The Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery presents Figurism: Narrative and Fantastic Figurative Art from the Illinois State Museum Collection. Organized by Assistant Curator Doug Stapleton of the Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery, the exhibition brings together historical and contemporary artwork that emphasizes the power and the range of the narrative and expressive figure in Midwest art. It does not try to define a regional figurative tradition but shows how ‘figurism’ has endured and evolved into pluralistic, eclectic, and highly individualized expressions.

Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery
James R. Thompson Center, Chicago
100 W. Randolph 2-100
Chicago, IL 60601


Show dates: January 30–May 25, 2012

Reception: Friday, February 3, from 5-7 PM

Derek Chan will exhibit in "Speak Forward" at the President's Gallery at Harold Washington College, Chicago. Chan will show alongside Daniel G. Baird and Judy Natal from January 16 - March 2, 2012.

A public reception for "Speak Forward" will take place Thursday, January 26 from 4:30 to 7:00 PM.

President's Gallery
Harold Washington College
30 E. Lake Street, room 1105
Chicago, IL
pedestrianproject.org

Megan Greene will participate in "Stylish Breed," a two-person exhibition (with Elaine Bradford) at the Hyde Park Art Center from January 15 - April 7.

Curated by director of exhibitions Allison Peters Quinn, "Stylish Breed" opens this Sunday, January 15 from 3-5 PM. Megan Greene will give a talk at the opening.

Hyde Park Art Center is located 5020 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL.

For more information: http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/stylish-breed

Carolyn Ottmers "Splice" at Elmhurst Art Museum
January 13 - March 10, 2012

Splice, Carolyn Ottmer’s installation of hanging vines and branches cast in stainless steel create a canopy of silver growth in EAM’s Hostetler Gallery. A hybrid of organic form, technical process and the use of specialized material, plant life that thrives in urban environments inspires the sculptures—like veins breaking through cracks in a sidewalk to clamber up inhospitable concrete walls.

Through a mastery of metal casting, Ottmers uses multiples to reflect her interest in the diversity of nature and the industrial production of objects. The construction of Ottmers’ sculpture becomes the intervention of seasonal change by disrupting and freezing organic subjects into immutable objects.

Please join EAM for an artist led talk with Carolyn Ottmers and curator Aaron Ott on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 6:30 pm. This program is free and open to the public.

Elmhurst Art Museum
150 Cottage Hill Avenue
Elmhurst, Illinois 60126
(630) 834-0202

Anne Lindberg will exhibit in the group exhibition "Placemakers" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art opening Friday, January 13 through March 31, 2012.

Lindberg exhibits "drawn pink" (2012) a site-specific thread installation.

"Placemakers" brings together nine artists engaged in interventionist and transformative acts that make places. Working in multiple media – video,photography, installation, sculpture and digital forms – each artist occupies and re-imagines a specific site. The exhibition includes seven commissions of new work and spans 12,000 square feet of the Bemis Center’s first floor and extends beyond the gallery’s interior.

Other participants include Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Isabelle Hayeur, Tim Hyde, Cybele Lyle, Jason Manley, Zach Rockhill, Quynh Vantu, and Letha Wilson.

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
742 S. 12th Street
Omaha, NE
www.bemiscenter.org

The Buffalo Arts Studio in Buffalo, New York will exhibit a solo show of Megan Greene's works opening January 7, 2012. The exhibition will run until March 10.

http://www.buffaloartsstudio.org/

"Chicago artist Chan incorporates Native American symbolism into his new paintings," by Candice Weber, Time Out Chicago, 28 December 2011

When it’s not part of their heritage, artists who bring indigenous or Native American religious symbolism into their work risk patronizing or—at the very least—misunderstanding their inspiration.

Derek Chan avoids this train wreck by being a good listener. In his 2010 book Cries and Whispers from the Salt Song Trail: A Reinterpretive Journey, the Chicago artist chronicles the time he spent with the indigenous peoples of the Four Corners region in the American Southwest. His new meditative paintings also offer sensitive interpretations of that experience. In Glyphs for Protection and Warning: The World on Its Side, Chan places two small kachina dolls so as to reflect their roles as objects of instruction. Reminders of the spirits that infuse all things, living and nonliving, they preside over the brilliant oranges and blues of the painting below them.

