (stgŁ750). Finch & Co, 0044-207-4139937, www.finch-and-co.co.uk.
"Chicago Contemporary & Classic Highlights"
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April 25, 2005
This Here Plate is Full
The coming days should prove unusually busy at Iconoduel HQ, provided I can muster the blogging wherewithal to churn out the fresh content the week deserves.
First, of course, there happen to be a few art fairs opening up this week, here and there. (What? You hadn't heard?) In fact, the party's already been kicked off with the Version>05 opening this past Friday at the Heaven, buddY and Highschool Compound in Wicker Park. Version runs through May Day, with projects, programs, parties and provocations throughout the city. Information is to be found here and, I'm sure, all over this joint.
I'm not sure how many Version events, if any, I'll be making it to myself. With so much else on offer everywhere, my generalized lack of patience with performance and time-based media would certainly be put to the test, but I do kind of regret missing this performance piece (though I work 8-hour Saturdays anyways). Considering this past weekend's weather, however, it may well be better in reproduction than it was in person.
The Version exhibition, dubbed the Version>05 Kunsthalle, runs from April 29–May 1 at the Zhou Brothers' complex in Bridgeport, the future home of the Zhous' international art academy and exhibition hall (affiliated, I gather, with the International Summer Academy the brothers teach at in Salzburg).
Among the more traditional participants in this approaching art fair storm, Chicago Contemporary & Classic marches out of the gates first with a VIP/press reception Wednesday evening out on the pier. Then Thursday evening, early, it's opening night at Art Chicago's new digs in Grant Park. Later Thursday, NOVA takes partiers into the wee hours on West Washington. All three fairs open to the public on Friday. The 2005 Navy Pier Walk sculpture exhibition, juried by Peter Schjeldahl and slated for an official opening date of May 6, should also be fully installed by Friday for a preview party that evening. And things should be hitting a fever pitch that night in the West Loop, as virtually every gallery out there appears to be coordinating their show openings this time around.
Stay tuned as I try to maintain the level of energy required to both attend to the various happenings around town and keep you apprised of the goings on. And, though I don't want to speak for others, be sure check in with the other Chicago art bloggers for more coverage (although, for his part, Erik Wenzel says he may opt for sleep instead). On top of whatever they and I put out there, it looks like we even have at least one out-of-towner coming for to cover the doings, as well.
As if all this weren't enough, I've agreed to take up guest-blogging duties along side the incomperable but elusive MK Miguel MS JL of Modern Kicks fame over at Kriston's place for the week (while that site's author submits himself to the rigors of scientific study). So look for a bit of content there as well. (Hopefully I can get a post up before JL manages to turn Grammar.police into all Nemerov, all the time.)
To cap it all off, I popped my clutch apparently straight-up broke the clutch pedal off* in a turn lane this afternoon while driving 6 blocks to pick up lunch and, at this very moment, am splitting my time between writing this post and figuring out how to scam an educational discount on some software for my brother. And none of this is to mention the feline urinary blockage that made itself known in mildly unpleasant ways this morning (which veterinary emergency, thankfully, I didn't have to deal with myself)...
*Update 4/27/05: Bear witness to the otherworldly wrath of the left foot of Dan.
"This Here Plate is Full"
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March 23, 2005
Working Up a Head of Steam
Two and a half weeks ago found me dragging my tanned and peeling ass back to sunny Chicago for what has turned into a minor stint of internet hibernation.
I suppose that, now that every ounce of melanin in me has withered and died, it's about time to shake off the tropical sand. As if by way of help in this regard, the first day of spring, in the wake of a week of snow and rain, brought with it a pair of swollen tonsils alongside a fascinating array of other ear, nose and throat ailments. Yet, even as I sit here swabbing my nostrils and hacking up all sorts of surprising crud, I soldier on... on account of I care so damned much.
In any case, where else to begin but with a belated art fair update (in a post I'd meant to write a week and a half ago)?
With the fairs less than a month and a half off (signaled as it were by a recent post-Armory press release from Art Chicago), it's time to check in again with all the latest developments.
So... into the home stretch...
The Park vs the Pier: the Participants RevealedFor starters, and jumping in where we left off, both Chicago Contemporary & Classic and Art Chicago have finally posted exhibitor lists. While both lists are continually updating, as of Sunday CC&C boasted 58 exhibitors hailing from 31 different cities, eleven countries and three continents (plus the Netherlands Antilles). Eight of these outfits are from Chicago, including antiques dealer Rita Bucheit. Of the seven local art galleries CC&C has lined up, only four—Carrie Secrist, Aldo Castillo, Belloc Lowndes and Marx-Saunders—are devoted primarily or exclusively to contemporary work (with Belloc Lowndes focused on British work, Castillo on Latin American and Marx-Saunders devoted strictly to contemporary glass).
Art Chicago lists 85 exhibitors, including 20 local galleries. Of these, 13 focus primarily or exclusively on contemporary art: Roy Boyd, Lisa Boyle, Bucket Rider, Catherine Edelman, gescheidle, Van Harrison, Marx-Saunders, Ann Nathan, Perimeter, Carrie Secrist, Linda Warren, Western Exhibitions and Zg. On the whole, Art Chicago exhibitors represent 39 cities from ten countries on four continents.
You might notice from just these lists some galleries pulling double duty. In fact, by my count there are ten galleries participating in both fairs, including four of the seven local galleries signed up with CC&C. Robert Henry Adams, Marx-Saunders, Richard Norton, Carrie Secrist, Jerald Melberg, Pan American, Praxis, Russeck Gallery, Galeria Trinta and Walker Fine Art will all split their business between the park and the pier.
In CC&C antiques news (if anyone cares at all)... in her February 18 Chicago Reader column Deanna Isaacs reports the departure of auction czar Leslie Hindman (formerly of AntiquesChicago at Navy Pier) from the pier show fold following their last-minute change of dates, the new dates conflicting with a major west coast antiques show (LA?). For whatever it's worth, CC&C also goes up against the Chicago Antiques Fair at the Merchandise Mart.
The Stray Show is Reborn Lakeside
In her column Isaacs also makes note of the genesis of the NOVA Young Art Fair (and, if I'm not mistaken—though there's a very real possibility that I am—her short blurb comprises the only real press coverage of NOVA to date) and then almost offhandedly mentions that "Thomas Blackman will move the Stray Show of emerging galleries, previously held on Kingsbury, to his Art Chicago tent."
The Stray Show may have never been officially dead but the last we heard anything about it we had TBA's Heather Hubbs (who has since moved on to greener pastures with NADA) seeming to suggest its ultimate demise. Or maybe not... but that's how this Chicago reader read it at the time. As of right now, the Stray Show lives on as the Stray Section at Art Chicago, and participants are currently being selected on an invitational basis.
Stray booths will be more expensive this year than in the past, but participants should now enjoy the benefits of visibility alongside the main fair by virtue of both proximate location and inclusion in the Art Chicago catalogue. How much of a benefit this will offer ultimately depends on how the main fair fares (that's the big question, isn't it?), but the Stray Show, which is from what I'm told considerably cheaper than NOVA, still looks to offer the best deal in town dollar-wise.
For their part, CC&C has buddied up with NOVA for purposes of cross-promotion and shared marketing and ticket sales. NOVA gets to piggyback on CC&C's bonanza of national advertising and CC&C apparently gets to slap their cattle brand on the West Loop, dubbing it the "after-party destination for Chicago Contemporary & Classic." (TBA was also approached by NOVA organizers looking for some sort of similar sponsorship arrangement, but they never bit.)
While the Stray Show finds some sweet real estate in Grant Park, NOVA seems to be banking on working up a party pitch in the West Loop gallery district. Director Michael Workman's vision for the fair has it being a "community-based art event" and, indeed, the NOVA project looks to overtake the neighborhood.
In what appears to be nothing short of a classic pincers movement, NOVA will flank the district with its commercial fair on Fulton at the north and an "artist friendly" space to the south, where Bridge has leased a 5,000 square foot space above the auto shop across Washington from Kavi Gupta's building. Slated for a fall opening, this space—christened the NOVA (Network of Visual Art) Center—is to eventually offer exhibition and performance spaces as well as room for up to four galleries and at least ten artists' studios. During the NOVA fair, however, the space will serve as site for exhibits from individual artists and non-profits. (The Hyde Park Art Center is apparently already lined up with an installation by Rael Salley.)
Lord help us if they ever get a foothold on Morgan.
... and the Commie Peaceniks Get Down on the South Side
Finally, as far as the "genre-bashing" "community-based art event" business goes, NOVA will find a bit of competition in Version>05, a 10 day art summit for the neo-Situationist set culminating on May Day (which, as it should happen, falls right in the middle of the big art fair weekend).
In the midst of its distributed, hybrid festival, Version will feature an art fair/trade show of its own down in Bridgeport:
The Version NFO ART EXPO is a trade show for experimental artists, info agitators and organizers of cultural interference. Alternative spaces are hubs for encouraging little utopias. Art and cultural places will act as laboratories for collaboration and explorations of emerging cultures. Version>05 will be hosting an NFO ART EXPO and space summit. We extend an invitation to members of artist run spaces, alternative institutions, cultural and social spaces, open universities, and individual artists and activists to present their work and mission within a booth or table at the version expo. A space summit will be organized to share stories, strategies and methods of survival and connectivity. The NFO ART EXPO will take place in a factory within the oldest manufacturing district of Chicago in a neighborhood called Bridgeport. Booth spaces are 15 x 15 feet. NFO tables are 3" x 6".
No word as to how much it will cost artists, spaces and collectives at the NFO EXPO to rage against "the roaring bullshit carnival that has become reality," but it's nice to know someone's on top of it.
"Working Up a Head of Steam"
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February 8, 2005
NOVA is Go
Michael Workman and the folks at Bridge Magazine have unveiled plans for a new indie art fair to be held concurrently with this year's two mainline fairs over this spring's art fair weekend.
The NOVA Young Art Fair, April 28-May 1, will find its home in the West Loop amongst the semis and forklifts on Fulton Market.
