Urban Archeology
Runs through May 31 at Walsh Gallery
Technology and social networks grow more impenetrable by the hour but, as Li Lin Lee demonstrates, our omnipresent visual vocabulary, from corporate logos to graffiti tags, remains quite accessible. Lee's deceptively simple canvases collapse centuries of history, imbuing common shapes and invented logos with a type of ancient reverence. Viewers are invited to mentally excavate these layers of paint and stripped-down forms. Through glimpses of barely touched canvas and dissolving shades, this work seems immediate but somehow ageless. The artist then arranges his work into sets of four images, each a piece of a puzzle linking Mayan and Aztec traditions to feudal societies to present-day Chicago. His stories are told in a language we strongly intuit, if only vaguely comprehend.
Karen Kilimnik
Runs through June 8 at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Probing subjects from ballet, literature and glamour-magazine heroines' forced idealism to the murderous anti-heroines in the news, Kilimnick's work is both a cry for help and a call to arms. The material influencing these arresting portraits and sketches is as varied as the materials she flings across her trademark "scatter art" installations.
Justin Cooper: Thread
Runs through May 31 at Gallery 400
Intertwining fifty garden hoses around Gallery 400's dogleg space, Justin Cooper's installation visualizes the world's endless clashes of opinions and the internal contradictions we carry but try to compartmentalize. "Thread" curiously satisfies from a distance but closer engagement provides tactile satisfaction, as gallery guests twist, bend and limbo through a network of common household items.
Diane Cooper: Wrapped
Runs through May 15 at Woman Made Gallery
Japanese reverence for antiquity meets bright textiles and cast-off material meets Chicago's industrial sensibility in Diane Cooper's intricately animated creations, a remarkable body of work puncturing the consciousness of our youth-obsessed culture. Salvaged fabric swatches, torn paper, frayed twine, wood scraps and other found objects intermingle, overcoming the baggage typically attached to "found-object sculptures."
Building Pictures
Runs through May 31 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
Architectural photography, so tightly controlled by preservationists and realtors, gets deconstructed by the eight contributors to this fascinating show, pulling viewers in conflicting directions. Chris Mottalini lifts the blinders, opening our eyes to Modernist abandonment, while Ionisio Gonzalez obscures his native Sao Paolo in mashing-up the lauded and reviled residences of its stratified social classes.
Ed Paschke: A Survey
Runs through May 10 at Russell Bowman Art Advisory
A closer look at this collection from the late, quirky local favorite reveals his mastery of otherworldly light and subtle gradations of color, deftly captured on linen canvasses. His unconventional style is given a major tribute in Bowman's River North gallery and nearby annex.
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