This show’s title suggests a Jungian approach to human history as a collective consciousness. Painters’ references to Jungian symbols tend to be heavy-handed, but Chan’s are refreshingly vague. The symbols he paints are open-ended: the moon, an open door, the four cardinal directions.

Three beautiful panel paintings—Origin, Cosmic Weaver (detail pictured) and Gateway—combine these basic mystical symbols with Chan’s distinctive mark making and eye for pattern. Standing before Gateway, the viewer can peer through a six-foot-high rip torn across the evening desert sky, deep into outer (or inner) space. Throughout “All Our Relations,” from the precise ink brushstrokes of Black Smile to the cosmic composition of the spacescape Eclipse, Chan’s skill as a painter is evident.

Link to article: http://tinyurl.com/6mvr4pl

Please note: Carrie Secrist Gallery will be closed from December 24, 2011 to January 2, 2012. We will resume regular hours on Tuesday, January 3.

Derek Chan: All Our Relations will be on view until January 28, 2012.

In the project room, The Living Book Production facility created by Plural and the Center for Book Technology will be on view until January 28, 2012.

Happy New Year!

Anne Lindberg was awarded a 2011 Painters and Sculptors grant by the Joan Mitchell Foundation. For more information about the grant and its recipients, please visit www.joanmitchellfoundation.org.

Carrie Secrist Gallery will present a solo exhibition by Anne Lindberg in September 2012.

Carrie Secrist Gallery, a PULSE Miami 2011 exhibitor, was pleased to be included in the Miami Herald's list of top ten "must see" booths in Miami this year. Our booth included an expansive installation by Angelo Musco titled Xylem (2011) which spanned a 20-foot wall.

http://tinyurl.com/7kpgn6f

Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to exhibit at PULSE Miami 2011 located at The Ice Palace, 1400 North Miami Avenue, Miami, FL. We will be in booth E-401.

Private Preview:

Tuesday, November 29
6PM - 9PM

Public hours:

Thursday, December 1
10AM - 1PM VIP Preview Brunch
1PM - 7PM

Friday, December 2
11AM - 7PM

Saturday, December 3
11AM - 7PM

Sunday, December 4
11AM - 5PM

Derek Chan, along with collaborators Lisa Alvarado and Joshua Abrams, will open Cosmic Workshop at 1637 W. 18th Street in Pilsen on Friday, November 4 at 7 PM.

Cosmic Workshop, an arm of The Happiness Project, will be open to the public November 3-20 on Thursdays through Sundays from 1-6 PM.

Using Aztec and Native American indigenous symbols, the three artists will explore happiness through multiple modes of communication - visual art, music, conversation, story telling, written handouts, and interactive activities. The public is invited to discuss and develop ways of living, acting, and playing that respects the Cosmic-Whole. Finding a balance between work and play, the space is meant to be a zone for exploring ideas, sounds, and words that encourage an open ended exploration of transforming reality through happiness.

The Happiness Project was curated by Tricia Van Eck, Artistic Director of 6018NORTH, a communal green space for experimental culture, installation, performance and sound.

Please follow the link below to read an article featuring Angelo Musco's work in the Daily Mail (UK). The piece includes a video detailing Musco's process as well.

http://tinyurl.com/6gr4nd6

Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce our participation in Art Toronto.

ART TORONTO
October 28 - 31, 2011
METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE
North Building, Exhibit Hall A & B
255 Front Street West

Opening Night Preview:
Thursday October 27, 2011
A Benefit for the Art Gallery of Ontario

Special Collectors' Preview:
October 27, 4:30-6:30pm
Tickets: $300.00

Opening Night Preview:
October 27, 6:30-10pm
Tickets: $200.00

PUBLIC HOURS:
Friday October 28 12 - 8pm
Saturday October 29 12 - 8pm
Sunday October 30 12 - 6pm
Monday October 31 12 - 6pm

Chicago-based arts archivists Sixty Inches from the Center conducted an interview with Andrew Holmquist, the artist occupying our main gallery through October 15. You may read the interview by following this link:

http://sixtyinchesfromcenter.org/archive/?p=10677

Please join Phyllis Bramson for a public lecture at SOFA Chicago on Sunday, November 6, 2011 from 2-3 PM; the talk will be held at Festival Hall on Navy Pier, Chicago, in room 326.