Offered forth as a relatively more affordable alternative to the bigger fairs ($2,500 for a 120 sq ft booth versus $10,500 for 288 and $8,800 for 240 with Art Chicago and Chicago Contemporary & Classic respectively), NOVA is also looking to stake out an ideological stance of sorts as a part of its "not-for-profit mission":
The NOVA Young Art Fair staff and committee will screen applications with an eye to work that seeks alternatives to our entertainment-driven culture. Similar to the New-York based New Art Dealers Alliance, NOVA will be an example of what not-for-profit and for-profit organizations can accomplish as partners rather than competitors, and NOVA planners intend for the selected exhibitors to reflect this philosophy. Programming at the NOVA Young Art Fair will reflect this genre-bashing approach to art exhibition. A portion of the exhibition space has been demarcated for performance and will include week-long showcases of performance art, live music, film screenings and more. A reading area will also be available for weary patrons to sit, relax and sample copies of art magazines and titles from art publishers while sipping coffee.
The selection committee is to include Charlotte Bonham-Carter, Stacie Johnson, Jason Lazarus, Krista Peel, Max Presneill, Sabrina Raaf and Melissa Schubeck.
[Hat tip: Caryn]
"NOVA is Go"
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January 29, 2005
Who Wants In?
Art Chicago's stated deadline for exhibitor applications (December 1) passed by right in the midst of the Great Miami Maelstrom, and the drop-dead date for withdrawl without penalty is February 1. The competing Chicago Contemporary & Classic fair has no apparent application deadline, though the penalty for withdrawl already rose from 30% to 50% back on January 16 (full penalty on or after March 15).
So this seems as good of a time as any to see where some local galleries stand, what with lines being drawn in the sand and all.
A quick canvass of 18 River North and West Loop spaces yielded all of three who said they plan on participating in Art Chicago 2005 in Grant Park. Zero avowed plans to exhibit on the Pier with CC&C.
Of the 15 remaining, one said it will "probably" and two said they will "possibly" do Art Chicago, while nine don't plan to participate in either fair and three were unsure of their plans altogether (whether the assistants I spoke with simply didn't know or said the gallery wanted to "wait and see").
Ten of these galleries exhibited in Art Chicago 2004 and twelve were involved in 2003. (By my count, there were all told 28 Chicago-area galleries and dealers represented in 2004—not counting Wendy Cooper, who has since relocated here from Madison—out of around 150 exhibitors total.)
Though perhaps suggestive of a general tenor, this is an admittedly incomplete accounting. There were five or six other galleries that I wanted to ask (including a couple heavy hitters) but, for various reasons, was unable to. I did not inquire with Thomas McCormick, but have since noticed an image of theirs in rotation on CC&C's exhibitors page, suggesting that they, at least, have been lined up to show at the Pier. That makes one, anyways. (McCormick exhibited at Art Chicago in both 2003 and 2004.)
In spite of any trivial edge that could be granted to TBA and Art Chicago from all this, only one person I spoke with expressed any great enthusiasm about their participation in the fair. Otherwise the prevailing tone is, quite understandably, that of rampant uncertainty. These galleries are not necessarily art fair-averse—a number had recently returned from fairs in Florida (variously Art Basel Miami Beach, -scopeMiami, NADA, Frisbee and Palm Beach 3) and several are gearing up for others elsewhere (ArtLA, the Armory Show, -scopeNewYork, Art Basel, etc). There seemed to be more or less a general sense of agreement, though, that a number of things need to be "sorted out" before they're going to be willing to pony up $10,000+ for a booth on the home front.
Thomas Blackman was hurting out in San Francisco earlier this month, in part due to questions about the state of affairs in Chicago. And CC&C's sister fair, Art Miami, has had plenty of troubles of its own, living in the shadow of the Basel juggernaut. The hesitance in evidence among local galleries seems to suggest, anecdotally at least, similar issues around here.
CC&C says they anticipate featuring around 140 modern and contemporary galleries (in addition to their coverage of antiques and decorative arts), expecting this to account for half to two-thirds of Festival Hall's 170,000 square feet. For their part, TBA has their own 125,000-square foot tent to fill.
If they can't convince the locals, though, who can they convince?
"Who Wants In?"
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January 17, 2005
Maybe it's the unwieldy acronym
Preparing its last-ditch revamp here at home, it seems Thomas Blackman Associates continues to suffer out on the west coast as well. This past Saturday the San Francisco Chronicle tackled the lack of fanfare surrounding this year's 7th San Francisco International Art Exposition (i.e., SFIAE7):
Expectations have deflated over the years since the fair's impressive beginning in 1998. By 2003, no one could disguise the fact that San Francisco's "International" art fair had devolved to a mostly regional affair.
SFIAE7 will have trouble making even that claim, as this year several of the city's most prominent galleries have passed on participating: Rena Bransten, Haines, Fraenkel, Steven Wirtz, Patricia Sweetow. The fair's international component has dwindled to three contributions from South Korea, one from Europe and one from Canada.
...
The advance wave of publicity for SFIAE7 was so faint that rumors of its 11th-hour cancellation began to circulate. Organizer Thomas Blackman put it down to a badly timed change of publicists and no local backup.
Some exhibitors also hesitated to commit, doubting that the fair would go forward, Blackman complained, because of news stories in mid-2004 noting the recent decline in quality and business of Art Chicago.
...
The devolution of the Chicago fair threw people on the art scene there into a tizzy of self-doubt. Everyone had grown accustomed to seeing the event as corroboration of Chicago's status as a serious art town.
San Francisco should not make the same mistake, no matter how disheartening locals may find SFIAE7. The Bay Area's identity and viability as a regional art center have never depended on any single perennial event and never will.
"Maybe it's the unwieldy acronym"
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January 7, 2005
Pfingsten Demands Satisfaction
Surrounded as we are by forbidding mountains of snow, our attention was naturally prepared to turn to Miami this morning, where Art Miami 2005 kicks off today. Franklin appears, shall we say, less than enthused.
But first, there's a bit of a shakeup in the local art fair wars, as reported in this morning's Sun-Times...
If you'll recall, Thomas Blackman Associates recently announced dates for Art Chicago 2005. It will not be in the summer as they had previously hoped (to avoid competing with the spring auction season, it was said) but rather the spring, a mere week before the competing Chicago Contemporary & Classic fair (brought to us by Pfingsten Publishing, the producers of Art Miami, CC&C will be taking over Art Chicago's old slot at Navy Pier). As if it weren't already enough to have the two fairs on consecutive weekends, the CC&C folks announced yesterday that they're now moving their fair up a week and so will compete directly with TBA.
No chance now, I guess, of gallerists participating in both (if that were cost-feasible before). I'd imagine collectors, too, may have their loyalties split. Pfingsten's forced their hand and we've got us a duel (though not yet the raging three-way we'd been promised).
Rob Spademan, marketing director of CC&C's parent company, Pfingsten Publishing, said the date change was intended to take the show out of conflict with the spring art auctions in New York, making it easier for more exhibitors and collectors to attend the Chicago fair.
Last year, CC&C director Ilana Vardy told the Sun-Times she was content with the Mother's Day Weekend dates because they were Chicago's traditional time slot for an art fair. "But once we got out there selling the concept, this was a bigger issue than we thought it was," Spademan said Thursday. "So we had to adapt."
CC&C also announced that the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, known as McPier, had guaranteed it the more favorable time slot for the next seven years.
That was hard news to swallow for Art Chicago owner Thomas Blackman, who said he had unsuccessfully requested alternate dates at Navy Pier for the past several years. When Art Chicago vacated its longtime home at the pier's Festival Hall last year, Blackman said it was McPier's inflexibility on scheduling that was the primary cause. (McPier later sued Blackman for $375,000 in unpaid rent and fees; the lawsuit was settled in November.)
The Tribune (who, given a three-day lead time for stories in Tempo, long ago relegated overnight arts news to minimal newswire-style reports in Metro), has the following:
"Hosting our fair the week prior will significantly increase our ability to better serve both the galleries and the collectors," said Ilana Vardi, director of the exposition.
That week was the one announced in November for Art Chicago, which will be moving to Grant Park's Butler Field. The change in dates forces prospective participants to choose one fair or the other, as they cannot practically exhibit in both. Concurrent expositions recall the situation that took place in Chicago in 1993 when three fairs battled for dominance, with Art Chicago emerging the winner.
Whether any of this actually matters (and why) is a question we may ponder later. For now take a gander at former gallerist Paul Klein's take from the wake of Art Basel Miami Beach last month. The man pulls few punches:
The success of the Basel / Miami Fair is completely attributable to the remarkable competence of the organizers, and the failure of Art Chicago likewise lies solely in the hands of those who put it on. Art Chicago has suffered from a thorough lack of vision and bad manners.
Many are prone to laud Miami and blame Chicago for the fairs' relative success or lack thereof, but that's not really the truth. It is however safe to say that the Miami extravaganza is easily 4 times larger than Art Chicago in a city less than one quarter the size—so of course it’s going to have a greater impact there.
This is not to say that Chicago blew it, or that we can't have a kick ass fair here. But it damn sure says that none of the existing players are sufficiently competent to pull off a good Chicago show. There are certainly many collectors who want to come back to Chicago, but I'm not sure this country's increasing population of philistines will support 3 fairs (the 2nd being the Armory show in New York).
Next May, at least in theory, we will have two, mediocre at best, "art" fairs. Thomas Blackman Associates is no longer welcome at Navy Pier, for good reasons, and he says he will be putting a show on in tents, but I don't know a single one of his former exhibitors who wants to leap his burnt bridge. And Ilana Vardy's Pfingsten Publishing Group, which does have Navy Pier's endorsement for next May, has a history of a financially viable (for the organizers) show that is neither cutting edge nor innovative, just lucratively bland.
Here, look at the numbers. Approximately 150 galleries with take 4 booths, each at $5000 per booth, yielding the organizers Three Million Dollars. Even if they charge as much as $20 to enter, which they never have, and get 30,000 attendees, which they won't, the attendance figures only generate $600,000.
