2015: Kate McQuillen @ Comfort Station

Above: An anonymous late-night cyclist about to pass the canted bay window at the center of Kate McQuillen's "Old Flame" installation at Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Chicago, IL, on February 21, 2015.

Kate McQuillen
"Old Flame"
Curated by Jessie Devereaux
January 24– February 22, 2015
Comfort Station
2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Logan Square
Chicago, IL

http://www.katemcquillen.com/

http://www.comfortstationlogansquare.org/

Saturday night, January 24, 2015: In Chicago, immediately northeast of Logan Square's Illinois Centennial Monument, the doors at 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue are locked. And Comfort Station (a shelter for trolley riders in the 20th century, a venue for arts patrons in the 21st century) is opaque as well as inaccessible. The single story structure's street level windows are filled with gouache-tinted paper, masked and backlit to create the illusion of yellow-orange flames within.

Above: An interior view of Comfort Station's canted bay window filled with paper and backlit for Kate McQuillen's "Old Flame" installation at 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Chicago, IL, as available for view on February 21, 2015. The white table supporting McQuillen's single-channel video is visible at far right, its monitor half-hidden by the surrounding yellowish material.

Puzzled would-be-attendees of the evening's opening reception periodically circumnavigate the building: looking, vainly, for a way to get in. Taken together with a single-channel video (the small screen of which peeks out towards Milwaukee Avenue) the architectural intervention is the work of thirty-five-year-old Massachusetts native Kate McQuillen, a visual artist selected for the occasion by Comfort Station curatorial panel member Jessie Devereaux. On an adjacent sidewalk a sandwich board bears a message in chalk: McQuillen and Devereaux are available at a nearby location, waiting with refreshments.

Above: An exterior view of the single-channel video component of Kate McQuillen's "Old Flame" installation as seen through the canted bay window at Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Chicago, IL, on January 24, 2015.

Theatrically, the staging of "Old Flame" is successful enough to engage an interested passerby. It works. Conceptually, the site-specific artwork wants for a paragraph of text which offers a historical ground for the experience. In this place, at this time, what does "Old Flame" mean?

Of course, it isn't fair to reserve that criticism for McQuillen and Devereaux. Chicago's art world, attractive largely for: (a) its schools; and, (b) its non-commercial residency, publication and exhibition system, is filled with young and short-term residents. Consequently, memory is wanting. And we have only few miserable, old, critics to suggest in writing such visual precedents as might exist.

Above: The maquette of Comfort Station's canted bay window (photographed while available for view on February 21, 2015) which was featured in the single-channel video component of Kate McQuillen's "Old Flame" installation at 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Chicago, IL, January 24– February 22, 2015.

For example, Oak Park resident Alison Ruttan presented (below) a little city of burned-out modelli at Chicago's ADDS DONNA gallery in 2012.[1] And Ruttan's ceramic, architectural structures were each identical in scale to (above) the maquette of Comfort Station's canted bay window featured in McQuillen's single-channel video. In fact, Ruttan has a concurrent show (January 24 - April 26, 2015) featuring said pieces, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," at the Chicago Cultural Center.[2]

Above: A detail of Alison Ruttan's "Natural Disaster" which ran April 15 - May 13, 2012, at ADDS DONNA, 4223 W. Lake Street, #422, Chicago, IL.

Above:An overview of Alison Ruttan's "Natural Disaster," which ran April 15 - May 13, 2012, at ADDS DONNA, 4223 W. Lake Street, #422, Chicago, IL.

Alison Ruttan isn't the only artist worth mentioning. Also running concurrently (January 9 - March 15, 2015) is a group show at the University of Chicago's Logan Center entitled "Lands End," which includes works from now Brooklyn-based Carrie Schneider's 2010-2011 "Burning House" series.[3] Schneider, like McQuillen, produced an architectural prop which was literally set ablaze and photographed, the results of which (below) were first displayed at Chicago's moniquemeloche gallery in 2012.[4]

Above: Carrie Schneider's "Burning House (October, afternoon)" 2010, originally a c-print, 40 x 50 inches. (C) Carrie Schneider.

Above: An installation view of Carrie Schneider's "Burning House," which ran March 31 – May 12, 2012, at moniquemeloche gallery, 2154 W. Division Street, Chicago, IL.