The topic of Bramson's lecture will be Henry Darger’s Bright and Guilty Place.

Artist Phyllis Bramson is inspired and provoked by the “censoring side” of Henry Darger’s images, particularly the feeling that his images might be often misunderstood or misdirected. In the presentation, she will address how her work and Darger’s art intersect in that regard, and the ways Darger’s concocted inner world has influencing her art making.

Presented by Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago

Phyllis Bramson will participate in "Provocateurs", a two person exhibition including Adam Scott (Chicago) at John A. Day Gallery, Warren M. Lee Center for Fine Arts, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota, from November 1-28, 2011. Bramson will give a public lecture on November 1 at the opening reception, 5-7:30 PM.

History’s Shadow
Photographs by David Maisel
Texts by Jonathan Lethem and David Maisel
72 pages, 43 color reproductions, 16" x 12", casebound
Published by Nazraeli Press
Publication Date: Fall 2011
ISBN 978-1-59005-278-4

Themes of memory, excavation, and transformation are given new form in Maisel’s latest work, History’s Shadow. In this series, Maisel re-photographs x-rays from museum archives that depict artifacts from antiquity, scanning and digitally manipulating the selected source material. The book also contains an original short story by Jonathan Lethem.

David Maisel profiled his newest project, "History's Shadow," in the 1 October 2011 issue of the New York Times. You may read his article and view a slideshow of his new works by following this link:

http://tinyurl.com/3jwefco

Event Deck at L.A. Live
1005 West Chick Hearn Court
Downtown Los Angeles, California

Booth # A-9

Friday
September 30
12pm-2pm
Press and VIP Private Preview

Friday - September 30
2pm - 8pm
Saturday - October 1
11am - 7pm
Sunday - October 2
11am - 7pm
Monday - October 3
11am - 5pm

Judith Geichman's work will be included in the exhibition "New Acquisitions" at the Elmhurst Art Museum, on view from September 16-December 30, 2011.

Tehom, a large-scale installation by Angelo Musco, is included in the group exhibition "Feminite 0.1" at Maison Particuliere Art Center, Brussels, Belgium. The show runs from September 15 through December 17, 2011.

A solo exhibition by Liliana Porter titled "Obras recientes" will be on view at Galeria Lucia de la Puente in Lima, Peru from September 14 through October 15, 2011.

Phyllis Bramson was profiled in the fall edition of Chicago Gallery News. You may read the article, "Considering the Chicago Artist," by Kevin Nance by following this link:

http://chicagogallerynews.com/pdfs/NanceArticleSept11.pdf

Gyeongnam Museum of Art, Korea
Curated by Inhee Iris Moon
September 8 - November 27, 20111

Phyllis Bramson has been selected as a Distinguished Artist for 2012.

In 1997, the Union League Club of Chicago established the Distinguished Artists program. The purpose of the program is to honor select Chicago-area artists for their contributions to both the visual arts and the community. In 2002, the Club extended the program to include authors and musicians. Internationally known, the artists who have been inducted into the program choose to make Chicago their home and continue to contribute to the cultural well-being and world-class status of our community. Some previously honored artists include: Dawoud Bey, Kerry James Marshall, Ed Paschke, Barbara Crane, Michiko Itatani, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, William Conger and Vera Klement.

Explore the fascinating realm of memory through the work of over fifty artists featured in HIDING PLACES: MEMORY IN THE ARTS.
Memories are embodied in everything around us—in our culture, beliefs, objects, and relationships. Their reach can be lifelong or fleeting. Our search for new and inventive ways to keep memories alive is never ending, an ongoing attempt to keep them out of the mind’s deep hiding places.