In other words, as Chicago's two organizers go forward into vaporland they really don't care about the quality art that brings in quality visitors; they care about the number of exhibitors. Hey, they may succeed economically, but we're going to be screwed.
My hope is that both shows cancel, admit defeat and slink away. They don't care if they are an embarrassment. Heck, the Old Town Art Fair will probably be better—at least they care. I would prefer a void.
With a void we have a need and maybe we will be lucky enough that the Basel group steps up and does a real show. Or Mark Lyman, but the Basel group has already raised the bar so high that only they, I think, could do a successful show here, because only they can draw the right exhibitors.
I’m not holding my breath.
Chicago has so much more substance than Miami. Our collectors don't need to collect 8000 works of art to compensate for anything. And we support our institutions. And if you don't agree, let me buy you lunch at Millennium Park and then we'll head over to the Art Institute for additional discussion.
[*Update: CC&C gets snubbed in Artnet's list of fairs and biennials, covering the first half of 2005 [via NEWSgrist], though they do have one of those rotating box ads at the right. Oddly enough, TBA has one of these too—for their River North exhibition space that hasn't existed since they abandoned their Huron Street offices back in July.]
"Pfingsten Demands Satisfaction"
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December 6, 2004
A Chicago Art Digest
I've been spending far more time than is probably healthy following newspaper arts coverage lately. Reasons for this will become apparent at a later date. For the time being, a backlog of stories in the world of Chicago art and culture...
Kings of the mountain at the Circle CampusSince Paschke's death, the Sun-Times' Kevin Nance has put some calls out towards a short list of local artists poised to take over Ed's mantle as local art dean. UIC makes a strong showing:
Paschke's death leaves Richard Hunt, his contemporary, as the dean of Chicago artists in terms of age and status. But the city is not without its contingent of rising stars who seem poised to fill at least part of the vacuum created by Paschke's passing. A dozen calls to local art-scene observers yield a short list of four names, most of them men in their 40s, who are well on their way toward building national and international reputations as well as solid records as teachers, mentors and advocates of the arts in the city.
They are Kerry James Marshall and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, both winners of the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and professors at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dan Peterman, a conceptual artist who recently joined them on the UIC faculty and had a solo show, "Plastic Economies," this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Dawoud Bey, a photographer who teaches at Columbia College and has had significant shows at institutions such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
While it may not be as sexy as towing scofflaws or as Big Shoulder-rugged as hauling asphalt, Chicago's Public Art Program is doing its best to get in on the city scandal bonanza.
On November 26, the Trib reported on a possible settlement in the latest iteration of attorney Scott Hodes' lawsuit against the program. The first go 'round began some 5 years ago:
Chicago artists have long called the program unnecessarily—even illegally—secretive about the way it sets prices for commissions, and how it chooses artists.
A corporate attorney who represents artists, often on a pro bono basis, Hodes long has complained in letters to city officials and newspaper editors about the way the program was managed. In 1999, he filed a lawsuit to end its secret deliberations and ensure fair play for the estimated 17,000 applicants registered to be considered for the program's dozen-or-so annual commissions.
In 2001, Hodes, in effect, won: Officials pledged to honor state open meetings and public records laws if he would drop his suit, and so he did.
A new era of transparency? That would run too much against Chicago's cronyist grain. The latest suit was prompted in part by the process (ahem, lack thereof) that put Public Art dollars into three commissions for Gallery 37 that same year.
These three commissions were anything but routine, because the building at 66 E. Randolph is of special interest to two of Chicago's most powerful and beloved women—First Lady Daley and Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg.
...
A series of intricate, interlocking relationships put Daley and Weisberg on both sides—donor and recipient—of the Public Art funds that flow through 66 E. Randolph.
In 1992, Maggie Daley established The Arts Matter, a private charity to raise money for the Gallery 37 teen artists' wages. Arts Matter receives money from private donors, but it also gets funds from Chicago's general city budget, channeled through Weisberg's Department of Cultural Affairs.
Daley chairs both the Arts Matter charity and the city-run Gallery 37 Committee. As commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Weisberg controls the funding for the Gallery 37 program she and Daley co-founded.
City records don't show that either woman played a direct role in the 66 E. Randolph commissions, and neither would comment for this article.
With the comparatively hefty $159,600 purse, the normally modest city program saw 66 E. Randolph as a chance to swing for the fences and go after "artists we could not have been able to get before," one city memo says. Gallery 37's then-director, Michelle Boone, drew up a list of eight nationally noted artists—including painters Ed Paschke and Kerry James Marshall, quiltmaker Faith Ringgold and photographer Michelle Keim—intending to award $50,000 each to three of them. Five of the eight artists originally considered were Chicago-based.
But, for reasons that remain unclear, there was a change of plan. Rather than go for artists with national reputations, city officials instead turned to others with ties to the Gallery 37 program. The available records don't show what discussion, if any, led to those choices.
...
Christopher Furman is known for interactive, kinetic sculptures installed in Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital and Purdue University in Indiana. Furman said he got a call from the Public Art Program asking him to produce a work for 66 E. Randolph, for which he was eventually paid $42,600. "I was flattered—at the same time I was kind of surprised," he said.
Furman had not submitted slides of his work to the Public Art Program registry to be considered for a commission, but he had been a Gallery 37 teacher, and had helped assemble artwork for then-director Michael Lash, an artist himself.
Called before a program advisory panel headed by Lash, Furman was prepared to present several proposals. "It didn't seem like much of a competition. It was like, `we're going to use you,'" he said.
...
Carpenter/cabinet-maker Jeffrey Goldstein had slides in the Public Arts registry. But he had taken a 15-year sabbatical from gallery submissions and showings, so his application contained slides of paintings that had not been exhibited. He bolstered those with photos of a sailboat he had constructed.
...
The lead artist creating "Dance Frieze" was Phil Schuster, who has taught at Gallery 37. According to a February 2001 memo, city officials initially intended to list him as a member of the seven-person Project Advisory Panel that would select artists for 66 E. Randolph.
Of course, it's well known that critics of the city's favoritism are really only out for one thing: to embarass Little Dick Daley. Reforms are mere window dressing for all the haters.
City officials call Hodes' charges of impropriety in those commissions "preposterous." But they acknowledge that, over the years, his litigation has prompted broad, tangible reforms. The program now keeps detailed minutes, submits annual financial reports and posts advance notice of meetings to the public.
"The city has ceased the practice of quote-unquote secret balloting, so that issue is moot," city attorney Andrew Worseck told the judge in an August court hearing.
But as Hodes kept winning, city officials privately expressed exasperation that he wouldn't stop suing, and said he seemed out to embarrass the mayor or wrangle a seat on the program's 17-member Public Art Committee.
So it is with some ruffled feathers that the two sides reach the brink of settlement.
Hodes and program director Greg Knight have agreed to meet on Monday to discuss resolving the litigation. City officials won't comment on the talks, but Hodes and a city official who spoke off-the-record said the key outstanding issue was creating a way for the city to publicize upcoming projects and invite proposals from artists.
Hodes, for his part, is optimistic:
"What they did was wrong," Hodes said. But in the wake of his lawsuit, he adds, "I tend to think they won't try it again."
Ha. I'd say forget it, Scott. It's Chitown.
Charged with developing a couple of new three-year funding initiatives in the arts, new Chicago Community Trust senior arts program officer Kassie Davis polled local arts organizations about their needs. 250 groups were asked to participate in the online survey. 131 responded. Charles Storch reported the results a week ago in the Trib.
But the survey results did hold some surprises for her, including that grants for more artistic works or artists were a relative low priority.
"The needs seem to be on the organizational side rather than on the artistic side," she said.
Another surprise was the age of some organizations. Respondents were divided into four groups, based on their budgets: very small, up to $250,000; small, $250,000-$999,999; midsize, $1 million to $4,999,999; and large, $5 million or more.
The results showed that 27 percent of the very small groups had been scraping by for 11 to 20 years and 21 percent for longer than 20 years. Were these Peter Pans that wouldn't grow up?
"A lot of organizations do grow over time," Davis said. "But there is something holding these back, or they have chosen not to grow."
She noted that the smallest groups might be able to afford only one or two salaried staff members, relying largely on volunteers. She said if more research suggests lack of paid staff is a big barrier to growth, then support for more salaried positions might prove a worthy initiative.
Something that struck me as noteworthy:
Question: What artistic or cultural disipline best describes the primary work of your organization?
Theater: 26
Arts education: 20
Dance company: 17
Museum/botanic garden/zoo: 15
Music: 13
Community arts/music schools: 8
Presenter: 7
Arts service: 6
Media arts: 4
Literature: 3
Visual arts: 3
Other: 4
No response: 5
Of course, many notable visual arts orgs are probably subsumed under "Museum/botanic garden/zoo" (take your pick).
As long as we're discussing Lois Weisberg and arts funding, perhaps you've heard about the Department of Cultural Affairs' latest creative fundraising scheme: The Great Chicago Fire Sale, a suite of eBay auctions featuring "one-of-a-kind items, services and experiences that are unique to Chicago" and benefiting Gallery 37, the Art Grants Program and the Chicago Cultural Center.
The first auctions opened last Thursday and most will remain up through the 9th, when a second set of goods will go up on the block. So far, a dinner for 10 with Bill Kurtis (plus a life documentary of the winner, done up A&E-style) leads the pack price-wise at $6,100 (with 20 bids). The marquee item, a vintage 1960s Playboy Bunny costume donated by Hef & Co, has yet to garner a single bid (opening bid: $6,000). Likewise a dinner for 6 with the Zhou Brothers (opening bid: $2,000).
In more traditional auction news, the Field Museum raked in millions at Sotheby's last week in a controversial deaccessioning of a collection of Western art that includes 31 George Catlin portraits.
In an auction that involved daylong drama and suspense, Chicago's Field Museum sold a collection of 19th Century Western art for $17.4million Thursday to an anonymous bidder and pledged to use the money to expand its holdings of contemporary anthropological artifacts.
