Music Koko Taylor and Bruce Iglauer /Photo: Marc Norberg Gator Raid Way before an alligator named Chance longest-lasting independent blues label (and The Snapper called Chicago home, we proud of it), with over 350 releases. It’s hard Alligator Records Shares had Alligator Records. This month Alligator is to do justice to that many records and fifty Fifty Years of Sizzling Blues celebrating its fiftieth anniversary with a two-LP years of history in a single release, even if the from Its Vaults and expanded three-CD set, “50 Years Of triple CD boasts fifty-eight tracks. (The double Genuine Houserockin’ Music.” Founder Bruce vinyl holds twenty-four, six cuts per side). I’m By Craig Bechtel Iglauer recounts in liner notes that the label sure that picking just one track to include for was born in January 1970 when he saw each artist was as difficult as choosing a Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers favorite child. I don’t know how many kids JUNE 2021 Newcity perform at Florence’s Lounge, a little South Iglauer has—I’ve just got the one, so it’s easy Side bar he describes as “on a gritty side for me. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to say his street of run-down houses, on a snowy first love is the blues. Sunday afternoon.” Iglauer had moved to Chicago to immerse himself in the blues, As he says about that Sunday afternoon and inspired by this performance, he started show at Florence’s, Alligator’s brand was to Alligator Records and released that trio’s become the blues that isn’t sad blues. “It was self-titled debut in the spring of 1971. blues to make you forget your blues, to make you holler and dance and throw away your Since then, under Iglauer’s leadership, A&R troubles. But it could turn serious, slow and and production touch, Alligator Records, cathartic.” Naturally, the collection begins with operating under the slogan, “Genuine House- a cut from that first record, the debut of Hound rockin’ Music,” has become the largest and Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers doing a 51
driving “Give Me Back My Wig.” He’s right Rockin’ Blues,” the quality of the female- on target when he calls the sound the trio fronted talent catalogued here is top-notch. produces a “glorious racket,” with Taylor’s Saffire—The Uppity Blues Women were an plaintive tenor and six-fingered guitar-playing, acoustic trio from Virginia, and on “Sloppy Drunk” from 1991’s “Hot Flash,” one of eight with a steel slide on his fifth, fronting the fray and throbbing bass from Brewer Phillips and albums they recorded for Alligator between 1990 and 2009, the late Ann Rabson sings Ted Harvey inserting unfussy but cymbal- and plays a boogie-woogie piano part and tells dense drums. a tale of preferring a bottle over a past partner. “The Queen Of The Blues,” by Koko Taylor Speaking of boogie-woogie, “The Swamp follows, doing her gender reversal of a Bo Boogie Queen” Katie Webster came out of Diddley classic on “I’m A Woman.” (Koko retirement in the early 1980s and cut three is no relation to Hound Dog.) It’s clear from albums for Alligator, including 1989’s the guttural growl at the outset why she “Two-Fisted Mama!” The searing “I’m Still MUSIC TOP 5 became a Chicago blues institution and her Leaving You” is punctuated by Webster’s 1 Liz Phair. Soberish. Based talent became a keystone of the Alligator label, mellifluous keyboard run that seems to sparkle on its early singles, the indie beginning in 1974 with “I Got What It Takes.” like Louisiana bayou waters as the sun sets demigod’s first album in eleven years She wrote this track for her 1978 release, “The on a summer evening. runs true to form: staggeringly smart, confrontational lyrics set to music so Earthshaker,” and the song was just that; she Living Chicago blues landmark Mavis Staples shaggy it’s almost an afterthought. Available June 4 sang the anthem at every live show for the came out of retirement (she was only sixty-five 2 Dennis DeYoung. 