Vision is elastic. Thought is elastic.

curated by Moyra Davey & Zoe Leonard

Josh Brand
Roy Colmer
Pradeep Dalal
Shannon Ebner
Joy Episalla
William Gedney
Roni Horn
Katherine Hubbard
Babette Mangolte
Mark Morrisroe
Adrian Piper
Claire Pentecost
James Welling
David Wojnarowicz

21 Apr – 18 June 2011

Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA, 2011 (solo exhibition)
David B Smith Gallery, Denver, CO, 2011 (solo exhibition)
“Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities”, curated by David McFadden,
Museum of Art and Science, NYC (group exhibition)

Liliana Porter says she knew Marcel Broodthaers's work only superficially before being paired with him for "The Incongruous Image: Marcel Broodthaers and Liliana Porter," an exhibition on view at the New Museum, New York, through July 3. Small and focused, the show includes eight works in a variety of mediums by Broodthaers (1924–1976)—including his projection of 33 slides, Sex Film (1971–72)—and 20 prints, drawings and paintings, from 1968 to 2011, by Porter.

Strong affinities between the two artists were quickly discerned, however, by guest curator Tobias Ostrander, who in 2009 had organized an exhibition of the underknown Porter (b. 1941) at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico. (He is presently curator at the contemporary art venue Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City, and co-organized the New Museum show with Annie Fletcher of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.)

Broodthaers and Porter are both deeply influenced by Magritte, who questioned the necessity of a relationship between objects and the words that name them. The objects that Broodthaers and Porter appropriate feel oddly out-of-date, and time seems to stand still—or move at an odd pace—in their films and videos. Both artists can assume the role of didact, though their teaching is unmoored from any commonly agreed upon knowledge.

Above all, the juxtaposition of incongruous codes of representation in both artists' oeuvres fosters an atmosphere of disorientation or bafflement-and no small degree of wry humor. One need only contemplate, in this exhibition, Broodthaers's Les animaux des fermes (1971), in which an appropriated pictorial chart of cattle substitutes the names of cars for the various animals, and, by Porter, a photograph showing a toy penguin conversing with a bust of Christ (Dialogue with Penguin, 1999). In these and other works, logic is abridged with absurdist results.

Born in Argentina, Porter has long lived in the United States, where she makes paintings and prints combining traditional mediums with collaged elements, usually small toys. Over the past decade, she has created photographs and videos that feature the toys; the videos are scored with extraordinary musical compositions by the Uruguayan-born composer and singer Sylvia Meyer. (For an example, see Rehearsal, a project Porter created for the Dia website in 2008.)

Though she spends most of her time working at her studio in Rhinebeck, New York, A.i.A. caught up with Porter at her Manhattan apartment on May 26.


Read more of the article here:
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2011-05-24/liliana-porter-new-museum/

The Art Institute of Chicago has acquired a complete set of A-ZYM, an encyclopedia prints, for their permanent collection.

" A Sense of Place" at the Italian Cultural Institute, Chicago
June 4 - September 16, 2011
Chicago is one of the international Italian cultural institutes chosen by art critic Vittorio Sgarbi to be included in the Italian Pavilion in the World at this year's Venice Biennale. A film created by artist Marco Ferrari representing the 7 artists in A Sense of Place will be on view in the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale June 4 through November 27, 2011.

“Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image,” places in dialogue works by Marcel Broodthaers (b. 1924, Brussels, d. 1976, Cologne) and Liliana Porter (b. Buenos Aries, 1941) to highlight several points of common interest, or philosophical accords, that explore the politics of knowledge, pedagogy, and display. Bringing together the work of Broodthaers and Porter in one space, “The Incongruous Image” proposes a dialogue or exchange of ideas explored by these two artists. Marcel Broodthaers famously described his genesis as an artist with the statement, “Finally the idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway.” Liliana Porter has posited that, “The only consciousness possible is doubt.” Positioning its inquiry between these spaces of insincerity and doubt, “The Incongruous Image” seeks to draw out, through juxtaposition, how each artist investigates the deceptions, dissonances, and incongruities that images and language can produce.