In what may possibly be a bit of good news, the Field's Jonathan Haas suggests that the lone, anonymous buyer may have been another institution. Then again, maybe not:
Former trustee Edward Hirschland, who said he resigned in protest of the sale, was not necessarily enthused at news that the paintings were sold in a single lot. "They could have been bought by a broker who intends to sell them individually," he said.
Finally, on the art fair beat, we find Chicago Contemporary & Classic director Ilana Vardy quoted in a recent PR wirelette at Art & Antiques:
CHICAGO—You might add a fourth "C," for "complete," to the name of Chicago Contemporary & Classic—the forthcoming international art fair (May 6–9) at Chicago's Navy Pier. For the first time, the newly renamed show expands past its modern and contemporary roots to include decorative arts, furniture and antiques. "Galleries told us they are not as interested in a straightforward contemporary art fair; they are looking for something more radical," says director Ilana Vardy.
"A Chicago Art Digest"
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November 16, 2004
Art Chicago Lives: or Location, location, location
This art fair business is officially getting interesting again.
Having settled a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against them by McPier, Thomas Blackman Associates has announced a date and location for Art Chicago 2005. The future of the Stray Show remains in doubt.
If you'll recall, Blackman's renewed fair will be held under a 125,000-square-foot tent (as it had been in its formative years). They've now found a place to pitch it, and I've gotta say I like the location: Grant Park's Butler Field, just east of the Art Institute and kitty-corner with Millennium Park.
Prime.
Recall also that TBA had hoped to move the fair to mid-summer so as to avoid running against the spring auction season out east and various shows abroad. Butler Field, however, was unavailable then and so the coming installment will again be held in the spring, April 29–May 2—a mere week before Pfingsten Publishing's competing Chicago Contemporary & Classic fair that is taking over Art Chicago's old spot at Navy Pier, May 6–9.
SOFA ran its stint at the pier earlier this month, so I'd imagine it's only a matter of time before we learn whether or not Mark Lyman and his crew will now follow through with their plans for a third fair, bringing us the red-hot, Leone-style showdown we've been promised. Might I suggest the weekend of May 13–16?
The big question regarding Art Chicago is whether moving it off of the pier will be enough to revive what has become a struggling enterprise as of late. Blackman is quoted in today's Sun-Times:
"The fair needs to be reinvented from time to time to make it new and exciting, and this is an exceptional opportunity for us to do that again," Blackman said of the new venue, which will be similar to that of Art Chicago's first two years. "People remember the original shows we did in 1993 and '94, and they remember what a great setting it can be."
And yet it seems that there are no drastic changes in the works:
"We're planning on doing the show that people have been most familiar with for years in Chicago," Blackman said.
I'd imagine, though, that this is mostly an attempt to reassure vis a vis Pfingsten's rush towards the second tier.
At any rate... let the jockeying for exhibitors begin.
"Art Chicago Lives: or Location, location, location"
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September 21, 2004
Alan Artner is Making Sense, and other art fair business I've missed
A couple art fair tidbits seem to have floated under my radar recently, but I've caught them all now and so it's time to get us all caught up.
The biggest bit of info I had overlooked: the Stray Show appears to be all but dead...
But, before we begin, a recap on the major players:
A) Thomas Blackman Associates (TBA), producers of Art Chicago and the Stray Show.
B) Pfingsten Publishing, producers of Chicago Contemporary & Classic (CC&C) (which has absorbed AntiquesChicago), as well as Art Miami and Artexpo.
C) a partnership of Expressions of Culture, Inc and dmg world media, producers, respectively, of SOFA and various Palm Beach art and antiques fairs and determined to establish their own (yet unnamed) fine art fair in our fine city.
(You can find a full rundown on the Chicago art fair doings here, here, here and here.)
Let's start things off with the Trib's Alan G. Artner. In a commentary piece a couple weeks back, the G-man pronounced any attempt at bringing a high-end international art fair to Chicago dead on arrival. "A 3rd art fair is not the solution when the phenomenon is dying":
As announced last week, the one promising something new, "Chicago Contemporary & Classic," will be a catch-all, attempting to draw on the audiences for modern and contemporary art, antiques, photography, works on paper and artist-designed furniture, which have been serviced comfortably by smaller fairs in Chicago throughout the year.
The old modern-and-contemporary fair, "Art Chicago," which for most of its history kept out second-tier dealers, can continue to admit them until a taste for work at that level dries up as well. And the remaining competitor, which has not yet a name but long has been content to mine a niche market of decorative sculpture, functional objects and crafts—the parent company organizes "SOFA Chicago"—can expand that sensibility until its effort, too, is just like the others.
This is supposed to revitalize the community?
Of course not. Art fairs are not about that. Despite diverse claims, they're about selling and schmoozing and showing you're a player.
Contrast this for a moment with Victor Cassidy's more positive assessment from the beginning of August.
Jumping to the beginning of this month we recall that Pfingsten has indeed eschewed any pretense of trying to do the Art Basel thing around here. To recap, as reported in the Sun-Times (9/1/04, now offline):
"If somebody were to announce an Art Basel-like show for Chicago, it wouldn't work, because that's such a high sliver of the marketplace that couldn't be pulled off overnight," said Rob Spademan, Pfingsten's marketing director. "Chicago needs to go for the $5,000 to $50,000 price point for collectors."
Flashing back to mid-August and Michael Workman in Newcity, we find that Pfingsten has also foresworn anything resembling the Stray Show:
Pfingsten has no plans to stage anything like Stray, opting instead to focus on building ties with the city's educational system by offering youth tours at the fair. "Stray Show had a lot of validity, it was very similar to Scope (in New York City) and shows put on in Los Angeles and London." says Vardy. "And I thought the Invitational was very good. But we're not going to pretend like we're the fair for everybody. We're very focused in our niche."
And alongside all the other uncertainty regarding TBA, between lawsuits and balance sheets, Workman reports that the future of the Stray Show itself hangs very much in the balance,
hinging on finding a location such as last year's warehouse on Kingsbury to stage it in. "I don't know if we'll do it again this year. Tom was really surprised he got it last year," says [Heather] Hubbs of the Kingsbury space. "Plans were to make it into a parking lot."
For what it's worth, TBA's website still has the announcement of the new site and dates for their big show slated for "the end of July." No word yet, however.
This all leaves us with TBA squarely in, as Workman puts it, "survival mode," the Stray Show (or anything like it) looking increasingly unlikely to materialize, and an admittedly second-tier niche show at the Pier offered up as a field trip destination.
Recall again that Mark Lyman of Expressions of Culture, Inc., whose company produces SOFA (a decorative and functional niche show which, it should be noted, now probably finds itself in competition with CC&C), insists that the opportunity remains for a top-tier fair in Chicago, but no solid plans have emerged from their camp as of yet, and Artner doesn't seem so sure. Indeed, Alan appears bearish on American art fairs in general:
Popular culture cannot be avoided. It comes to recipients regardless of their level of curiosity or effort. The fine arts, which traditionally have delved deeper, involve more. But American culture demands instant gratification. Art fairs, which provide a terrible environment for viewing and understanding, long have benefited from this quick-hit sensibility. Now, however, they have lost out to a society that even at the highest reaches spends an overwhelming amount of money on entertainment and knows or cares about little else.
A prediction: The fair emerging the commercial winner from next year's competition will be the one that panders to such taste most shamelessly. Museums and galleries have been doing it for some time with periodic attacks of conscience; art fairs are the places that will suffer them no more.
It's time to acknowledge that Chicago was the North American test case for big international contemporary art fairs with highbrow pretensions, and that phenomenon—which was fading long before the 25-year mark—is now as dead here as the fashion for monocles and plus-fours.
(I'm curious where that leaves Art Basel Miami Beach and the Armory Show.)
Workman writes of "the need for an art fair that connects the city culturally and artistically with the rest of the world," saying further that it is "essential to Chicago's standing as a world-class city." And this seems in keeping with a tendency to see the fortunes of the Chicago art world rising and falling on the back of our art expo (a rising tide and whatnot) or at the very least using it as a gauge by which to measure the scene's health. But is it really reasonable to do so?
I remain curious to see what sort of legitimate effect any big time international art fair (or biennial, for that matter) ever has on a local art scene. Surely there have been some investigations into this somewhere. I'm less skeptical than, err, curious.
But the question remains: does this debacle really warrant pessimism regarding Chicago art on the whole? For one possible response we again turn to Artner who insisted at the outset of the fall gallery season that, in spite of the art fair death throes and the loss of the Terra, the Chicago art scene is a picture of relative health. "The View from Our Critic: The art scene is thriving":
A short memory is a wonderful thing. It allows people to pronounce on the present without recalling what things were like in the past.
The pronouncement going around for months is that the art scene in Chicago in poor health. This is based, first, on the decline of Art Chicago, the art fair that for 25 years has taken place each spring at Navy Pier, and, second, on the wearying possibility that as many as three competing fairs will take place in 2005.
Well, guess what? Those are commercial considerations affecting only the people who trade in modern and contemporary art. The art scene is defined by all that one can see rather than buy, and that makes for a bigger picture—much bigger, and therefore healthier, than it was when was a college student riding the elevated train down from Evanston to look at art in Chicago.
This weekend is the kickoff of the fall art season, and more than 50 galleries will open exhibitions. That's about 20 more than the entire complement of local galleries in 1970, and the total scene now holds six times as many galleries. Of course, opinions differ on the quality of what the places show. Opinions always differ. But there can be no differing on this: Today, Chicago has 180 galleries where once there were only 30.
All of them—even the ones that ignore the hours they've posted—manage to keep their doors open, which means they're being sustained. How is not our concern. Whatever the business, all proprietors think they do too little. The point is, they do enough to keep going, some for quite a while: The Contemporary Art Workshop has been open since 1949. And since galleries charge no admission fee, we are the beneficiaries.
...
