The Carl Hammer Gallery’s current show, titled “Fresh Faces,” presents works from four emerging artists. The best are the unstretched canvas paintings of Vinnie Angel, who fashions whimsical tableaux suggestive of carnival banners, except that they isolate images, the colors are more muted and the words and phrases have an off-handed humorous edge; and the small paintings and delicate collages by Elizabeth Shreve, who incorporates images of body parts in lushly colored and thoughtfully arranged compositions such as “Ball of Eyes with Hat.” Shreve’s pink and green “Feeding Time,” of a nude female surrounded by bonbons and cakes, is a whimsical departure. Some of Aimee Beaubien’s collaged photographs — she also is the photographer, and her subject often is her own body parts — reveal a cleverness of technique and composition. She takes the pictures, cuts elements out by hand and glues or tapes them together with archival materials. Many of the images are so sexually explicit that they can distract a viewer from questions of aesthetic value, although whether these works are pornographic is a subjective judgment, the artist says. Henry Ray Clark’s dark colored pen on manila envelope artworks have a morbid surrealness about them, with their air of obsession and repeated motifs. Some may wonder whether his output would be deemed gallery worthy if it had not been made by an untrained inmate in a Texas state penitentiary. The show continues through Aug. 31 at 200 W. Superior St.
Need a quick trip to the country to cool off? The Jan Cicero Gallery has mounted a group show of landscapes titled “Something Cool.” The styles range from Paul Labus’ small and charming Impressionistic acrylics on paper to Ernest Viveiros’ realistic scene of Diversey Harbor, which resembles a large photograph, to James Cook’s “Larkspur 2,” which also has a photographic quality from afar but up close a highly textured oil painted surface. In a small back room, Craig McDaniel’s three paintings consist of one oil and pastel on paper of a stream and two still lifes painted with acrylic on plexi reverse. The show continues at 221 W. Erie St. through Aug. 30.
The theme of this year’s Absolut Vision show is “Then and Now,” and Fassbender gallery is among the few River North galleries that took the theme seriously. It has mounted an exhibit of past and current works by six of its artists, which prove that the strongest artists continue to develop, sometimes altering their subject matter, technique or medium. In most cases, a visual progression can be traced, however. One sees how self-taught Chicagoan Matt Lamb’s ornately impastoed and colorful abstractions, including one from his 1988 “Archangel Series,” have evolved into more sophisticated and appealing paintings. The major forms now are less abstract, though his new demented beings hardly resemble humans. His painting technique remains complex but is no longer frenzied and distracting. His palette still is rich but more unified, helping to hold together his complex compositions. Vera Klement’s three paintings also reveal a continuity. She still divides her large oils into sections, but her subject matter is less romanticized and delicate, when “Woman at the Window” from 1965 is contrasted with “Midnight Birds” from last year. Michiko Itani’s current untitled oil on canvas reveals a far more varied palette, use of texture and new dimensionality than in his “No. 12” from 1980, but the geometric background markings in the earlier work still crop up periodically. The show continues at 309 W. Superior St. through Aug. 23.
