Five years ago, when sculptor Fred Sandback last showed at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery, it was in conjunction with a neighboring exhibition for Sol LeWitt that clarified both artists’ allegiance to the kinds of forms that once were called “primary structures.”
Now, in a larger show at Hoffman, Sandback’s “drawing” with yarn in open spaces requires no association with another artist to come clear. He’s a master whose simple geometric forms enliven spaces far beyond the work’s minimal — sometimes almost invisible — means.
Yet the playfulness that gradually has crept into LeWitt’s work is here as well, particularly in a triangular corner piece that subdivides a single yellow string into the colors of Piet Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie” paintings. It’s a homage that’s almost bouncier than the originals.
The more sober Sandback is present in small painted reliefs made with a table saw. Cuts and the spaces between wood blocks read as lines drawn on the panels, powerfully echoing his large wall drawings as well as high-modern Constructivism.
Here’s work that is modest and assertive at once.
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At 118 N. Peoria St., through April 19. 312-455-1990.
Conor McGrady
Conor McGrady’s oil paintings at NFA Space are portraits not of specific individuals but of a type: the white suprematist skinhead. Each figure is posed, mainly without props, in a way that recalls royal portraiture from centuries past. The idea seems to be to accord the figures pictorially the power that their models actually seek in life.
Does this confuse our attitudes toward the figures? Yes. But then what? When Leon Golub painted mercenaries torturing victims while glancing toward the viewer, an audience stood accused and was forced to recognize its own complicity. McGrady’s canvases are more open-ended. To that extent, they are also more optimistic that viewers will be prompted to wrestle with cloudier issues of power in a culture of abuse.
This viewer finds that in society today painting is no longer able to stimulate that kind of analysis. Moreover, if it did, the analysis would probably be urged through a style that commands by particulars, whereas McGrady favors generalization. The force his pictures have is blunt and instantaneous, which ironically brings them closer to their opposite: paintings conceived in terms of entertainment.
Those who share the artist’s continued belief in a strong social role of painting will see here much to admire. I see McGrady’s drawings — many of which are shown at the Chicago Cultural Center through April 21 — as being more successfully provocative, in part because they’re more modest in aim.
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At 119 N. Peoria St., through Saturday; the artist will discuss his work at 3 p.m. Saturday. 312-491-0236.
`Chameleon Dreams’
“Chameleon Dreams,” at the Julia Friedman Gallery, is a museum-quality survey of six contemporary Japanese artists who use photography to form — or transform — identity. As abstruse as that sounds, the work in all but one instance is as much visual as conceptual.
The exception is Akira the Hustler’s installation of 15 photographs, text and a mirrored disco ball. The artist is a gay male prostitute who here reflects on an atmosphere of caring for his clients. Neither his triptychs assembled from blurry close-ups nor his brief text makes clear how the work — as opposed to his drag-queen persona — engages the theme of the exhibition. The piece is more like pages from a self-consciously poetic visual diary.
Of course, self-consciousness in an exhibition on identity is pretty much the norm. But the remaining artists present their transformations either more subtly (Yuki Kimura’s slide presentation on siblings) or with more evident humor (cross-dressing portraits by Yasumasa Morimura and Yoshiko Kamikura, an over-the-top series on the aging of fashion models by Miwa Yanagi).
The most direct works are extended projects by the youngest artist, Tomoko Sawada. One piece surrounds two of her own gigantic head-and-shoulders images with hundreds of photo-booth pictures of identities she has invented and assumed. The other essay has her posing for 30 portraits used in arranging marriages; viewers then are asked to vote for the woman they would choose.
As does Sawada, the show as a whole deftly treats complex issues.
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At 118 N. Peoria St., through April 27. 312-455-0755.