It's not New York, but all our hospitals do not make the Mayo Clinic either. Still, anybody who lived in Chicago for decades before dealers started calling themselves gallerists cannot help but notice the scene's expansion. It has become now what people in the 1970s were scarcely able to envision. And no matter what anyone thinks of it, that is a healthy fact.
"Alan Artner is Making Sense, and other art fair business I've missed"
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September 1, 2004
A Discouraging Art Fair Digest
Hmmm... Can't say I like the sound of this from today's Trib:
The new producer of Navy Pier's May international art fair said Tuesday it will expand the show beyond modern and contemporary works to include furniture, decorative arts and antiques.
The show, to be called Chicago Contemporary & Classic and run May 6-9, will absorb the AntiquesChicago show that has run concurrently with the art fair for the last two years in a different part of the pier. Chicago auctioneer Leslie Hindman, a co-producer of the antiques show, will work with the fair's new director, Ilana Vardy of Pfingsten Publishing LLC.
Not encouraging, Pfingsten. But should we have expected any more from the International Art and Framing Group? I suppose not.
Vardy assures us that the gallerists aren't worried:
"The contemporary galleries are excited," she said. "They understand that people's collections are very broad, that some people who collect antiques also collect modern art."
Sure sounds like spin to me.
Mark Lyman, head of the partnership that lost out in their bid on the fair, is understandably pissed:
The authority chose Pfingsten to stage the show over a group led by Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc. Expressions President Mark Lyman said Tuesday he was "shocked" that Pfingsten's plans are so different from what the authority had proposed.
"We were told very clearly that the pier was looking for a modern and contemporary fair of the highest order," he said.
Thomas Blackman could not be reached for comment.
"It's completely different from anything that's being done in America right now," [Hindman] said. "We'll have antique and modern furniture, rugs, carpets, tribal art, 18th and 19th century paintings and prints, and modern and contemporary art—all under one roof. I've felt for a long time that something really exciting and new needs to happen, and this is it."
Another factor in the move was a decision by Pfingsten Publishing, the Ohio-based firm that will own and operate CC&C, not to attempt the Chicago equivalent of very high-end art fairs such as Art Basel, acknowledged as the world leader in the field.
"If somebody were to announce an Art Basel-like show for Chicago, it wouldn't work, because that's such a high sliver of the marketplace that couldn't be pulled off overnight," said Rob Spademan, Pfingsten's marketing director. "Chicago needs to go for the $5,000 to $50,000 price point for collectors."
Mark Lyman of Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc.—whose competing bid to produce an art fair in the same time slot at Navy Pier was rejected—disagrees, adding that he is still in discussions with partners for a Chicago show that would aspire to the very top echelon of art fairs.
"They were probably realizing that they were going to have difficulty filling up the hall with the top-level fine-art dealers, so they're taking a more generalist, lower-level approach to this," Lyman said. "I think this makes it very clear that there's a strong opportunity in Chicago for a top-level art fair that would span contemporary and later modern art."
More to come I'm sure. And we wait with bated breath.
"A Discouraging Art Fair Digest"
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August 11, 2004
Art Fairs a Go-Go
Here's Victor Cassidy's take on the art fair debacle over at artnet—doing his best to foster some positive expectations:
... Based in Seven Hills, Ohio [ed: Pfingsten Publishing's parent org, Pfingsten Partners, LLC, is actually based in north-suburban Deerfield, IL], Pfingsten publishes Art Business News, Framing Business News, Décor, Art Expressions and other trade magazines. Pfingsten owns Art Miami, which is directed by Ilana Vardy, who worked for some years as Thomas Blackman's assistant. Vardy’s presence in management suggests that Pfingsten’s Chicago expo will have high standards. [ed: I suppose contrasted against what we might otherwise expect from the publishers of the aforementioned trades]
Another art-fair producer also has its eye on Chicago. Mark Lyman, director of SOFA Chicago, the Midwest version of the chain of Sculptural Objects and Functional Art expositions, is partnering with DMG World Media, a British firm, to produce what he claims will be "a very important and top-rated art show for the Chicago market." Lyman has made a success of SOFA and kept standards high, so if he can find a venue and get his show off the ground, it is sure to be worth attending.
It is sad to see Thomas Blackman in trouble. Personally very popular, he has done a great deal for the local art community. But if he does go down, as seems quite possible at this point, Chicago will have at least one—and possibly two—strong art expositions next year.
I think the personal regard for Blackman and his support for young local art bears emphasizing. After all, with the fate of Art Chicago in question, that of the Stray Show also hangs in the balance. While I've found my Stray Show experiences somewhat dispiriting, I think the opportunity it presents to emerging venues and talent is a necessary counterpoint to the Main Event. Should Art Chicago founder, as Cassidy points out, we'll still have two other contenders vying for the blue-chip crown. Do we have similar assurances for the Stray constituency? At least one fan expresses concern.
Back in 2002, posting to the Other Group detailing positive strides in the Chicago art scene, Cassidy offered the following points of encouragement contra the perennial pessimists:
f.. Art Expo (born 1983) has done a tremendous amount to project Chicago, its art, and its artists onto the international consciousness. It got international dealers to come here and brought journalists from everywhere. If nothing else, Chicago is the place everyone goes in May.
g.. Now we have Tom Blackman running Expo and isn't he the guy who has a space downtown where young artists show? And isn't he the guy who gave lights, booths, cash, and organizational backing to the Stray Show in December? John Wilson, who ran Expo before Blackman, would never have done those things! He did not care about young artists and was too busy fighting with everyone in sight. Please do not take Blackman for granted-cherish him!
h.. Be grateful for Paul Klein who has shows in his gallery of unknown local artists. He just put on a Chicago and Vicinity show in December and it was excellent. Is there another dealer in town who does this? I can't think of one...
Well, we've already lost Klein.
No matter. Onwards: for some history on Art Chicago circa 1999, let's turn to this article from the Albuquerque Tribune:
Talk to gallery directors and you'll find that most have been coming to Chicago art fairs for a long time, some for the last 10 or 15 years.
Over that time, Chicago has seen three fairs; in one year—1993—all competed for attention over the same handful of weekends.
Since then, two have been squeezed out: Art Chicago International, created in 1990 by Los Angeles organizer David Lester; and Chicago International Art Exposition, founded by John Wilson's Lakeside Group in 1979.
That left Art Chicago, started in 1993 by Thomas Blackman, a Chicago native who worked for Wilson for more than a decade.
Blackman has relied on a rotating jury of 16 or more gallery owners, who are also required to be in the fair, to pick dealers for Art Chicago. Their choices are based on the quality of the work dealers represent as well as seemingly unimportant details like the proposed layout of the booth. Of the more than 400 applications submitted this year, a lean group of 214 emerged—some familiar faces, some newcomers.
Although Art Chicago has embraced galleries with blue-chip artists like Warhol, Picasso or Diebenkorn, it also has emphasized more challenging work by contemporary artists like Matthew Barney, Kara Walker or Carrie Mae Weems.
Walk the aisles and you'll see a lot of work that you probably don't understand and may not, in fact, like but is nonetheless exploring the newest boundaries of a medium.
And that, organizer Blackman has said, has been Art Chicago's trump card.
"Market makers, some look at us as a barometer," Blackman says. "Some look at us as a capitalist tool. One thing we never pretend is to be a museum. . . .
"On the other hand, we can do something no art museum in the world can do, to bring together 20,000-plus artists at one time from 24 countries," he says. "Here you really get a chance to see in the most unadulterated way what is going on in the contemporary art market."
I'd also love a peek at Art Miami assistant Director Lisa Witherite's thesis, The History and Dynamics of Art Chicago, from SAIC's Arts Administration Program. From the abstract:
The fair is a critical event in the Chicago arts community; the environment it creates is centered around the works on display which represent young, emerging artists in the company of contemporary masters. It is a vehicle for the development of art, culture, and commerce in the city of Chicago, and the educational values it displays under the charismatic leadership of Thomas Blackman are vital to the understanding and promoting of contemporary art.
The results gathered from the surveys of approximately 30 Chicago gallery owners and arts administrators will provide insight into the importance and influence of Art Chicago. The Chicago galleries surveyed are representative of the diverse cross-section of exhibitors selected to participate in Art Chicago. Their contributions are crucial to understanding the importance of the fair to its exhibitors.
This study seeks to explore how Blackman's Art Chicago became the leading contemporary art fair in Chicago, especially focusing on the charismatic leadership of its founder. Blackman was the executive director of the Chicago International Art Expo, produced by John Wilson, President of The Lakeside Group. Because of his experience with CIAE, Blackman became a familiar and important figure in the Chicago arts community.
This study will also investigate the elements that have made the city of Chicago ripe for the success of Art Chicago. Surprising to many, the fair's success is completely dependent on the promotion and funding of TBA. Although the fair provides Chicago with cultural recognition, tourism, and revenue, there is a lack of support for the fair by the city. This thesis examines some of the reasons for this, and some of the implications.
"Art Fairs a Go-Go"
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August 7, 2004
Three Fairs for Chicago
Pfingsten Publishing, which earlier this year acquired Art Miami (which has been struggling in the face of Art Basel Miami Beach) and Artexpo, has accepted the reigns of another struggling fair in Navy Pier's annual exhibition.
Pfingsten Publishing will replace Thomas Blackman Associates, which had produced its Art Chicago at the pier every May for more than a decade. Blackman and McPier severed ties in June, and Thomas Blackman, head of the Chicago firm, said it planned to stage a Chicago show in a tent next July.
Earlier this year, Pfingsten, an art magazine publisher, acquired the Art Miami and Artexpo New York fairs.
Ilana Vardy, the director of Art Miami, is expected to run the fair here. Vardy is a former director of Art Chicago as well as of the Chicago International Art Exposition. She had continued to live in Chicago until moving to the Miami area in July.
As previously mentioned, according to Crain's Chicago Business' reporting, Blackman may in fact have been sent packing by McPier over back rent.
