Closer to home, Alison Ruttan's previous body of work was about the chimpanzees at Gombe, in Africa, who divided into 2 groups and waged a civil war against each other, until one group was eliminated. Extrapolating from the notion that if chimpanzees kill one another, it must also be human nature to aggressively go after one another, she has spent the last 2 years creating a ceramic body of work called Natural Disaster. Her sculptures are based on internet-found images of Middle Eastern demolished buildings and bombsites. Strong work at Adds Donna Gallery, opening Sunday afternoon.
To an extent, Marc Dennis' work at Carl Hammer Gallery, is in the same vein, a critique of the pettiness of humans. Good painting, provocative juxtapositions and a salient commentary.
Nicole Beck is a dynamic sculptor whose distinctive new body of work sings with innovation and charisma and is more poorly installed than the paintings I once saw hanging on the posts of a corral. A dozen works are crammed into a 15-foot entrance stairway at the Chicago Artists Coalition. With some pieces 6 feet above your head and numbered with multicolored dots, the cacophony of mistakes ruins the triumphs of these wondrous new pieces. A travesty; if I were the artist I would have bailed.
Matthew Cox's new pieces at Packer Schopf are as distinictive and special as Nicole Beck's, and are elegantly allowed the opportunity to breathe. Don't you wish you'd thought of embroidering medical X-Rays? Okay, maybe because I have a month-old titanium hip the subject's been on my mind. This work is beautiful, fresh and flat-out fun.
Artists must take responsibility for their art and their careers, how and where the art is seen, and under what circumstances. Creativity and innovation are rewarded. Stupidity is punished. Mays Mayhew is an artist who is getting it right, commandeering a pop-up space in the Loop and inverting the formula. Instead of putting the art on the inside facing in, where few of the Loop's thousands see it ,she has put it in the windows and it's seen by all. I commend her for her innovative creativity.
That's it friends. More art is on the horizon. Time to appreciate the weather and get on out.
Thanks very much,
Paul Klein
Paul
Thanks for this article and for the photographs.
Great city. Great Art. Tremendous effort. And we will always make it happen.
Like the new site. Your energy appears boundless. Thanks
Thanks Paul,
I am living in Germany right now doing a year of research, looking at art rather than making it and struck by how much of the work I've seen (and specifically sought out) that addresses our very pressing social and political issues, past and present. Certainly in Germany the history of this kind of work is infinite but I was also just in Spain for the first time and enjoyed a look through their cultural history as well. In July when I return to my studio in Champaign, I'll begin the exciting and daunting task of trying to make sense of it and integrate it into my own work. These letters are a huge help to me as well. Thanks for taking the time to write them.