Cool Hunting
Urban planning throughout Chicago’s history has been used deliberately to form the city’s current composition and character—for better and worse. Entorno: Grass Grows Greener on the Other Side, a show that opens at Polvo, an alternative art space in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, on 28 April 2006, is being mounted as a reexamination of what the city grid has come to mean. Polvo’s founders Miguel Cortez, Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa, and Jesus Macarena-Avila are bringing together urban planners, community activists, scholars, and artists to collaborate on installations, video, photography and traditional sculpture and painting addressing history, current change, and the future. Macarena-Avila and Rodriguez-Ochoa are two artists whose work traverses contemporary, near-academic conceptual practices and the gleeful impulsiveness of street art. Both have dealt with issues of gentrification in their work, but rather than simply discussing displacement of economically disenfranchised people, their work questions where the practicing artist stands in the cityscape where prefabricated housing is replacing architecture.
Entorno: Grass Grows Greener on the Other Side through 20 May 2006
Opening reception: Thursday April 28, 2006, from 6-10pm
Contributed by Kristopher Irizarry
|
previous entry Vice Scandinavia adicolor Contest |
next entry Candle with Matchbox Built In |
Kansas City artist Kacy Maddux, whose headless sketches in the University of Chicago Renaissance Society's "All My Pretty Corpses" exhibition caught a lot of attention in 2005, is to be featured again in the Windy City. This time her fine illustrations are to be featured in a solo exhibition at the Gescheidle gallery in downtown Chicago. These free-hand drawings appear to riff on the...
Celebrating the launch of their newest flagship luxury LS 460 sedan, the Lexus 460 Degrees Gallery opened 20 October 2006 in LA and runs through 3 November 2006. Curators Shamin Momin (of the Whitney) and Sebastian Agneessens helped Lexus commission artists Arne Quinze, Miranda Lichtenstein, and Pascual Sisto to create the "Light and Speed" exhibition. Featuring Quinze's massive arcing installation made from readymade 2x4s,...
Wonder Twins' call to action, "Wonder Twin Powers, Activate" is a group show opening tomorrow, 14 July 2006, at Chicago's Gescheidle gallery. Featuring works that are "aesthetically charged, and reference symmetry and metamorphosis," images range from Erik A. Lang's classically-composed homoerotic photographs to Colleen Asper's neo-icon paintings to the collaged psychedelia of Rob Yamabushi (pictured). Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Opening 14 July 2006, 6-9pm Through...
One of my favorite installations at this year's Scope Miami was "Without You Baby, There Ain't No Us," a special Scope project by Comenius Reothlisberger and Admir Jahic of The Invisible Heroes. Fascinated with the YouTube phenomenon, Comenius and Admir have created a series of drawings on handmade paper which document a variety of videos, from the utterly absurd (a video featuring an animated potato)...
The PULSE Contemporary Art Fair, which was conceived to bridge the gap between larger, more established fairs and experimental counterparts like NADA, had a particularly strong collection of artists on exhibit this year. Kenneth Tin-Kin Hun recently embarked on a series of artwork documenting the presidency of Barack Obama. A vibrant mash-up of political figures and corporate logos, "HOPE he can CHANGE this shit!" (above)...
NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance), the small but relatively well-established fair known for its more raw, youthful energy has really come into its own this year. (Images above by RISD grad Ara Peterson, represented by Ratio 3.) If I had to pick my favorite at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, this would be the one. From the art itself to the fresh-faced exhibitors...