At any rate, Chicago is well on its way to hosting a pair of annual art fairs, provided TBA finds a place to pitch their Art Chicago tent—and maybe more. The new wrinkle: dejected at being out-bid on the Navy Pier deal, a partnership of Expressions of Culture, Inc and DMG World Media says they'll be looking into venues for their own Chicago fair.
Pfingsten beat out a group led by Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc., producer of SOFA, the international exhibitions of sculpture objects and functional art held at Navy Pier and in New York. Expressions President Mark Lyman said his firm had teamed with DMG World Media, a London-based international exhibition and magazine company (owned by the firm that publishes London's Daily Mail newspaper).
"I am completely baffled by it," Lyman said of the choice of Pfingsten, which he called "a company new to the business."
He said he was told Pfingsten "offered a more lucrative financial deal."
...
Lyman said his firm and DMG haven't given up on producing an arts exposition here.
"My group will get together to see what other opportunities there are in Chicago for a fine arts fair in a venue other than Navy Pier," Lyman said.
And then there were three, though they may yet come to their senses.
Stay tuned.
** Update: More in today's Trib: in June McPier filed a breach-of-contract complaint against TBA over the aforementioned back rent, seemingly doing what they can to stop Blackman's fair in its tracks.
Blackman said on June 11 he was moving because Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the municipal agency that manages the pier, could not accommodate his need to hold the international fair in the summer, when it wouldn't conflict with major auctions in New York.
But Billy Weinberg, a spokesman for McPier, as the agency is known, said Friday that Blackman was notified soon after the last fair "that we were releasing him from his agreement [for subsequent fairs]. Based on his chronic failure to pay, we had chosen to sever business ties with him."
On June 17, McPier filed a breach-of-contract complaint in Cook County Circuit Court against Blackman and his Chicago firm.
The complaint alleges Thomas Blackman Associates owes $373,314 under its 2004 rental agreement for the pier's Festival Hall and has ignored payment demands. It also claims Blackman entered into the pact in April with a $103,500 check that later bounced.
The complaint seeks to prevent his firm from selling or leasing trade equipment, fixtures and other property used as security for the agreement.
Weinberg said the complaint was not retribution against Blackman for moving the fair but reflected McPier's efforts to improve its financial footing.
Reached Tuesday, Blackman said he had not seen the complaint and could not comment on it. Court records indicated he had not been served with it by then. Efforts to reach Blackman on Friday were unsuccessful.
The article also provides better context for the coming (potential) Art Fair Wars:
Vardy and Blackman worked for the former Chicago International Art Exposition, and she ran Art Chicago for Blackman from 1993 to 1999. She then became director of Art Miami, a long-running fair held each January that was acquired recently by Pfingsten Publishing.
Pfingsten could face competition here from Blackman and a group led by Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc. and London-based DMG World Media. That group lost out to Pfingsten for the Navy Pier site.
Vardy is a veteran of the Chicago fair wars of the early 1990s—when three expos clawed for advantage—and of those now in South Florida. The field there is more crowded and cutthroat, with rival shows timed close to or simultaneously with one another.
But she said the shows are not all fighting for the same dealers and collectors—unlike the Chicago fairs of a decade ago.
Also of note regarding TBA's woes: when I was tooling around River North during the July 9th Vision 9 openings and receptions, I stopped by TBA to see if they had an exhibit up and, according to the elevator guy as well as the general appearance of the place (a quick peek through the door), they seemed to be in the midst of closing up shop and moving out of their Huron Street offices.
** More in the Sun-Times on the lawsuit and the Art Fair Wars.
From the former:
The lawsuit was filed a week after Blackman made a surprise announcement in June that Art Chicago would be leaving the pier's Festival Hall because MPEA had failed to give him more desirable dates for the fair. Unknown to the public, however, the pier had already severed its decade-long business relationship with him over a series of financial disputes.
...
Blackman declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday because he said he had not seen it. Attempts to serve Blackman with the suit last month were unsuccessful, in part because he has closed his offices on Huron Street and moved them into his warehouse.
From the latter:
And while Art Chicago is widely perceived to have declined significantly in recent years, it still has its ardent supporters.
"A lot of the galleries in Art Chicago are likely to stay with Tom Blackman," said local dealer Rhona Hoffman. "Speaking for myself, I'm not interested in Lyman's art fair or Pfingsten's. I will only do one show in Chicago, and I would throw my hat in with Tom Blackman first."
If contacted by Blackman's competitors, she said, "My answer would be no. That's about as succinct as you can get."
Ultimately, Blackman said, Chicago may prove to be large enough to accommodate two or even three art fairs, especially if certain conditions were met.
"It's a big market, and arguably the second most important art market in terms of museums and collectors," he said. "I think there's room for a lot of shows, and they may try to look at different segments of the art market, because there's plenty of those as well."
Some local art world observers agreed. Joseph Tabet, organizer of Navy Pier Walk, an annual outdoor sculpture exhibit, said competing shows might very well be just what the city needs to shake it out of its current art fair doldrums.
...
Still, the prospect of a trio of competing fairs leaves some on the local art scene feeling that more isn't necessarily better.
"Obviously it's not good to disperse the possible exhibitor pool among three different art fairs," said Natalie van Straaten, executive director of the Chicago Art Dealers Association. "It also will be difficult for the Chicago galleries because I'm sure they would all like there to be one fair. It's very, very important to the Chicago art community that we have a strong art fair that will bring international visitors from around the world as exhibitors and attendees. However that can happen is what needs to happen."
In the end, van Straaten said, 2005 could turn out to be a "transitional" year for Chicago's art scene, "and it may take some experimenting before it all shakes out."
In a "bizarre" way, she added, "I find it encouraging that there are these major companies who feel that Chicago is still a viable place to hold an international art fair. Specifically, the fact that there were two very strong organizers who wanted the May slot at Navy Pier is an indication that Chicago is alive and well as an art market."
"Three Fairs for Chicago"
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June 14, 2004
Art Chicago Back Under the Big Top in '05
For the 2005 installment of Art Chicago, Thomas Blackman will move the annual fair from its previous home at Navy Pier (having been held inside in the Pier's Festival Hall since '95) to a 125,000-square-foot tent at a yet to be determined downtown location, where it plans to return for at least 5 years. It is also slated for mid-July, a couple months later than in the past.
As for the reasons why, according to the Sun-Times it's mostly a matter of timing and logistics:
The change of venue was necessary, Blackman said, because the show needed to move away from its traditional timing in early May, a period when many top collectors and dealers are involved in the recently expanded art-auction season at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, he said, has been unable to provide a different set of dates at the heavily booked Navy Pier and McCormick Place.
"We've been hamstrung by the success of those buildings," said Blackman, who operates Art Chicago through his company, Thomas Blackman Associates. "It just seemed to us that it would be better to try and seek another venue that would be more flexible so that the fair could continue to be strong."
Likewise, from the Trib:
"There were some timing issues we were trying to resolve with the fair for about four years," Blackman said. "Some were with the contemporary art auctions in New York. Major, catalytic changes were necessary, and the Pier was unable to help us. Now we will be able to take advantage of what Chicago has to offer in the summer, as well as conflict less with all the other shows in America and Europe."
Blackman said finances were not a reason for his departure from the Pier -- site of art expositions in Chicago since their beginning 25 years ago. "We owed about $250,000, which had to be paid before the fair this year. We'll know what the outstanding bills for this year are soon, and they'll be paid too. That's not the issue here," Blackman said.
But, judging from Crain's today, it sounds a little more like TBA got booted:
Navy Pier is seeking a new operator to run Art Chicago, a major annual art fair held there, leading the show's manager to move the event elsewhere.
"It's unfortunate that it had to come to this," says Thomas Blackman, who has booked Art Chicago in its current format since 1994.
A spokeswoman for the Chicago Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, known as McPier, says it is soliciting proposals from would-be operators of a new art fair on the pier. The bids are due June 22, and a decision is expected by summer's end. She wouldn't say why McPier no longer wants Mr. Blackman to run the event.
Mr. Blackman said McPier officials cited concerns about back rent and how slowly he repaid it.
The upshot is that Chicago may now be seeing two competing annual fairs where it's struggled to support one—not to mention the Stray Show. (This brings to mind this discussion at Artblog, considering apparently different circumstances in Miami.)
"Art Chicago Back Under the Big Top in '05"
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May 15, 2004
Stray Show Assessment (sort of)
I'd meant to get to some Art Chicago and Stray Show highlights before the shows ended, but I've been slacking a bit on it. (Anyways, I didn't make it out to 1418 N. Kingsbury until Stray closing day last Sunday.) Nevertheless... Real Art Chicago highlights (as opposed to the preview rundown) should be forthcoming, but let's get this started with the Stray Show. (If you haven't yet, do read Caryn Coleman's overview at the Art Weblog.)
For starters (and only a year after the fact) an opening rant about Stray Show 2003 [If you'd like, you can skip this appetizer and head straight for the meat].
As much as some gallerists wish to eschew the "Stray" tag, many of the participants nonetheless seem to enjoy positioning themselves in opposition to the mainstream affair, hyping the show as young, hip and edgy alternative to Art Chicago, something for the outsiders. Frankly such claims to 'underground'-ness would be more compelling were the Stray Show not the step-child of an institutional market behemoth, and, moreover, any claims to 'freshness' might satisfy were the work actually as fresh as the hype is heavy. (But, of course, freshness as a virtue in art, even when achieved, is generally short-lived.)
The plain fact is I didn't see anything at the 2003 Stray Show that I really liked all that much. (While I'm as amused as anyone by it, I found myself quite disappointed when the true highlight of the show proved to be Jimi's jimmy.) My real quarrel, however, was with a more general attitude that was on display. And my negative reaction on this count was quite visceral.
As my memory banks have it (admittedly, my memory has, on occasion, proven an unfair mistress and so my generalizations may be unfair) the show was dominated by the curatorial equivalent of snapshot photography and post-it note conceptualism: an evident push-pin salon aesthetic that wears its casualness as a badge of radicality, but mostly serves to disengage and frustrate.