If Alison Ruttan and Carrie Schneider are comparable to Kate McQuillen because of their common choice of subject matter (a building which is being or has been burned) the University of Chicago's Jason Salavon seems good to remember because of his working method: In 2009, Salavon employed computer-controlled projectors inside the Hyde Park Art Center to cause (below) animated, geometric patterns of colored light to appear across the screened clerestory--an effect enjoyable from outside the building.[5]

Above: A still, interior view of Jason Salavon's animated "Spigot (Oracle's Reflection)," which ran September 23, 2009 - February 6, 2010, across the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: A still, exterior view of Jason Salavon's animated "Spigot (Oracle's Reflection)," which ran September 23, 2009 - February 6, 2010, across the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL. (C) Jason Salavon.

Every work cited above can be seen to hinge upon an energetic treatment of architecture. And, each artist having concerned herself with a particularly human intervention in the environment, the figure is conspicuous in its absence. Taken together, McQuillen, Ruttan, and Schneider are suggestive of a potentially alarming turn from the controlled, domestic interior of the still life towards some ambiguous violence in the landscape.

What does it mean? In Chicago, in 2015, architecture as ground for some phenomenon of light is found recurrent in practices as diverse as those maintained by Luftwerk and Colleen Plumb. In Chicago, in 2014, the strongest displays at the city's EXPO art fair took the form of architecture. Again, among other examples, Judy Ledgerwood's direct architectural paintings were paired with Anne Wilson's "Portable City" pieces at Rhona Hoffman's gallery in 2011. Whatever else might be happening, in this place, at this time, there's evidence of a widespread and persistent interest in the built dimension of the world.

Above: Kate McQuillen, left, with Jessie Devereaux, right, within McQuillen's "Old Flame" installation at Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Chicago, IL, for a closing event on February 21, 2015.

Epilogue: Saturday night, February 21, 2015, McQuillen and Devereaux hosted a closing event. Comfort Station's doors were unlocked. And attendees were able to view "Old Flame" from within, which in the end allowed for the best possible experience of the artwork. Comparative knowledge is sometimes available without an appeal to history or geography. In this case it was possible to consider how one's position--inside or outside--determined one's perspective. Even as the individual artwork was opaque when only its exterior was accessible, so too the larger "art world" defies scrutiny from the borders of its territory. And it's easy to forget how many people are inclined to pass unobservant: supposing that the lights and colors therein are no more related to one another than are the sounds in the cacophony of the city itself.

[1] Alison Ruttan
"Natural Disaster"
April 15 - May 13, 2012
ADDS DONNA
4223 W. Lake Street, #422
Chicago, IL 60624
http://addsdonna.com/ADDS_DONNA/Natural_Disaster.html
http://www.alisonruttan.com/cv

[2] Alison Ruttan
"if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
January 24 - April 26, 2015
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Ave. Galleries, 1st Floor South
78 E. Washington St.
Chicago, IL 60602
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/ruttan.html

[3] Carrie Schneider
"Lands End" (a group show)
Curated by Zachary Cahill and Katherine Harvath
January 9 - March 15, 2015
Presented by the Reva and David Logan Center
for the Arts and the Department of Visual Arts at
the University of Chicago and the Goethe-Institut
Chicago
915 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
https://arts.uchicago.edu/landsend

[4] Carrie Schneider
"Burning House"
March 31 - May 12, 2012
moniquemeloche gallery
2154 W. Division Street
Chicago, IL 60622
http://moniquemeloche.com/exhibitions/burning-house/
http://carrieschneider.net/work/houseburning.html

[5] Jason Salavon
"Spigot (Oracle's Reflection)"
September 23, 2009 - February 6, 2010
Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery
Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S. Cornell Avenue
Chicago, IL 60615
http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/jason-salavonem-spigot-oracles-reflection-em
http://www.salavon.com/

Above:

Images (1,2,4,11) February 21, 2015;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

Image (3) January 24, 2015;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

Images (5,6) April 15, 2012;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

Image (7) Copyright 2010 Carrie Schneider.

Image (8) March 31, 2012;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

Image (9) September 23, 2009;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

Image (10) Copyright 2009 Jason Salavon.