26 East, next thirty years, until her death in 2009, at the time) for 2004’s “Have A Little Faith,” Vol 2. A year ago the former Styx frontman released Volume 1, shortly after performing at the Blues Music his first solo album in more than a Awards and winning her twenty-ninth award. and the passionate “There’s A Devil On The decade; now he delivers its sequel— Loose” serves as a cautionary tale arising from which he’s also announced as his swan song. Available now The talents of harmonica masters Big Walter the post-9/11 milieu. Marcia Ball celebrates 3 Liquid Soul. Lost Soul, Vol. 1. Horton and Carey Bell, his mentee, are New Orleans as a “Party Town” from 2008’s The album collects propulsive live performances by saxophonist- enough to make me holler “Have Mercy” “Peace, Love & BBQ,” one of seven albums composer Mars Williams’ funk- meets-free-jazz octet, from a when listening to their 1972 instrumental duet. she’s recorded for Alligator, and another 2008 decade, beginning in 1993, when release, Janiva Magness’ “What Love Will Do” they were fixtures at Elbo Room Fenton Robinson’s “Somebody Loan Me A and Double Door. Available now is represented with a rocking, funky cut. The Dime,” from 1974, predicts the sweet soul 4 Course. A Late Hour. Based and tone of Robert Cray, who teamed up with Grammy nominee has released fifteen albums, on the opulent texture of its Johnny Copeland and Albert Collins for 1985’s three for Alligator. While we’re on the topic first single, “Give It All Away,” the “Showdown,” still Alligator’s best-selling album, of Grammy nominees, it’s fantastic to see synth-pop ensemble’s debut album Shemekia Copeland’s “Clotilda’s On Fire” promises to be a gorgeously layered from which “The Dream” is drawn. The label souffle of lush, dreamy soundscapes. included. Copeland cut her first record for Available now released records for seven years before it the label at age eighteen, her 2018 release 5 Old Joy. Trash Your Life. signed its first non-Chicagoan, Collins as a Singer-songwriter Alex Reindl “America’s Child” was my choice for the most bills this project as “scum pop” solo artist, and the Houstonian’s talents as and “power trash,” and it does “the Master of the Telecaster” are on abundant important record of the year, and if anything, plumb the underside of contemporary 2020’s “Uncivil War” was better. life; but the tunes themselves are display on “Blue Monday Hangover,” from surprisingly polished and infectious. Available now 1980’s “Frostbite,” co-produced by Iglauer Even though at first blush the three-disc 52 and Dick Shurman. collection may seem front-loaded with a more More harmonica histrionics blare forth in the recognizable stable of stars, it’s a tribute to form of William Clarke’s “Pawnshop Bound” Iglauer (and his team, he would be quick and “Little Car Blues,” another Carey Bell to credit) that the entire survey is of such collaboration, but this time 1990’s “Harp consistent quality. While there are reliable Attack” included James Cotton (who played stalwarts sprinkled throughout, like Roomful with Muddy Waters for ten years until embark- of Blues, The Kinsey Report, Billy Boy Arnold, Joe Louis Walker, Billy Branch & The Sons ing on a solo career in the mid-1960s), Of Blues, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials and Junior Wells and Billy Branch. Bell also a track from 2020’s “100 Years Of Blues” appears solo on disc two with “I Got A Rich collaboration between veterans Elvin Bishop Man’s Woman” from 1995’s “Deep Down.” and Charlie Musselwhite, there are also Professor Longhair’s final record, 1980’s up-and-comers like Christone “Kingfish” “Crawfish Fiesta,” capped off a career of almost Ingram, Selwyn Birchwood (whose title cut to 2021’s “Living In A Burning House” is included) forty years, and on this, his favorite album, he teamed with Dr. John on guitar. His driving and the whole glorious affair fittingly concludes with Toronzo Cannon’s rocking track, “The yet creative piano dexterity and almost silly Chicago Way.” “Second City? Try second sounding tenor on “It’s My Fault, Darling,” to none,” Cannon barks fiercely, and that backed with a bracing horn section that propels its ambling gait is yet another highlight. also sums up the fifty year legacy of Alligator. And if you’re counting, we’re only on the first Unless you’re an Alligator completist, or Newcity JUNE 2021 CD, and we haven’t mentioned Son Seals a blues encyclopedist, there must be an (Alligator’s third signing, who recorded eight embarrassment—an intensity of blues albums for the label, beginning in 1976), Texan blues guitar hero Johnny Winter, Luther bordering on a shade of navy black— of music new to you among much that Allison, Lonnie Mack and Brooks back to perhaps isn’t. But even if you have all 350- back (both of whom appear live), Clarence plus records Alligator has provided to the “Gatemouth” Brown and many more. world since 1971, this collection is all killer, While percentage-wise, the guys significantly no filler, and it’s fantastic to have so much outnumber the gals on “Fifty Years of House- richness in such a compact package.
