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Watching the colors change this fall.

Monday Aug 28, 2006.     By Joanne Hinkel

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Hey art lovers, are you ready for the biggest holiday of the year in the Chicago art world? In case you forgot: Friday, September 8 marks the start of the fall art season, a night when Chicago galleries synchronize their openings and thousands of you bump sweaty shoulders in an effort to see it all. The night usually peaks at about 8:45 p.m. on the sidewalks in front of the buildings at 118 and 119 N. Peoria Street in the West Loop, the prime contemporary art locale. This is just about when the crowds get too overwhelming, the Two-Buck Chuck supply starts to wane, and it's time for a group cigarette. Here's a short list of art I don't want to miss, even for a good smoke.

2006 Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival Opening Night Party
Around the Coyote Gallery
Thursday, September 7; 8 p.m.-midnight
$20 admission (includes food and drinks)

What truly kicks off Chicago's fall arts season is Wicker Park's famed festival for the arts. Be good to the festival by showing up at the kick-off party. Your admission payment will benefit art education programming...and benefit you in turn with a video showing by Kim Alpert, the unveiling of artLedge's site-specific installation, beats by DJ Sid Delicious and the chance to bid on artwork in a silent auction. Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival rocks on through the weekend with a roster of programs so long that we'll just recommend you check its website for theater, poetry readings, open studios, art tours and specific visual arts exhibitions.

"Laura Mosquera: in the deep end"
Monique Meloche Gallery
Through October 16; opening September 8, 6-9 p.m.

Waiting for the train at the CTA Red Line Chicago station almost feels like fun thanks to Laura Mosquera. Since 2001 her eight painted billboards of people looking and wandering through abstracted architectural spaces in surrealistic color constructions has delighted many a passenger battling boredom. For the first time in years she will be showing her work again at Monqiue Meloche Gallery. Going against her usual grain of acrylic painting, Mosquera will be exhibiting works on paper and drawings this time around. Mosquera's focus has long been "the gaze," through capturing people in the act of looking. Looking at all this looking should be fun.

"Suspension of Disbelief"
Thomas Robertello Gallery
Through October 14; opening September 8, 6-9 p.m.

Artist John Delk's solo exhibit promises to include an installation of sound and mixed media sculpture, photography and live fish. While the promise of "live fish" leaves me curious enough to stop in, the concept of the show holds the most promise: all displayed art hinges on the idea that Americans are accepting outrageous fictions from the federal government in order to avoid the brutal political reality. One piece on display spells out the word "evildoers" on a wall in Braille with 26 security surveillance globes; in another stills from a wining moment on the "Price is Right" are looped to show the artificiality and produced effect of winning in a commercial culture.

"Anna Joelsdottir: Heima? / Home?"
Zg Gallery
Through October 14; opening September 8, 5-8 p.m.

While the West Loop boasts a more exciting art party atmosphere, there are several reasons to make it to River North as well on opening night. Zg Gallery's new show tops that list of reasons. Anna Joelsdottir's solo show features mixed media on panel paintings mix up expectations of what abstract paintings are in a cool, electrifying way. Colors zigzag in jagged lines through explosive color variations, always against a background of white nothingness. Joelsdottir moved to Chicago from Iceland years ago, but is able to negotiate her longing for home, through pen and paintbrush, through articulating the movements and shapes of volcanoes, glaciers and mountains that she misses from her native land in paintings.

"Michael Kenna: Hokkaido / New Work"
Catherine Edelman Gallery
Through October 14; opening September 8, 5-8 p.m.

The best photography find is at Catherine Edelman Gallery. There's nothing too complicated here, but you'll find an Ansel Adams-type of beauty found in a place few of us can afford to visit: Japan. Almost appearing as calligraphic drawings, Kenna captures flowers and reeds strewn around in field of snow. He documents wintery beaches, misty mountains, rivers and valleys at day break, all in a cool, serene way that will allow you to lose yourself, in a perfectly Zen-Japanese kind of way.

"Juan Perdiguero: Perros Fragmentados"
ThreeWalls
Through October 14; opening September 8, 6-9 p.m.

Greyhounds are just sad creatures. Juan Perdiguero taps into the inherent vulnerability of this dog, typically made for competition and deprived of animal freedom, as an allegory for the human condition. Perdiguero has been drawing greyhounds on photographic paper for several years, and continued the practice as an artist-in-residence at ThreeWalls this summer. This is a rare chance to see the work of this Spain-based artist.