One of the more curious exhibitions in town presents new works by John Broenen, at Perimeter Gallery, 750 N. Orleans St.
Broenen’s love for found objects and interest in outsider art has led to a sculptural installation and several wall pieces made from such organic materials as apple cores, orange peels and grapefruit skins.
The artist has combined these substances with more orthodox materials-pigment, aluminum, paper-to produce figurative works redolent of Haitian metal cutouts as well as early paintings by Jean Dubuffet.
Broenen sometimes has added small, vaguely surreal figurative paintings of his own, though they are pictorially the weakest elements, bordering on kitsch illustration.
The sheer strangeness of Broenen’s other work is perhaps most apparent in “Apple People,” the installation that fills the largest room in the gallery with tiny suspended figures carved from the cores of apples and coated with a caramel-like glaze that produces an effect at once horrible and funny.
There’s a peculiar sensibility at work here that can’t be ignored. (Through Aug. 30.)
– Malcolm Austin Rogers, deputy director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, will become director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, effective Sept. 1. Rogers, an authority on 16th, 17th and early 18th Century portraits, has had extensive experience in fundraising and museum administration. He will replace Alan Shestack, who in December became deputy director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
– The Terra Museum of American Art, 666 N. Michigan Ave., will be closed from Aug. 1 to Oct. 7 for renovations. All of the galleries, the lecture hall, classrooms and washrooms will be refurbished. The heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems also will be modified. The lobby and bookstore will be open from Aug. 9 to Oct. 7, presenting a free video retrospective of the Terra collections.
– William Rainey Harper College in Palatine has acquired “The Bather,” a concrete sculpture by Pablo Picasso and Carl Nesjar. The work’s donor is William Ylvisaker, former head of the Gould Corp., which in the 1970s commissioned a large version of the sculpture for its former headquarters in Rolling Meadows. The piece now awaiting installation at Harper measures 6 feet high by 1 1/2 feet deep.
– A free talk on “Goya the Printmaker” will be given at 12:15 p.m. Friday in Morton Auditorium of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. It complements “Goya: Truth and Fantasy, The Small Paintings,” the traveling exhibition at the museum through Oct. 16 on its only U.S. showing.
– “At Night in the Grand Court,” a collaborative art installation-event by artist Michael Piazza and the resident youth and staff of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, will be from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Center, 1100 S. Hamilton St. Call 312-996-3337 for more information.
– “Tree of Life by 44 Artists,” a multimedia exhibit on a spiritual metaphor, will open at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the historic Second Presbyterian Church, 1936 S. Michigan Ave. Free.
– Curator Douglas Druick will give a free lecture on “Odilon Redon’s Modernity” at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Fullerton Auditorium of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. Druick co-curated the Redon retrospective exhibition continuing at the museum through Sept. 18.