Lucky Plush Productions Stage will create a new piece on the Harris stage for “The Map of Now.” Multiplayer “When I saw the announcement, I couldn’t Links Hall and audiences don’t travel out of their Mode wrap my brain around it,” says Julia way to see a show, either from the North Side Rhoads, founder and director of Lucky Plush to the South Side, or my students at University The Map of Now Gamifies the Productions, of the Harris Theater Creative of Chicago getting out of their Hyde Park Virtual Performance Festival Future Fund—project financing created to bubble. The thought about doing something support artists through the pandemic through that maps the richness, the ecology of our By Sharon Hoyer the theater’s Virtual Stage platform. “We’re performing arts field—and literally with the not in the studio right now. I was so not geography on the map—began to excite me.” interested in going in a place with masks.” JUNE 2021 Newcity Rhoads contacted four venues to co-host But as Rhoads mulled over the possibilities, “The Map of Now” festival, which runs June 25 the pieces for a different sort of virtual festival and 26: Links Hall, Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre, fell into place. Through the Neo-Futurists, the Logan Center for the Arts and the Harris Rhoads learned about GatherTown, a video Theater. “I didn’t want to micro-manage platform that combines streaming services curation,” she says. “I wanted venues to tap and virtual meeting spaces in a videogame into artists they regularly partner with and feel interface. Attendees create an avatar they are part of the ecology of their space.” maneuver through a “Mario”-esque 16-bit graphic map, enter meeting or performance The result is a multidisciplinary lineup that rooms, chat with other avatars (attendees), is still to be finalized. Confirmed performers and stumble across surprise hyperobjects. include writer and theater artist Chloe Johnston, and dancers Darling Shear and “I thought about GatherTown and my work at Sojourner Zenobia at Links Hall; tap and University of Chicago. It’s hard to connect footwork dancers Bril Barrett and Donnetta audiences across their habits of where they Jackson, musician Sam Trump and poet consume performances,” Rhoads says. “Lucky avery r. young at the Logan Center; BAPS Plush has performed from Washington Park to Comedy and storyteller Jeremy Owens the Logan Center in Hyde Park to up north at courtesy Steppenwolf; and Lucky Plush at 53
STAGE TOP 5 Sojourner Zenobia will perform at Links Hall as part of “The Map 1 Ohio State Murders. of Now.”/Photo: Eric Rejman Goodman Theatre Live Stream. Tiffany Nichole Greene directs the Harris. Performances are pre-recorded plus an option to attach to a guide for a Adrienne Kennedy’s story of a writer and relatively short—seven to nine minutes pre-programmed tour. Rhoads said recording returning to her alma mater, where she on average—and shot, for the most part, links will be provided for ticket holders who was one of the few Black students in on partner venue stages. Steppenwolf 1700, missed a performance they wanted to see. 1949, to reveal the truth of a life lived which opted on the side of caution and did “My fear is that people will feel like they failed in the shadows. June 17-20 not allow activity in the theater space, was at something or missed what they paid for, the exception. Instead, Steppenwolf served so we’ll make it available later,” she says. 2 Zafiro Flamenco. North Shore as curator for films created off-site by artists “But part of the fun is getting lost a little bit Center for the Performing Arts in their LookOut Series. and happening into a conversation.” and streaming live. Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theatre celebrates So how does the whole thing work? Audience “The Map of Now” comes at what many of us their forty-fifth anniversary with an members buy a sliding-scale ticket, then sign hope is the cusp of live theater’s return. But outdoor concert featuring works in during the performance times to create an crowds filling large venues is still a way off, and choreographed by Wendy Clinard avatar and explore the map of Chicago, walking big, iconic Chicago theaters have already laid and Grammy-winning Nino de los to the four host venues. Once inside, avatars fallow for well over a year. Rhoads has this at Reyes, and music by guitarist Paco top of mind as she and her collaborators in Fonta and dancer-percussionist- can chat with other attendees in the lobby guitarist José Mareno. June 18-20 and then enter virtual renderings of the theater. Lucky Plush consider their piece, the only one The avatars find a seat (it’s possible to sit with in “The Map of Now” filmed on the Harris stage. 