Hyde Park Art Center: New Works
Hello Folks. I just attended an opening at the Hyde Park Art Center, and if you have not been there, I recommend bookmarking their site for a list of current exhibitions, readings, and performances in Chicago’s art world. The Hyde Park Art Center, a part of Chicago’s art scene for over 60 years, has 5 exhibition spaces that are always changing to highlight a diversity of artwork being made in Chicago. (Photo credit: Darrell Roberts)
In the center’s main gallery is Consuming War, an exhibit showing artist whose work deals with being consumed by war and conflicts. Curated by Barbara Koenen, the show includes artists Lynda Barry, Wafaa Bilal, Mary Brogger, Adam Brooks, Burtonwood & Holmes, Michael Hernandez de Luna, Fred Holland, Harold Mendez, Michael Rakowitz, Ellen Rothenberg, Edra Soto, Paula White and Dolores Wilber.
Mary Bogger has created a large steel Persian rug that floats tentatively on pins, and a raft out of oil drums and a car frame.
Edra Soto Fernandez displays photos of Hollywood actors who have played soldiers and depicting the glamour of Hollywood over actual events.
Harold Mendez paints a large section of the gallery wall black and then layers it with packaging tape to create fences and barriers, referencing corrals and fences from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib.
In the gallery in the hall, Adam Brooks displays pronouncements of war in quotes, similar to signage on the CTA.
AT the end of the hall in Gallery 3, Alice Shaddle has a show of her collage paintings, made up of thousands of tiny fragments of colored paper glued on the canvases. After looking at the abstract pieces, images start to appear as in this piece, titled Faces. Shaddle recently retired from the Hyde Park Art Center after teaching for 50 years.
On the second floor is a show of Theaster Gates’ ceramic works, in which he created dinner plates for a performance that has turned into a major solo installation for the artist.
Finally, on the second floor in Gallery 4 is a show about the self and how an artist deals with “I, you and identity.” Fraser Tayler’s language of an artist becomes more abstract in his installation.
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The reception for Consuming War was very well attended. Is that because we are consumed by the war, or because of the art?
This is a complex exhibition dealing with difficult issues.
I find that some new art has a certain kitchsh element, in my opinion.
I was immediately engaged by the digital portraits of movie soldiers. The movies, of course, can’t help but glamorize war, no matter how authentic they try to be, the stench or bodily functions, blood and fear, the sounds of gunshots, bones crunching, blood vessels bursting, screams, the insect infestations cannot be replicated to the extent that they manifest in real life situations. So the movies can never get it just right.
When I first looked to see who these portraits represented and recognized someone and then someone else, I felt relief that these guys would escape all the horrors of real war.
I love the airplanes, also because of their unreality.
Barbara Koenen did a fabulous job putting importatnt artists into this group endeavor.
In the long run, does an art show such as this have any impact on the real thing? Should it have? Is that even a goal?
I often think about that too, Joyce. What can artists/exhibitions really do to essentially impact the political climate and change the status quo? I definitely think that that should be a goal - actual change, or at least change in perception should be a goal of politically motivated shows. Otherwise they’re pointless, and they are just preaching to the choir. But how to achieve that is so complex, and often not feasible.
It is not always pointless — I beg to differ. Some “preaching to the choir” is actually a form of “cheering on the troops” — here cheering on and encouraging the anti-troops. I have always enjoyed Mary Brogger’s work and am disappointed that I’m not there to see it, especially the carpet.