These were overwhelmingly manic, unfocused and crowded displays that offered, at a glance, all the signifiers of vitality and alterity—haphazard, borderline anti-aesthetic productions that seem to scream, 'we do institutional critique up hardcore.' And in the end, to put it crudely, the theatricality of display foregrounded itself at the expense of art and the artist. Mining the residue of fashionable postmodern thought, these tactics seemed designed to simply try patience and foil attempts to give the artwork the consideration it deserves. And, when the work itself more often than not proves to be of a lazy, throw-away variety that so well matches such a curatorial style, such effort on my part feels ultimately wasted.
It wouldn't have been so bad, I think, if it weren't for the apparent appeals to the notions of authenticity and vitality that always cling to the self-consciously 'underground', the oppositional pose that says, 'we're so much better than all those fetishists down at the Pier'. This is to say, I do not take issue with either such casual or brash approaches to art or display necessarily, but rather with the implicit ideology that promotes such schemes as inherently better, or at least freer, than sedate traditional forms, whether by virtue of some purported critique or pretense of subterfuge, or by dint of a deeper contemporary relevance.
Beyond the specificities of an homage to punk DiY raunch or the aesthetics of ephemera, this is merely the familiar contemporary iconoclasm that trades the fetishization of the well-formed image for the fetishization of display, the fetishization of the whole for that of the fragment (or of the 'moment' or 'gesture'). And, insofar as it offers forth political ambitions, it betrays a classic avant-garde idealism that rarely pans out: if only we could release our art from its frame or from the conventions of traditional display it could be free to wreak its revolutionary havoc all over your bourgeois ass. The diminished remains of '68, I suppose.
The desire behind this, it would seem, is to deny the basic similarity that exists between the Stray Show and Art Chicago. But this is also, as it turns out, to deny the real value of the show: namely, providing a venue for emerging galleries and alternative spaces, and underrepresented artists who might lose out in the marketplace of cash and clout, held in conjunction with, and hopefully benefiting from, the hype surrounding Art Chicago. (Whether this logic pans out, I'm in no position to judge. Still, kudos to Thomas Blackman for continuing to provide the venue. While I certainly don't have access to TBA's books, I'd feel safe assuming that the Stray Show is not the big cash cow of their various productions, either in terms of cash collected at the gate or in terms of exhibition fees. I'd frankly be surprised if they didn't lose a bit on this.) Yes, the artists at the Stray Show are younger, the galleries newer. There's no doubt that many of these represents art's future, if only by virtue of the calculus of age. But to declare it representative of some 'future wave' is to yoke it with far too heavy a burden. Bottom line: it's just another fucking art show, guys. (Of course, if this is the case, why is a totally separate show even necessary?)
Anyways, this all begs the question: where do we stand this year? In many ways, it was more of the same. The busy display of Fresh Up Club's bright kitsch salon, for example, drew me in with high hopes, but I'd be hard pressed to say I liked, let alone remember, anything I saw; I had a similar reaction to General Store. But, generally speaking, it was a rather improved exhibition this go 'round. While the signal-to-noise ratio was often still out of control and a good deal of work was of the rough and ready variety Stray Show 2004 witnessed, at least to my eye, greater variety and depth across the board. And many of last year's Stray offenders, relocated in '04 to the Big Show, also offered up some pretty decent stuff down in Invitational row. Some even had, gasp, horror, framed works on display.
(Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this year's no different from last. Maybe it's just me that changed. But really, how likely is that?)
At any rate, my verdict: though I still had to dig through some noise and fluff, most of the work was reasonably good, some was pretty fantastic (some god-awful), with the real dazzlers (naturally) few and far between. So, without too much further bloviation, a fistful of Stray highlights:
Overheard at Fresh Up Club (Austin)
on the great model protopomo: "Yeah... Duchamp is happenin'"
and how 'bout that Joseph Beuys: "...with all the fat and the felt, he's way out there"
Matthew Suib at Vox Populi (Philly)
It's eyeline match run amok in Matthew Suib's "Cocked", a 10-minute remix of deadly stares, shifty eyes and itchy trigger fingers culled from spaghetti western gunfights. For something as straightforwardly monotonous as this, Suib's video displays a rather sensitive (though limited) development from start to end: the various stages of the showdowns, in all their surprising nuance, are represented by discrete clusters of related shots, both highlighting the sameness of these films as well as illuminating their quiet differences—including, for example, a strikingly subtle series of shots depicting moments where the slightest change in the squint of the actors eyes seems to denote a dramatic shift from a detached alertness to a frightened horror. Again, this is, not surprisingly, a drawn-out and monotonous piece—the only bit of dialogue in the piece is a brief exchange of "Hey"... "Hey"—and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, offers little by way of climax or payoff for all the built up tension (the climax is there, but it remains minimal), but I still found it quite satisfying in the end.
Hideyuki Sawayanagi at Hiromi Yoshii (Tokyo)
To describe Hideyuki Sawayanagi's "Self-contained" is to ruin the surprise that, in part, makes it so wonderful. Nonetheless, a description is all I offer. This is one pristine mirrored object, at first resembling nothing more than a silver Minimalist box. Close inspection reveals a tiny bit of text engraved at its center: "i love me." The moment you get close enough to read this, however, a bright flash bulb fires from behind what turns out to be a 2-way mirror. As you back away, eyes adjusting, you notice an afterimage etched in blue on your retina: "i love me, too."
Czech and Slovak Staged Photography (Brooklyn)
The most cohesive display (though this does not necessarily mean, I hasten to add, the best) was to be found in Anne Arden McDonald's half of a booth split with False Front (Manhattan). This is naturally due to her restricted focus as a dealer/curator of staged and performance-based photography from Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Apparently staged photography in general is a primary interest for McDonald, who found a rather considerable concentration of practitioners of the genre in the former Czechoslovakia. From her website:
Staged photography is born out of boredom or dissatisfaction with the world. The photographer wants to see the world as a place where anything is possible—a place full of more beauty, more meaning, more play, more symbolism. In the face of Communism, these Czech and Slovak artists were escapists and surrealists—dreaming themselves into other realities and making photographic documents of them. Some of them say they are making pataphysical theatre—theatre of the absurd performed for the camera.
Daniel Barrow at ThreeWalls (Chicago)
I have to fess up about cheating a bit on this one. ThreeWalls (not to be confused with Three Walls from San Antonio) was showing some work of their artists-in-residence, including a video of a Daniel Barrow performance (a live animation using overhead transparencies). I inquired specifically about a Barrow piece from their early 2004 Middlemanagement-curated exhibit (their inaugural exhibition?), "We Need to Talk: Uneasy Props and Propositions". The fella manning the booth was kind enough to throw on that very DVD for me, so what follows is more of a belated salute to the highlight from that show.
The video, "Catalog of the Original Trading Cards," is simply a presentation of Barrow's hand-drawn trading cards of the same name, featuring voiceover narration of the text on the cards' versos as well as a fine Casio soundtrack. I find the piece utterly charming. With a clear dandy/queer/kitsch/tragic-outsider theme, the cards feature the likenesses and stories of Dismal Desmond, Scott Thorson, Margaret Keane, Rip Taylor, Wayland Flowers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Liz Renay, Bunny Roger, Kristy McNichol, Little Miss No Name, and Quentin Crisp, and the video is quite fitting. While a tad depressing at points in its brushes with tragedy and death, I'm still not sure what this was doing in a show devoted to "permagoth".
Kim Collmer at Mule (Chicago)
It's hard to know what to make of Kim Collmer's stop-action animations ("Stars of the Lid", "Mercury Moon", "Warm Jets"), and this, I think, is part of their magic. Featuring glittering, undulating sculptural worlds, overwhelmingly blue, these videos evoke vaguely sci-fi spacescapes. They are also somewhat low-fi, but made with a charmingly evident dedication.
Benjamin Moreau at No Fun (Chicago)
Superheroes and comic books are apparently all the rage. My favorite Stray Show inclusion in this motif were Benjamin Moreau's caped, masked self-portrait (I'm assuming) drawings, e.g., "The Invincible Ben Springs into Action."
Ultra-brief
Track House: a VW van filled with suckers; guess the number of suckers, win it all.
Sixspace: Richard Colman's fantastic paintings; (overheard at sixspace: someone asking Caryn why she wasn't posting more often)
Telegraph: Haley Bates' funnel-spoon hybrids—dynamic and dialogic objects.
New Image Art: Rebecca Wescott's loose portrait paintings and Jim Houser's cartoonish, folksy panels.
ZieherSmith: Javier Pinon's spare "Centaur" collages and cowboy-minotaur cage matches in graphite on canvas banners; Marc Dennis' "Jesus Fucking Christ."
Fahrenheit: "from the collection of Peregrine Honig," a pair of dead fawns; quoth the gallerista, wearily anticipating the obvious: "Yes they're real... yes they're dead."
"Stray Show Assessment (sort of)"
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May 8, 2004
Brief Art Chicago Project Space Update
A more or less full accounting of the Art Chicago 2004 project spaces, listed in the order I encountered them.
