Absolute Delusions
& Some New Hope
By: Wendy City
Coming once each year, the royal blitzgrieg of The River North, Absolute Visions takes over for a mid month Friday night in July. Outside of just about every single gallery having an opening, there is a special delight for all booze bags out there, martinis. Ah, Martinis, the only spirits for people that truly comes close to drinkable turpentine. Maybe it’s supposed to make one feel closer to the world of art by drinking? I guess what makes it more intriguing to have the vodka maker at the openings would be in how it perpetuates the nice fantasy that some gallery owners may have about prospective clientele. "Maybe, if we can get ‘em plastered enough they won’t know what they’re doing, they’ll be putty in our hands…" Who knows? Now if they had a buffet night, they would really get a crowd, well, most likely just a bunch of bo-ho artists wanting dinner.
What has sort of been an interesting trend to notice at the last number of openings is the drastic scale of pricing from one gallery to the next. For instance, one gallery Phyl, Sass, Gerty and I stopped at, there were pieces there for a hundred grand… OOOkkkay, Let me hit the First National and get back to you. What was truly ironic about it, outside of the prices was that the work was ho-hum "safe" pastiche style painting which was blatently derivitive of Robert Rauschenberg’s early ‘60’s style. If you want to be a true artist of appropriation, do something creative, using your own ideas! Fancy the thought. I have to say that one of the galleries we stopped at did have somewhat interesting outrageously priced works. They seemed to almost be like fancy translucent or transparent Rubic’s cubes each on mini golden globe style stands. Maybe they’re aiming for the rich who feel they need to be ‘awarded’ or at least feel vaguely important. One of the funnier pieces there was this rotating psuedo-Enron sculptures they had in the middle of the gallery. I guess if you’re starting your own corporation and got at least seventy grand or more to blow, this show was for you.
A few of the nicest shows of the evening displayed a growing new view into realism. This one gallery in particular has this wonderful Russian artist who paints these fascinatingly macabre narrative figure-scapes of seemingly grotesque and gritty performers. As far as the art of the figure is concerned, the man is truly adept. I, personally have studied figure painting for a number of years and was rather impressed with his depth of color and emotive textures. We also enjoyed the somewhat larger than life scale of all of his paintings. If they were done in a smaller scale, I don’t think they would’ve held the same gravity of confrontation needed to experience his scenes. The second gallery we came across with an interesting twist to realism had these smaller scale portraits of people done in a rather bizarre perspective. Phyl nicknamed it the ‘Nose-hole show’… since there was a strange repeating use of the view within each portrait. The craftsmanship we all agreed was a highlight to the works even though we were all wondering if the work was teetering alittle too close to the edge of seeming like mini-Chuck Close portraits with Alfred Leslie style satanic lights. An after thought show we wandered into had a simple play on perceptions eluding to highly realistically painted features of trees. The compositions however, were very much surreal and had a slight humor to them in their sense of the bizarre. The only thing that was keeping this show from being spectacular for us was that it was just alittle too much of the same view. We got the idea already, move on… Why don’t you try tropical plants next?
Let me get back to the truly scary shows, which thankfully by then most of us were alittle smashed from the ‘tuni’s.’ This one show in particular really stands out for me in both the utter bizarrity of it being insanely crowded and that the semi-decent work of the other artist was shoved into their teenie weenie basement room. Being that most of the entourage I travel with to these affairs are artists; the first thing everybody thought was where to find a nearby IHOP… Why oh why would this particular artist obsess about creating waffle-relief cubes and rectangles? Outside of, it’s been done a hundred and twelve million times by much better post minimal/conceptual wanna-bes, what makes this art, or "profound?" I’ve seen much better adept constructions at arts and cra(ft)ps fairs. Maybe the artist could have at least worked with color or other shapes? Which leads us into the funny-hoo hoo similar show we wandered into that had these more expressive Donald Judd wanna-be constructions. The array of colors was what Phyl, Sass and Gerty found the most humorous since they seemed to fit the flamboyance of Chicago’s north side. It was like there must have been a huge sale at Sappano’s or Thybony on every crayola color available. I did however, see some interesting potential for the artist to seriously look into his wall constructions as functional book or artifact shelves. This show, as well as the majority of shows held at this gallery ,were into the twilight zone of expensive with everything starting around thirty grand… We probably wouldn’t even have bothered with going into this gallery but usually at the majority of their openings they have kick-butt food and booze. This show was on the cheapy side having only malted chocolate balls and semi-decent vino. After this place, though, we got hungry! From Waffle-reliefs to chocolate balls, we had to stop for a bite.
At this junction, you have to ask yourself, is the scene out there leaving you alittle hungry? Hungry for let’s can the pastiche/conceptual crapola and get back to basics. Let’s stop trying to copy New York’s graffiti-scribble style Abstract Expressionism and let’s look more into ourselves as artists. You went to Art school, why not use the twenty or thirty grand worth of education to do something awe-inspiring, even possibly intellectual!
Wendy City
Next Time, blowing your way:
August, the scene as it ebbs into Fall.