Maison Particulière is a new art center born of a couple’s wish to share their passion for collecting art.
This elegant townhouse in the heart of Brussels by the Place du Châtelain has been converted into a unique setting that reinvents the interior space of a private residence, thus creating a novel approach to exhibiting works of art.
Maison Particulière’s purpose is to welcome those who are passionate about art in a stimulating environment dedicated to promoting discovery, conversation and exchange. On exhibit for the season, select works of art are distinctively intermingled throughout intimate sitting areas in the three stories of the house.
Central to the creation of this house where dialogue is key, are long-time art collectors Myriam and Amaury de Solages. Their interest in the arts knows no boundary, no limit in time period, no restriction in art form or genre, and no border in geographical preference. Sharing their passion for the arts is the driving force behind this most extraordinary project.
Maison Particulière is not merely an outlet to exhibit their private collection exclusively. Indeed, they plan on presenting temporary installations grouping several contributors: collectors, artists and others, with a passion for the arts in common. Each installation will feature a main theme which will serve as a thread to the subjective (and often unexpected) selection offered by the various guest-patrons. This unique space is truly a place to engage in exchange.
Opening on April 26, 2011.

at The Art Center in Highland Park. Friday, April 29th from 6:30 to 9:00 pm.
1957 Sheridan Road.

Participating artists include:

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley
Judith Hersko
Kim Keever
David Klamen
John Opera
Timothy van Laar
Andrew Young

Prints from Antonia Contro's A-ZYM series will be included in the exhibition which will run through June 2011.

Bay Area artist David Maisel continues his inquiry into the dual processes of memory and excavation in History’s Shadow, a new photography series derived from x-rays of art objects from antiquity. Initiated during a residency at the Getty Research Institute in 2007, Maisel became captivated by x-rays of art objects from the museum’s permanent collections. Though utilized for conservation purposes, Maisel recognized the power of these images to transcend the original artworks’ context and familiarity, conveying messages across time.

Irritable Abstraction

Curated by Susanne Doremus

with Joe Baldwin, Timothy Bergstrom, Brian Calvin, Federico Cattaneo, Edmund Chia, Dana DeGiulio, Dan Devening, Cheryl Donegan, Judith Geichman, Andrew Greene, Magalie Guérin, Antonia Gurkovska, Seth Hunter, Michiko Itatani, Eric Lebofsky, Diego Leclery, José Lerma, Jim Lutes, Rebecca Morris, Sabina Ott, Noah Rorem, Erin Washington, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

April 3 - April 24, 2011

Opening reception: Sunday, April 3, 2011, 4-7PM

Hours: Every following Saturday & Sunday, 1-4PM, and by appointment

Solo exhibitions at Kinz Tillou at Dorian Grey Gallery, New York, NY and Katharine Mulherin, Toronto, Canada

Place as Idea explores the idea of place as a vehicle for visualizing time, displacement, memory, and fantasy in works by an international roster of contemporary artists.

New York-based Kim Keever makes photographs of bonsai-scaled landscapes assembled inside a 200-gallon tank that is filled with water and topped with paint pigment and addressed with lights and gels to create convincing effects of clouds and atmosphere. His tropical vistas, sylvan forests, and mountain views openly wear their own artifice while they also display the fine-grained complexity of the real thing. Looking at them can be an otherworldy experience. NewArtTV visits Keever at his East Village studio.

Melodie Provenzano
Carrie Secrist Gallery
December 11- January 29, 2011
www.secristgallery.com

RECOMMENDED
No two approaches to landscape photography are in greater contrast than Kim Keever’s color images of garishly illuminated misty, craggy “nature” scenes that he painstakingly constructs in a 200-gallon tank filled with water, and David Maisel’s large-format black-and-white and color aerial shots of the land as it has been scarred by industrial civilization. As it turns out, Keever’s contrivances are deceptively realistic, whereas Maisel’s straight shots often border on abstractions, especially his “Lake Project” series, in which he documents Owens Lake, in California, which was devastated in the construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct in 1926. In his most arresting shot, “Lake Project 6,” Maisel captures, from high above, the desertified lake bed, broken up into multicolored segments; his image would warm the heart of a passionate abstractionist were it not for its filthy and scarred traces of all-too-obvious human spoliation. As different as they are, Keever and Maisel unite on the postmodern dictum that “nature is dead”—the viewer is left to choose among hells. (Michael Weinstein)
Through December 4 at Carrie Secrist Gallery, 835 West Washington.

The CU Art Museum recently acquired a masterpiece of video art by Liliana Porter, one of the most significant contemporary Latin-American women artists. The work, titled Fox In The Mirror: A Concert (2007), is on view in the museum's new video gallery and explores human vulnerability and frailty through a narrative of animated ceramic and plastic figurines. Fox In The Mirror includes a moving score written and recorded by Porter's collaborator, Sylvia Meyer.

