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.

2015: Colleen Plumb @ Pilsen

Above: Colleen Plumb standing before "Thirty Times a Minute" 2014, a projected digital video, with sound, 7:37 minutes in length, looped, shown from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM, on January 31, 2015, at 18th Street and Sangamon Street, in Pilsen, Chicago, IL.

Colleen Plumb
"Thirty Times a Minute"
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
January 31, 2015
18th Street and Sangamon Street
Pilsen
Chicago, IL

http://www.colleenplumb.com/

http://thirtytimesaminute.com/

"Why do so many people want to look at animals? Why do we defend or implicitly support the practice of looking? What does it mean to participate as a spectator of captive animals?

'Thirty Times A Minute' explores elephants in captivity. Since 2009, I have traveled to more than half of the seventy-five zoos in the US that keep elephants, making video of elephants exhibiting what biologists refer to as stereotypic behavior, also called 'weaving.' Only captive elephants exhibit weaving, which includes rhythmic rocking, swaying, swinging the trunk, head bobbing, stepping back and forth, or pacing. These compulsive, repetitive movements cause debilitating, life-threatening damage to the animals’ feet and joints. I have also begun to document circuses and fairs where elephants perform. The project title references the heart rate of an elephant: circus owners have been known to tell visitors that elephants must sway as they doze while standing, keeping with their heart rate of thirty beats per minute.

...In what ways do humans, along with all living beings, seek soothing and connectivity? Can ritualistic behaviors be viewed as a means of escape from present reality, and do forms of escape potentially--or inevitably--become debilitating distortions?"

Quotation above from: http://www.colleenplumb.com/video/warp.statement.htm

Above: Plumb's video projector by means of which "Thirty Times a Minute" has been presented on building facades in 11 different Chicago neighborhoods between October 10, 2014, and January 31, 2015.

Above: Plumb's vehicle-mounted projector in operation on Sangamon Street, immediately south of 18th Street, at the beginning of the Chicago blizzard lasting from January 31, 2015 to February 2, 2015.

Above: A spectator interacts with Plumb's "Thirty Times a Minute" video projection on January 31, 2015, at the intersection of 18th Street and Sangamon Street, in Pilsen, Chicago, IL.

Read more:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/love-and-loss-and-the-animal-kingdom/

http://www.mocp.org/collection/mpp/plumb_colleen.php

http://www.wipnyc.org/blog/colleen-plumb

Above:
Images (1-4) January 31, 2015;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos

2015: Traci Fowler @ Hairpin Arts Center

Above: Traci Fowler's "Winter Wear for Warm Weather Plants" 2014, yarn and plants, within the opening of "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

"Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne"
Ursula Andreeff, John Bannon, George Berlin, Traci Fowler, Tucker Hagge, Cindy Hinant, Brandon Howe, CJ Hungerman, Taehoon Kim, George Larson, Charlie Megna, Selden Paterson, Jovencio de la Paz, Jack Ryan, Luis Sahagun, Josh Samuels, Thorsten Sahlin, and The Utopia School
January 24-31, 2015
Hairpin Arts Center
2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago, IL

http://hairpinartscenter.org/

"Lion VS Gorilla, in partnership with the Hairpin Arts Center, is proud to announce the opening of the group show for 'Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne,' an art show and mini-exposition on utopias. In the spirit of the medieval myth of Cockaigne, which imagines an ideal land of endless ease, luxury, health, and hedonistic pleasure, this show features work by established and emerging artists on idiosyncratic, futuristic, transhuman, and personal visions of utopias."

Quotation above from: http://hairpinartscenter.org/events/event/lion-vs-gorilla-presents-crystal-palaces-cockaigne/

Above: Traci Fowler's "Winter Wear for Warm Weather Plants" 2014, yarn and plants, within the opening of "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: Traci Fowler's "Winter Wear for Warm Weather Plants" 2014, yarn and plants, within the opening of "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: Traci Fowler's "Winter Wear for Warm Weather Plants" 2014, yarn and plants, within the opening of "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: Jovencio de la Paz standing before his artwork, "Long Song (for Jimmy Scott)" 2014, indigo on cotton, batik, during the opening reception for "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: Tucker Hagge in performance during the opening reception for "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," January 24, 2015, at Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Above: The view of the six-corners (Milwaukee Avenue, Diversey Avenue, and Kimball Avenue) intersection as available from the second floor window of the Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL, during the opening reception for "Crystal Palaces in Cockaigne," on January 24, 2015.

Above:
Images (1-7) January 24, 2015;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.

2014: Marissa Lee Benedict @ Chicago Artists Coalition

Above: Marissa Lee Benedict, left, with artist and partner David Allan Rueter, right, opening night, March 7, 2014.

Marissa Lee Benedict
"Augur"
March 7 - 27, 2014
BOLT Residency
Chicago Artists Coalition
217 N. Carpenter Street
Chicago, IL

http://marissaleebenedict.com/

http://chicagoartistscoalition.org/

Friday, March 7, 2014: Within the context of a site-specific installation which occupies the whole of the Chicago Artists Coalition's BOLT Residency gallery, Marissa Lee Benedict exhibits (4-channel) video documentation of an earlier performance in the Mojave Desert.  Benedict, the performer, presents herself as a hydrologist occupied with the task of collecting soil samples from Harper Dry Lake, in Hinkley, California.

Above: The video component of Marissa Lee Benedict's installation "Augur," in the Chicago Artists Coalition's BOLT Residency gallery.

