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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