David Maisel: Shadow and Dust will be on view at the UCR/California Museum of Photography in Riverside from August 31, 2010, through January 1, 2011. The exhibition of more than 100 photographs comprising two floors of the museum will feature the first museum showing of David Maisel’s "History's Shadow" on the first floor, and an extensive selection from his "Library of Dust" series on the second floor.

Aerial photographer David Maisel shoots environmental messes -- like cyanide leaching fields and dried-out lakes. But his color prints are big, gorgeous, and mysterious. Maisel talks about his pictures of Los Angeles, just published in the book Oblivion, and how he seduces and betrays viewers at the same time. Produced by Trey Kay.
http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2007/03/30

By Lauren Viera, Tribune reporter
10:45 a.m. CDT, July 2, 2010

It's rare, I think, to experience a local gallery exhibit that has the power to completely envelop the viewer in the way that an exhibit of larger, museum proportions might. Italian-born contemporary artist Angelo Musco's all-encompassing exhibit at Carrie Secrist Gallery is even larger than a museum show, if you can imagine it. Experiencing it is more like a visit to the deep sea tanks at an aquarium.

Collectively dubbed "Tehom," Hebrew for "the deep" or "abyss," Musco's collection of enormous photographic mosaics feature nude swimmers shimmying in sync like schools of fish, intertwined in passion, struggle or both. The largest of the eight works here, which lends its title to the show, takes over two walls of the gallery's front room.

Large is an understatement. Two years in the making, "Tehom" is 12 feet tall and spans a massive 48 feet, wider even than the gallery's longest wall, and one end of it folds into a corner accordingly. Comprising 22 glossy, gorgeous panels of meticulously digitally edited images, the illustrative mural-like work features swimmers disappearing into dark holes that fade into the distance; some swimmers look as though they're fumbling toward the surface while others seem content to go with the flow. There are between 100,000 and 200,000 swimmers in all, and their nude bodies are positioned so gracefully, they have the realistic effect of swimming together en masse, producing imagery that's both beautiful and mind-boggling. (They're not cheap, either: Purchase "Tehom" or any of the other multipanel pieces here, and you're looking at an investment up to $200,000.)

Musco's art is a study in the human figure and their innate relationships with each other, from birth onward (it's noted in the artist's statement that he spent two extra months in the womb, emerging as a 14-pound baby). From a distance, Musco's models seem homogenous (I struggled to find one that wasn't Caucasian) as if they're part of some super-race, caught in the throngs of existence and not sure where to head next. Look closer and individual expressions emerge from the masses. No two are alike.

Angelo Musco, "Tehom," at Carrie Secrist Gallery, 835 W. Washington Blvd., 312-491-0917; secristgallery.com. Through July 10

Permanent Impermanence
an exhibition curated by Larissa Leclair
featuring photographs by Christopher Colville, Todd Hido, Kate MacDonnell, David Maisel, Curtis Mann, and Doug + Mike Starn

June 11-July 9, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, June 11, 6-8pm
Exhibition Hours: Monday-Friday 11am-5pm
Location: Washington Project for the Arts (WPA)
2023 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
202.234.7103

The WPA is pleased to present the exhibition Permanent Impermanence. This project is part of the WPA's Coup d'Espace series which invites member artists and curators to stage their own exhibitions an programming in its Dupont Circle space. Come enjoy some great photography! Permanent Impermanence explores fundamentals of the photographic medium, through artistic expression in both subject and process. The exhibition will include works by
Christopher Colville from his Emanations series;
Todd Hido from A Road Divided;
Kate MacDonnell from 100 Ways;
Curtis Mann from Modifications;
David Maisel from History's Shadow; and
Doug + Mike Starn from alleverythingthatisyou.