Presumably, it takes a bit of research outside of the gallery in order for most members of the audience to learn that the site of Benedict's investigation, Harper Dry Lake, was made arid as a result of human intervention in the local ecosystem.  Having made the effort, it's easy to connect Benedict to Sarah and Joseph Belknap, whose own installation, "It's Getting Hot in Here," filled the same BOLT Residency space two years earlier, from April 13 to May 3, 2012.

Above: Sarah and Joseph Belknap's "Glacier Spring Rider" in "It's Getting Hot in Here" on April 13, 2012.

As playful glaciologists warning of the imminent, global destruction sure to result from rising sea levels, the Belknap's concerned themselves (at least in part) with flooding, i.e., the side of the climate change coin opposing Benedict's depiction of drought.

At least one other point of coincidence exists between Benedict's "Augur" and the Belknaps' "It's Getting Hot in Here," just barely visible in the photograph of the "Glacier Spring Rider" above: In the northwest corner of the BOLT Residency gallery, the Belknaps, with great difficulty, obtained permission to drill a portal in the floor.

Above: The portal in the northwest corner of the BOLT Residency gallery which was made by the Belknaps in April of 2012.

If memory serves, the Belknaps intended the portal, depicted above, to suggest the scientific practice of core sampling--to which Benedict has returned, both actively in her video and also passively through the inclusion of a similar portal in the floor of her installation, seen below.

Above: A detail of Benedict's portal in the southeast corner of the BOLT Residency gallery reveals the core sample set within it.

Above: Benedict's portal found in a floor of reclaimed lumber, built above the gallery's natural grade, on March 7, 2014.

Above: A shadow is cast by a visitor walking near the portal set in Benedict's floor of reclaimed lumber, March 7, 2014.

Outside the Chicago Artists Coalition, within the Museum of Contemporary Art's recently closed exhibition "The Way of the Shovel," Tony Tasset's self-portrait as Robert Smithson communicates a similar aesthetic vision, if not also a similar ideological agenda, realized twenty years earlier.  And one wonders about Benedict's exposure to said work, as well as her exposure to said exhibition's curator, Dieter Roelstraete, whose own curatorial conceits have wanted to examine the appearance of scientific processes in art of late.

Above: Tony Tasset's "Robert Smithson (Las Vegas)," 1995, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Above: Marissa Lee Benedict, still from "Attempting to collect a good sample, Attempts 1-4, Harper Dry Lake, Hinkley, CA," 2014.

Tasset's piece, portrait orientation seen above, is the still photographic study of a particular man, here found clothed in a light color; Benedict's piece, landscape orientation seen above, is a time-sensitive video study of the environment as subject to some dark-clothed figure's intervention.  There are differences between the two; nevertheless, the comparison seems worth introducing at this point.

The art world is its own sort of environment, remarkably resistant to investigation and objective measures, in which delicate things are variously inclined to flourish or fail because of abundance as well as scarcity.  Attention and money, like water in the BOLT Residency shows from both Benedict and also the Belknaps, tends not to be evenly distributed; rather, we have flooding and droughts according to the caprice of our kind, and the cruel indifference of Nature.  It's an interesting year to be in Chicago.

Above:
Images (1,2,5-7) March 7, 2014;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.
Images (3,4) April 13, 2012;
Copyright Paul E. Germanos.
Image (8) MCA Chicago, gift of artist & Rhona Hoffman; restricted gift of Jack and Sandra P. Guthman, 1995.
http://mcachicago.org/exhibitions/next/all/324
Copyright Tony Tasset.
Image (9) Video still from "Attempting to collect a good sample, Attempts 1-4, Harper Dry Lake, Hinkley, CA," 2014.
http://chicagoartistscoalition.org/programs/bolt-residency/augur
Copyright Marissa Lee Benedict.

Read more:

"Presented by Chicago Artists Coalition’s BOLT Residency, 'Augur' is a new immersive installation produced by artist Marissa Lee Benedict. An extension of Benedict’s ongoing investigation into processes of research, collection, extraction, and cultivation, this solo exhibition will feature a 4-channel video installation depicting Benedict’s repeated attempts to collect a core sample from the arid, clay-hardened surface of Harper Dry Lake located in Hinkley, CA.

Working to cut into the parched ground and glimpse what might lie beneath, Benedict tries to gain traction in the harsh landscape via a series of gardening tools (a sledge hammer, a bucket, a shovel, a drill, and a series of pipes) and amateur soil sampling techniques. The show’s title, 'Augur,' plays between the words augur – to portend a good or bad outcome of an event or circumstance, to foresee or predict– and auger – a hand tool often used by soil scientists, geologists and glaciologists to bore holes into the earth.

Just as the aperture of a camera opens to allow light to pass though, Benedict’s repeated attempts to extract and expose the strata below speaks to the artist’s process of searching and re-searching, striving to make tangible connections with the elusive or imperceptible."

Quotation above from: http://www.thevisualist.org/2014/03/marissa-lee-benedict-augur/

Quotation above from: http://chicagoartistscoalition.org/programs/bolt-residency/augur

Note:

Marissa Lee Benedict joined Sarah and Joseph Belknap in a special project (which also included Karsten Lund, the curatorial assistant to Dieter Roelstraete in "The Way of the Shovel" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago) at the alternative print publication Newcity on September 5, 2013:

"Invited by Newcity to 'hijack the newspaper,' Chicago-based artists Sarah Belknap, Joseph Belknap and Marissa Lee Benedict have inserted into this special issue a selection of photographic re-enactments, highlighting the contemporary fascination with space and space travel, and the growing number of Chicago-based artists and curators who are participating in this resurgent dialogue."

Quotation above from: http://art.newcity.com/2013/09/05/after-a-time-a-newcity-artist-project/