From right to left (east to west) along back wall:
Mike Lash with gescheidle: fork over $100, pick a ducky, win a painting... should you not care for your prize and would like to switch, word has it that a bribe on the order of $10 should take care of things
Nancy Mladenoff with Wendy Cooper Gallery: photos of painted mushrooms
Anne Wilson with Roy Boyd Gallery: "Errant Behaviors"... video installation, thread and hair animation
Sarah Tse and Michael Chu with Art Beatus
Laurenz Berges with Patricia Sweetow Gallery: color photos of empty, sun-lit interiors of former Soviet military facilites
Kevin Francis Gray with Changing Role-Move Over: sculpture and photography... lipstick-red girl band and then some
Douglas Holst with Tory Folliard Gallery: colorful wall mural, based on pentominoes, features an arrangement utilizing each of the 18 possible forms just once
Paul Amitai with Tory Folliard Gallery: "Working in a Coal Mine"... 2-channel video projection based on Museum of Science and Industry's Coal Mine Tour
Eldon Garnet with Christopher Cutts
Alec Soth with Weinstein Gallery: "Sleeping by the Mississippi"... color photographs
Vadim Katznelson with Roy Boyd Gallery: acrylic paint on squares of mylar
Wim Catrysse with Galerie Kusseneers: "Quartet"... video installation
Jaume Plensa with Richard Gray Gallery: large, glowing fiberglass figure
From back to front (north to south) along west wall:
Markus Wetzel with James Nicholson Gallery
Ester Partegas with Foxy Production: huge trash bag from "Civilization Is Overrated"
Frank Haines with Jack Hanely Gallery: "A Night of Invited Guidance"(?) featuring "The Gyromatic Deluge"... video/sculpture installation, utterly, fantastically brilliant and still so dumb
Danny Yahav-Brown with Mixture: "Self-Sufficient"... installation
Samara Caughey with Golinko Kordansky Gallery
Susan Meiselas with Stephen Daiter Gallery: "Pandora's Box"... BSDM photo set
Brian Finke with Catherine Edelman Gallery: football and cheerleading
Kerry Tribe with Bodybuilder & Sportsman:"Florida"... video installation, footage of Floridian paradise with audio interviews with elderly residents of Floridian nursing and retirement homes
"Brief Art Chicago Project Space Update"
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May 6, 2004
Rough Guide to Art Chicago 2004
Chicago art's annual Navy Pier circle-jerk gets under way tonight with this year's Vernissage/MCA Benefit. I'll be attending the fair with the rest of the plebes tomorrow. It should prove an exhausting day, as I don't think I'll make it to the Stray Show opening tonight and so will hit that tomorrow as well. Here's hoping for a better showing altogether than last year (Caryn of the Art Weblog, posting from the inside, says the Stray "looks like it’s going to be one amazing show," which would indeed mean a world of improvement over '03). My pre-emptive, nearly fail-safe judgment before the fact: the shows will overwhelm all and satisfy few (but that's really just the nature of the beast).
Submitted for your consideration: a brief and ridiculously underinformed preview. Really this is little more than a batch summary judgment almost exclusively based on first impressions of online thumbnails—far from comprehensive, far from fair, and probably laying out my prejudices a bit too baldly. Consider it my walking notes/hit list for tomorrow. [*Update 5/8/04: fair highlights highlighted for improved perusal value]
Come and run the gamut with me:
A word about booth numbers: I believe the exhibition hall will be roughly divided in half, with booths numbered in the 100's to the west and the 200's to the east, and with 4 aisles (designated, from south to north, A-D); chances are you will be entering from the south (I think). For a (nearly) complete listing of exhibitors, see TBA's official list here. Note that, as far as I can tell, TBA's list is itself not quite exhaustive: looking at the Howard House website yesterday [via Carolyn Zick] I noticed that, though they are apparently part of the invitational, they remain officially unlisted. Note also that, though I listed all of the info I could find on this year's Project Spaces (considering a lack of such information on the official site), this list is also, I'm fairly certain, not complete; in the past there have usually been something like 15-20 Project Spaces, I've got only 11 listed.
[*5/8/04 Project Spaces update here]
Paul Amitai with Tory Folliard Gallery
Wim Catrysse with Galerie Kusseneers
Brian Finke with Catherine Edelman Gallery
Douglas Holst with Tory Folliard Gallery
Mike Lash with gescheidle (Gescheidle's got some javascript that prevents me from linking directly to an artist's page, so I'll have to link directly to some images: "At Age 5", "Ostrum")
Vadim Katznelson with Roy Boyd Gallery
Susan Meiselas with Stephen Daiter Gallery
Ester Partegas with Foxy Production, "Civilization Is Overrated"
Alec Soth with Weinstein Gallery
Kerry Tribe with
Bodybuilder & Sportsman, "Florida"
Anne Wilson with Roy Boyd Gallery
Galerie Beckel Odille Boicos (Paris), Booth B245: Vivian Van Blerk, Jennifer Lund, Alain Galet
Black Dragon Society, Booth AB247
Bodybuilder & Sportsman, Booth B240
Boom/Shane Campbell, Booth A244
Bucket Rider, Booth B246: Nicola Kuperus
Changing Role-Move Over (Naples), Booth AB248
Christopher Cutts Gallery (Toronto), Booth C245: Richard Stipl
DCKT Contemporary, Booth AB245
Daniel Hug Gallery, Booth A242
Monique Meloche Gallery, Booth AB240
James Nicholson Gallery, Booth C241
Daniel Reich Gallery, Booth AB241: Hernan Bas, Bjorn Copeland, Christian Holstad, Paul P
Linda Schwartz Gallery, Booth AB244
Sister, Booth A247: Jeremy Blake, Danica Phelps
Bodybuilder & Sportsman, Booth B240
Bucket Rider, Booth B246: Nicola Kuperus
Catherine Edelman Gallery, Booth A121: Elizabeth Ernst, Richard Misrach, Melissa Ann Pinney
Carl Hammer Gallery, Booth B221: 
Henry Darger, Nicholas Miles Kahn & Richard Selesnick, Nicky Hoberman, Joseph Seigenthaler, Vintage Side Show Banners, Eugene von Bruenchenhein
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Booth B210
Alan Koppel Gallery, Booth B121
Monique Meloche Gallery, Booth AB240
Peter Miller Gallery, Booth A236
Perimeter, Booth A125: John Wilde
Byron Roche Gallery, Booth D215: Lisa Erf, Rebecca Shore, Jiwon Son, Ann Wiens
Carrie Secrist Gallery, Booth B229
Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Booth B215
Julie Baker Gallery, Booth A228
Linda Durham Gallery, Booth B141: Phil Binaco, Raphaelle Goethals, Robert Kelly (like 90% of Canyon Road, yet not all that bad)
Greg Kucera Gallery, Booth B235: Mark Calderon, William Kentridge, Kerry James Marshall, Jane Hammond, Ed Ruscha, Kara Walker, Jack Daws
(I point to Jack Daws mostly for the sake of mentioning how similar his "Agreement" (a union jack in the colors of the Irish flag) is to Mark Wallinger's "Oxymoron", featured outside the British Pavillion at the 2001 Venice Biennale—as an American, I think I missed the full force of its (anti)nationalist flavo(u)r at the time and so found it rather daft, but apparently it proved provocative for the Brits, so mission accomplished I guess)
Galerie Kusseneers (Antwerp), Booth A233
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Booth B211: Robert Beck, Jasmin Sian, Melissa McGill, Elena del Rivero
Miller Block Gallery, Booth A227: Laylah Ali, Richard Erlich
Newzones (Calgary), Booth D240: Cathy Daley, Sophie Jodoin, Colleen Philippi
Rocket (London), Booth A237
Galeria Trinta (Santiago, Spain), Booth A111
Stephen Cohen Gallery, Booth A221: Laura Greenfield, Edmund Teske, Weegee
Catherine Edelman Gallery, Booth A121: Elizabeth Ernst, Richard Misrach, Melissa Ann Pinney
Peter Fetterman Gallery, Booth A137: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastiao Salgado, Mario Giacomelli
Halsted Gallery, Booth A149: August Sander
Lee Marks Fine Art, Booth C125: Lucinda Devlin, Mariana Cook
Laurence Miller Gallery, Booth B226: Helen Levitt, Maggie Taylor, Eadweard Muybridge
Yancey Richardson Gallery, Booth B220
Arion Press, Booth A116 (Last year someone at Arion Press seemed to get pissed off at me for having the audacity to suppose that the work they had out was there for viewing, even if I'm not hauling a fat wad of cash. Stop by Booth A116 to waste their time by inquiring about this $5K edition. Arion Press: bear witness to hardcore typographic fetishism at work.)
Paulson Press, Booth A222: Caio Fonseca, Amy Kaufman
Shark's Ink, Booth D140: John Buck, Enrique Chagoya, Red Grooms, Jane Hammond, Don Ed Hardy, Hung Liu
"Rough Guide to Art Chicago 2004"
Posted by Dan at 01:26 PM | Referenced URL's
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April 30, 2004
Ahoy, Hoser
For Artboat 2004 at Art Chicago, a curatorial crew of Middlemanagement, Mixed Pallet and Andrew Rigsby have proffered a bevy of Chicagoans and Canucks, heavy on the new media, heavy on the collaborations. Perhaps heavy on the art cum science vibe? Heavy on the quotidian?
A bit of heavy Googling gives us:
LINT (Rena Leinberger & Ben Butler), Rena Leinberger, Ben Butler,
Allison Hrabluik, Allison Hrabluik, Allison Hrabluik
Kyla Mallett, Kyla Mallett, Kyla Mallett
Duke and Battersby, Duke and Battersby (Real Video), Duke and Battersby (PDF), Duke and Battersby
Paul Woodrow and Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow and Alan Dunning, Alan Dunning
Matt Irie/Dominick Talvacchio, Matt Irie, Matt Irie, Dominick Talvacchio
Lou Mallozzi, Lou Mallozzi, Lou Mallozzi
Fernando Orellana, Fernando Orellana, Fernando Orellana
Michael X. Ryan, Michael X. Ryan
Siebren Versteeg, Siebren Versteeg
A couple other recent shows featuring a few of these all-stars: "Collectible" at NIU (Winter '03), "Perfect: a group exhibition" at Chicago Cultural Center (Winter '04)
I'd initially balked at the thought of shelling out $35 for this boat ride on a day when I would be otherwise overwhelmed by art anyways, but this list has really piqued my interest. I very much liked Versteeg's 12 x 12 exhibit at the MCA (link above), Leinberger's felt manhole covers at Zg a few months ago were surprisingly cool, and I'd really like to see what Woodrow and Dunning have in store, likewise Duke and Battersby. Too bad I have to work Saturday, huh?
If you plan on boarding, however, you'd better hop to it: the presale discount ends May 1st.
"Ahoy, Hoser"
Posted by Dan at 03:14 AM | Referenced URL's
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