![]() Obstructions aside, “Shared Eye” offers a gratifyingly handmade response to two very contemporary conditions: the understanding that everything is defined by its context, and the layering of information as it appears on computer screens, window upon window upon window. First, however, viewers will need to get past the grandiose gallery statement and the artist’s abstruse framing device, wherein the size, number and sequence of her work was determined by a famed piece made in 1976 by the late artist Blinky Palermo. Displayed in a case, they’re as compelling, even more so, than some of the finished works, and suggest how rich a “War Stories” book could be, with some of the blank space between the collages filled in.Īt the Renaissance Society, Sadie Benning hangs a series of 40 mix-and-match panels that is as enlivening to look at as it must have been to make. Complete narratives lie buried in her dense notebooks. King communicates in fragments: word bubbles and floating phrases, repeating patterns and witty graphics. Older stories come out the sharpest, simplified as they are by the passing of time more recent ones tend to the miasmic and overwhelming. King, who was born in Michigan in 1942 and lives part of the year in Hamburg, Germany, has a style that veers between the wry violence of Ida Applebroog and the postmodern anti-war sensibility of Aaron Hughes, depending on the era she’s representing. “War Stories” depicts the tales of those affected by war, from World War I on up to the crisis in Syria, as told by veterans, civilians and refugees to the artist in interviews. Upstairs at the center, a solo exhibition by artist Mary King provides as much sensitivity as it does heartbreak. Patrons Janis Kanter and Tom McCormick went artist Tony Tasset one better when they filmed a mock movie trailer about the 12-foot-tall fiberglass deer he’d made for a meadow at their weekend home. Ani Afshar made “Fantasy Veils” for a pair of nude drawings by Diane Ponder, draping them with delicately stitched layers of tulle. Some commissioners choose to collaborate quite literally: Nuria Montiel’s wallpaper for the Nelsons included borrowing doodles from their kids’ notebooks, turning them into stamps and having the entire family print up rice paper sheets. There’s risk involved here, and mystery, as well as studio visits and a whole lot of sharing. The matchmaking service, begun in 1995 and now in its sixth iteration, is not like buying art in a gallery, where clients find a finished work they like, pay for it and take it home. Artists pocket half the money, with the rest earmarked as a donation to the art center. Subjects are not limited to beloved living creatures but also to other kinds of dear entities: a favorite tree in Lincoln Park, a marriage, an amazing voyage to South Africa, a treasured home, soon to be vacated.Īnyone can sign on to collaborate with an artist and keep the resulting work, and with prices running from a modest $50 to a steep $80,000, not just various tastes but various economies have been accommodated. Who wouldn’t want up-and-comer Jessie Mott to draw a kaleidoscopic portrait of their young children, complete with the kids’ favorite animals? What mother could refuse the willingness of Melissa Ann Pinney, one of the Midwest’s most eminent photographers of youths, to take a picture of her daughter emerging, alone, out of the mystical gray-blue of Lake Michigan? Also on display are Nancy Lu Rosenheim’s fantastical landscape with a beloved brown tabby cat named Captain Merriweather Lewis small grayscale wooden boxes by Joyce Owens representing five generations of women, from the patron’s grandmother on down to her grandchildren Darrell Roberts’ petite, bold take on Eileen Truong’s life, done in thick, swirly blacks, yellows and pinks and Lee Blalock’s black-and-turquoise geometric abstraction, a double portrait generated by measuring her patrons’ heart rates. Portraiture isn’t the theme, but it is an understandable outcome for the program, which pairs up mostly local artists and patrons to produce new commissions. to Matthew Metzger and Nikki Renee Anderson. “Not Just Another Pretty Face” features many attractive visages among the 80 photographs, paintings, ceramics, quilts and prints on view by artists ranging from Lora Fosberg and Cecil McDonald Jr. Interested folks, including those who resolved to see more art in the new year, have a few weeks left to catch “Not Just Another Pretty Face” and “Mary King: War Stories” at the Hyde Park Art Center, plus “Sadie Benning: Shared Eye” at the Renaissance Society. ![]() It’s been 2017 for 12 days already, but since most museums haven’t opened their new exhibitions yet, head to Hyde Park, where a handful of worthy shows that went up in 2016 still haven’t come down.
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