IN THE SPIRIT OF FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES

With her own special red light-green light twist, Chicago’s Denise Adan will perform as her alter ego, Elisa Purls, and recreate Gonzalez-Torres’ go-go dancer works from the early Nineties.  Also from Chicago, Robert Furman brings an individual vision to Gonzalez-Torres’ paper stacks and candy piles and Paul Fritz explores Gonzalez-Torres’ light strings with his hanging ceramic constructs.

Finally, from Vallhalla, NY, Robert Mutterson II contributes another fascinating and unique perspective to the paper stacks using WWII political propaganda kitsch as the starting point.  

The Wild, Wacky World of the Botero Cuketoos 

For our September 2010 Gallery Show,  Chicago sculptor Robert Furman displayed one of his longest-running and most popular series, The Botero Cuketoos.  From a freak of nature--a small pickling cucumber in his garden that grew incredibly into the shape of a wingless, Botero-plump bird--he’s cast an Oldenburgian “parallel reality” that's sometimes comical, sometimes serious and at all times a surreal mixture of the sacred and the profane and the high and the low, appealing to both the young and the old, the hip and the square, the insider and the outsider and the sophisticate and the uninitiated. These tableau vivants are an enticing cross between a George Segal set piece and a New Yorker magazine cover with a touch of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post work added for good measure.  The Cuketoos adroitly turn the Jeff Koons world of popular art on its head and spin it furiously around like a Dr Seuss concoction for adults. For more information and photos of works appearing in the show, go to robertfurman.com.

                         The 23rd Atmosphere Group Gallery

                     Hosts 2nd Annual YPA Show, August 6-28

In the early nineties, Charles Saatchi launched the careers in London of a group of artists who famously became known as the YBAs, or the “young British artists.” Last year, Chicago held it’s own version of the YBAs—a groundbreaking exhibit featuring the YPAs or the Young Polish Artists.

During August, The 23rd Atmosphere Group Gallery  (1907 S. Halsted) will continue this exciting new series and host the 2nd Annual YPA Show.  Opening night reception is August 6 from 6-10 pm.  Join us also August 13 for the Chicago Art District Second Friday, 6-10 pm.

With the 2010 edition of the YPA show, we’re expanding the horizons to include two exceptional and talented young women from outside Chicago, Antoinette Wysocki from NYC and Karolina Karlic from CA.  They join Chicago’s own Andrea Jablonski and Denise Adan to compose a formidable group of talented young Polish artists. And more may join them soon.

There’s no better city in the USA to introduce these talented young daughters of Poland to the world than Chicago, with the largest population of Polish people outside of Warsaw. We are sure Chicago’s Polish community will open its heart to the YPAs and give them a warm and enthusiastic welcome.

 Unable to join us at the opening reception or the Second Friday?  Just call and we’ll set up an appointment for you or your organization. Make an event of it and combine it with dinner at one of our fine local restaurants—Nightwood is a great choice.

In addition...we are pleased to present a film by Craig Macneill depicting Antoinette Wysocki's process in creating one of her works. It's an absorbing and fascinating behind the scenes look. Craig is an award winning director, screenwriter, and video artist based in New York City. His first film, LATE BLOOMER was an official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and played at over twenty prestigious festivals worldwide, winning the Audience Award for Best Short Film at the Lake Placid Film Festival and "Best Short Film" at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival. More recently, Macneill, along with co-director Alexei Kaleina, completed a feature film tilted THE AFTERLIGHT featuring Michael Kelly and Oscar nominated actor Rip Torn. THE AFTERLIGHT was featured as the headline story in Filmmaker Magazine's quarterly "In Focus" section and had its world premiere at the prestigious 2009 International Rome Film Festival. THE AFTERLIGHT opens theatrically in New York City on September 10th, 2010 at the Quad Cinema. Also in 2009, Macneill, wrote and directed, LOBOS (WOLVES) a short film shot entirely on location in Spain. LOBOS (WOLVES) premiered at the Zagreb Film Festival and the 2010 Palm Spring Shortfest. In 2010 Craig was awarded a Jerome Foundation Grant. For more information on Craig please visit www.northlakefilms.com

                                     Transgressions/Transmutations

the Book Rejiggered

CHICAGO : June 10 thru July 31 2010

Artists have altered and incorporated books into their work for decades—Buzz Spector for example—but it’s only recently that the genre has exploded in popularity. We are pleased, then, to present hometown artist Robert Furman, Lucinda Chapman from Lexington KY, Mathew Hall from Salt Lake City and Robert Mutterson II from Valhalla, NY for this exciting and edifying show. The Gallery is also pleased to display the definitive book on the topic,  "Playing with Books:The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing and Reimagining the Book," by Jason Thompson.

Some see the “rejiggering” of books as a serious transgression of the social contract but these artists contend no viable book was harmed in creating their work. Instead, they afford these books, treated by others as landfill-bound refuse, a transmutation into a long, productive second life. They do no worse, they argue, than the surgeon cutting, sawing and rejiggering a patient to save her life.  

 “Beyond Warhol in the 21st Century: A Post-Pop MetaRomantic Retrofit”

CHICAGO: April 30 thru May 31, 2010

BROOKLYN, NY: June 11 thru June 28 2010

This show featured  four contemporary artists from across the country who interact with the works of Andy Warhol to examine the tensions between Modernism and Pop Art. Rather than the simple, shorehugging reiteration of the pop style and aesthetic of a Jeff Koons, these artists filter Andy Warhol through their own metaromantic prism in a strong, provocative and highly subjective manner. They seek to advance the artist’s personal vision, not to negate it. Exploration, both internal and of the world at large, is their chief goal, whether it is reexamining old truths or retrofitting a synthesis of prior methods, styles and ethea with a new vocabulary.

Mel Smothers, from Brooklyn, NY carries on a painterly dialogue with Warhol in his series “Dear Andy: Postcards from Montauk.”  Warhol once said he wanted “to be a machine” and Pindar Van Arman, a Baltimore, MD artist, accommodates him with his artificially intelligent painting robot named Dahupi. In her “sans electric chair” pieces, Peggy Roberts from Cleveland, OH removes Warhol’s electric chair from his silk-screens and uses the remaining color field as a starting point for her own expressionist work. She also  showed a series of storefront photographs that knowingly reference Warhol’s days as a window display designer. In his Warhol Rag Series, Robert Furman, a Chicago sculptor, explores the interplay between video and sculpture where both relate to a common theme. He adopts some of the style of Warhol but adds his own expressionist substance by delving below the pop icons to detrivialize the subject matter—Marilyn Monroe, for example in Warhol Rag 1.