RECOMMENDED
For a pure orgy of fantasia, check out Angelo Musco's mammoth photo-works in which thousands of nude men and women disport themselves underwater in tangled conjunctures and simulations of schools of fish. Musco achieves his undeniably overpowering and shocking effect by taking countless shots of small groups of submerged people, combining them in the computer to compose his gargantuan images, and printing on metallic paper supported by aluminum and plexiglass. Two years in the making, the title work of Musco's show, "Tehom" (Hebrew for abyss), tells the whole story. Measuring 12 x 48 feet, "Tehom" is ample enough for Musco to fill the surface with spinning vortices of bodies separated by a bevy of freer formations. Identifiable individuals pop out of the composition, bearing expressions that run the gamut of human emotion. Italian Renaissance philosophy championed the "coincidentia oppositorum," the conjunction of opposites; Musco's surrealism is right in that line. (Michael Weinstein)
Through July 10 and Carrie Secrist Gallery, 835 W. Washington

Want to start your own collection but don't know where to begin? Never fear. We've got the season's best and most on-trend must-haves to suit every budget.

"Greene a relative newcomer, builds poetic, quasi-abstract forms on top of Audubon drawings. She had an impressive show at Pulse Miami last December (Carrie Secrist Gallery, 835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago., Chicago; 312.491.0917).

Carrie Secrist just had a big opening on May 1st for an artist relatively new to the gallery, and to the world, and now Chicagoans have a few weeks to see the large-scale solo show in the West Loop gallery. The young Italian artist, Angelo Musco, showed his photographs at Secrist's Art Chicago booth in 2009, shortly before a late acceptance into the mega-art showcase, the Venice Biennale last summer. The current exhibition, Tehom, runs through July 10th, but be sure to see this show sooner rather than later. I mentioned Musco in an earlier post about Art Chicago since I was already excited about the opening of the exhibition.


Musco's work leaves strong impressions of birth, life, nature, and order. When you see this show on the large scale in Secrist's West Loop space, the hundreds of swimming, naked bodies are practically life-size, diving and spinning, and staring out at you from the gallery's main 12' x 48' wall. While the subjects are moving in tight formations together under the water, light from an implied surface above is clearly shining through.

The story I got over the weekend was that Musco was born in Italy, and he was in the womb for 11 months after a complicated pregnancy. When he was finally born, he weighed 14lbs! Today, his art is concerned with internal structures, underwater worlds, nature and human life. To create his magical scenes, Musco takes tens of thousands of photographs of 80 nude models and then creates a Photoshop masterpiece.

According to Wikipedia, Tehom, the show's title, is the Hebrew word for 'deep' or 'abyss.'
The dark, glossy backgrounds created in the gallery create a new, enveloping, womb-like environment for viewers, as well as possibly a sanctuary. This is a show you have to see for yourself in person.

We weren't sure how Phyllis Bramson and Judith Geichman would play off one another in a joint exhibition. Bramson's boldly colored mixed-media works feature droll large-eyed cats, Darger-esque girls and glitter-dusted landscapes that recall Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Geichman relies on gestural drips and smears to produce Expressionist paintings in a more subdued palette, which includes diaphanous pastels, hints of bronze and stormy bursts of black and gray.
Despite the differences in the Chicago artists' (and longtime friends') approaches to form and abstraction, "Then Is Now" reveals a sublime interplay between their works. Bramson's paintings fill the first room, their tangled fairy-tale motifs inviting close inspection. In Ring around the Rosy (soon they all fall down) (2008), cats wearing pants cavort with cartoonish girls in a field of poppies. Chains of flowers, some made of delicate sequins, weave through the scene, directing the eye to different areas of the canvas—and even beyond it, to a cluster of gaudy blooms hanging atop the painting.
Homing in on Bramson's details trains viewers to experience Geichman's paintings in the next room. In Herald (2009), forms emerge from seemingly random smears of paint, resembling the fluid, shape-shifting figures of clouds. Even without tactile embellishments, Geichman's works feel dynamic and multidimensional.
The artists present an enchanting collaboration: the painting The Three Melancholy Mystics (2010). The most rewarding aspect of "Then Is Now," however, is the way their divergent practices usher the viewer toward deep contemplation. As in all great friendships, Bramson and Geichman's differences are complementary.


Read more: http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/art-design/84372/then-is-now-at-carrie-secrist-gallery-art-review#ixzz0kQeWTrDp

Article can be found here: http://media.modernluxury.com/digital.php?e=CHSO