”Backtalk,” an exhibition of pieces by five artists who work outside the cultural mainstream, is a complex and rewarding show that does credit to its organizing institution, the Randolph Street Gallery, 756 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Works by David Keating, Celia Munoz, Esther Parada, Gary Simmons and Philip Soo are united by their appropriation and redefinition of mainstream material including cultural signs and stereotypes.
This is certainly not new territory, but for once the artists explore it with a freshness that elevates their work far above the more typical political harangues.
Parada`s project, on efforts of a black women`s group to honor Jean Baptiste Du Sable at the 1933-34 World`s Fair, is especially persuasive in its use of historic photographs, video and texts. The resulting combination might well serve as a model of how to go about creating such multileveled pieces and is an exceptionally successful manipulation of materials so extensive.
Simmons, on the other hand, has created a disarmingly simple installation that evokes both memories of the classroom and the kind of racial slur that once functioned as popular entertainment. In their own quirky way, the artist`s ”blackboards” with smeared chalk drawings make for a piece ultimately as moving as Parada`s.
Munoz`s large installation on a boundary dispute between the United States and Mexico has lost something in being moved from the territory in question, and Soo`s architectural constructions are not as communicative as his series of photographs. But Keating`s photoworks and text again achieve a high level of achievement by leaving almost as much unsaid as do characters in a Henry James novel. (Through Saturday.)
– Javier Perez de Cuellar, former United Nations secretary general, has become chairman of a new World Commission on Culture and Development, a UNESCO initiative expected to start work later this year. The commission, which will cost an estimated $6 million, will hold hearings over the next three years to prepare a report on ”how cultural sensitivities can better be taken into account in the worldwide process of social and economic development.”
– A collaborative installation by students and faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago is the sole representative of the United States in the exhibition ”Life Between Artifact and Nature: Design and the Environmental Challenge” continuing through May 3 in Milan, Italy. The event is the 18th in a series of international exhibitions, with installments every three years.
– The traveling exhibition ”Martin Puryear” has been extended to June 21 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in the artist`s hometown, Washington, D.C.
– ”Arts of the Spring Equinox,” a free demonstration of crafts having to do with the return of the sun to the vernal equinox, will take place at 11 a.m. Friday on the concourse level of the State of Illinois Center, 100 W. Randolph St.
– A program of documentary and experimental films and videotapes about the relationships between mothers and daughters will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday at Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Admission: $4.
– Works by the Midwest Latino Video Collective will be screened at 10 p.m. Friday and April 17 at N.A.M.E. Gallery, 700 N. Carpenter St. The hourlong program also will be cablecast on Chicago Access Channel 19.
– Art historian and critic Craig Adcock will speak on ”Abstraction in Chicago” at 11 a.m. Saturday in Cobb Hall of the University of Chicago, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. The program is the second of four lectures related to the exhibition of Chicago painting at the Renaissance Society through April 26. Series admission: $65; for single admission, call 312-702-8670.
– Animator Ken Boyer will give a free talk on ”The Making of Tiny Toons and Warner Brothers Animation Today” at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Stay Tooned Gallery, 220 S. Cook Rd., Barrington.
– ”Musical Bridges Connecting Images and Ideas: An Afternoon of Music and Art” will be presented at 2 p.m. Sunday in Fullerton Auditorium of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. The Wesleyan Camerata will play a free concert of music by Handel, Bartok and Haydn followed by a tour of the museum`s collection.
– Frederick E. Hoxie, director of the D`Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, will give a free talk on the Western art collection of Edward F. Ayer at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St.
– Curator Beryl Wright will give a free talk on exhibitions of the works of John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Yasumasa Morimura at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 237 E. Ontario St.