3 Map of Now. Virtual. Lucky friends and chat in a separate window), then “What do you say to an audience that size, that Plush Productions, the Harris scale? What is the value of a body in space? Theater, Steppenwolf 1700, Links Hall a window opens with the streamed perfor- and Logan Center for the Arts present mances, which start every ten minutes or so. How do we expose the largeness of the space an interactive, choose-your-own- that speaks to the moment?” The expansive- adventure, retro-videogame-style festival of theater, dance, music and Rhoads says the map, which is still being ness of live theater, its power to heighten the comedy. June 25-26 drafted, will include other cultural landmarks spirit and create a collective thrill, sob or burst 4 Find Your Family. CultureBuilds. Long-standing storytelling and surprise interactive objects. “Your avatar of laughter from a group of strangers can collective 2nd Story teams up with only be achieved by bodies in shared space. Brave Space Alliance and Lawrence spawns at the Riverwalk, so we’re going to Hall to present Chris Thoren’s story That expansive energy, along with bear hugs about discovering her transfemme hopefully highlight some of the Art on the identity, and a conversation about and bare-faced smiles at neighbors, service how queer youth can find and build Mart. We’re going to have Garfield Park a chosen family. June 17 Conservatory for something on the West Side, workers and passersby, has been missing from Newcity JUNE 2021 our lives for far too long. “The Map of Now” 5 Wave Wall Moves. Navy and other places people would recognize, Pier’s Wave Wall Platform. See promises to provide a playful virtual reminder Chicago Dance has designated June like the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel. We’ll do the Chicago Dance Month, and presents Neo-Futurists with something to click on, like of what it will be like to once again gather, have free pop-up performances Saturdays, chance encounters, and together experience including works by Winifred Haun & a short play. We’ll probably do something Dancers, Red Clay Dance Company, with Hideout so there’s a music object people the alchemic power of live art. Joel Hall Dancers, Simantikos Dance, Culture Shock Chicago and more. can click on and hear.” June 5-September 4 “The Map of Now” virtual festival, 54 Tutorials of the map and GatherTown platform June 25-26, 5-730pm. $5-$50, tickets will be available for the less-technically inclined, at luckyplush.com/map-of-now
JUNE 2021 Newcity 55 eviews Installation view, “Reproductive: Health, Fertility, and Agency,” Museum of Contemporary Photography 2021. Ebony G. Patterson, “she is land…she is the mourning…,” /Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago
Review Fess Grandiose the acid lounge. And there’s even more from MIIRRORS, The Imperial Boxmen, Neptune’s Cove, Gramps the Vamp and Adem Dalipi. “Situation Chicago 2” is available for download from May 21; a vinyl edition with fewer tracks follows in July, courtesy of Chicago-based nonprofit Quiet Pterodactyl. Proceeds from the album will provide financial aid for Chicago musicians through the CIVL SAVE Emergency Relief Fund. For more background, I direct you to CIVL’s website. But first, let me steer you to the music itself. As a document of the Chicago music scene’s vitality, diversity and spirit, “Situation Chicago 2” is just what we need, when we most need it. (Robert Rodi) Situation Chicago 2 is available for preorder on the Situation Chicago website. Art Boundary Crossing A Review of Christina Quarles at the MCA Newcity JUNE 2021 Music people who love house can easily The paintings of Christina Quarles are arrange to hear nothing but house— all about boundaries: the boundary as Cool Aid ditto lovers of shoegaze and aficiona- threshold, as surface, as canvas, as A Review of Situation Chicago 2 dos of K-pop. “Situation Chicago 2” skin. Largely focused on the figure—or does an outstanding job of juxtaposing perhaps more accurately, the body— When we last spoke to Chicago artists and tunes to bring home the Quarles twists and contorts them as Independent Venues League (CIVL) a staggering sonic and stylistic range we they reach out, wrapping themselves little over a year ago, the view of the deny ourselves when we return too around one another until the multiple pandemic by the coalition of local club often to the same genre well. This is an bodies appear as one. In her piece owners was eerily prophetic. In the album in which the Goddamn Gallows’ “Peer Amid (Peered Amidst),” we see words of Subterranean owner Robert punk-metal scorcher “The Maker” (“I’m multiple heads and arms attached to Gomez, “We were among the first to the one to decide your fate / I take bodies that are stacked together, be closed… and we will be the you betrayers / Take you down, bring obscuring the individual figures’ borders absolute last to be allowed to reopen.” you down while you’re burning at the until we cannot tell where one person stake”) is followed by the charmingly ends and the other begins. This is one In recent weeks, live music has finally airy nap rock of V.V. Lightbody’s “Really of the borders Quarles complicates: been returning in earnest, but it’s a Do Care” (“I can’t take you anywhere / the body, the skin. Not only does the long way from flourishing. And the cost But I do, really do care / You may move artist intricately render her figures as if to both the venues and the musicians to anywhere / But I won’t really care”). they are molded together, but she also themselves will take a long time to modifies the skin itself. In a way akin redress. There’s something you can Hip-hop is represented by Robust’s to the work of Francis Bacon, the skin do about that—beyond, of course, “I Don’t Know Why” (“Feet gotta stay in Quarles’ paintings alternate from attending live shows—and it’s as grounded but that’s a deeper challenge dense to opaque to completely absent, simple as a download. / Most people think that I’m beneath with all levels of translucency present them till I’m leaping past ’em”); Celtic throughout. The textures that are “Situation Chicago 2” is a compilation of folk rock by the Avondale Ramblers’ formed through numerous ways of fourteen tracks by Chicago artists. It’s raucously witty drinking song, “One for applying paint to canvas create a wide the second such endeavor, following the Ditch” (“One for my sweetheart / variety of surfaces, all in one body. last year’s “Situation Chicago,” which One for the road / What the hell, give Washes of acrylic paint create dripping raised money for twenty-five indepen- me one for the ditch”); jazz with “flapper flesh that often appears as muscular dent venues that had been shut down. girl” Erin McDougald’s “The Parting tissue. In “Laid Down Beside Yew,” we This follow-up album is aimed at Glass,” another drinking song, this see what looks like tendons in a leg, providing similar relief to local musicians. one vintage (“Since it falls unto my lot / while rib-like shapes show through in That I should rise and you should not / the chest. What’s more, in that same Unsurprisingly, the tracks are all I’ll gentle rise and softly fall / Good night body, paint is missing, leaving us with excellent, but what is surprising is the and joy be with you all”). nothing but subtle outlines and bare range of genres, grooves and styles it canvas; ghostlike remnants of the body. offers. The vast digital landscape has Umphrey’s McGee teams up with The artist’s phenomenal use of paint made it possible for music consumers banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck; Jeff Parker informs her bodies in ways that leave (and I’m as guilty as anyone) to settle (Tortoise) provides funk-infused jazz; them fused together yet also disappear- comfortably into a bath of the familiar; HON3YBUN delivers the electronica, ing. This use of opacity complicates the 56
skin, as it becomes both solid and the surface of the canvas by oftentimes Parallel to her aesthetic strategies of Reviews see-through. The barrier of the skin leaving them both bare. The raw, beige bodily dismemberment and obfuscation, is broken; it is made fictitious and canvas is left exposed within the her picture planes have become less imaginary, leaving the bodies with bodies of the figures, but as a flat, contained and less uniform. In the four nothing to hold them back from floating plane. Throughout the exhibi- large-scale artworks, replete with becoming one. tion, our attention is drawn to these intricate detail, which anchor her places left bare, leaving us to determine current installation, “she is land…she The body, or rather, the skin, is not if the raw canvas is the surface of the is the mourning…” at Monique Meloche the only barrier that Quarles breaks skin, the boundary of the square plane Gallery, an assortment of faux flora and down in her paintings. The more or merely the background of the piece. fauna appear ready to spring out of obvious thresholds are the flat, square As the largest presentation of the compositional planes, propelled by planes of color that appear throughout artist’s work to date, there is much an unruly array of textured paper, embroidered appliqué and costume Christina Quarles, “When jewelry. While ill-fated insects and It’ll Dawn on Us, Then blades of grass creep toward the edges in her two works on paper, encased Will It Dawn on Us,” 2018. in oversized shadow boxes, a lone © Christina Quarles / specimen has escaped. Heed the sly Courtesy of the artist, iguana roosting atop the picture frame, her neck craned upwards and trium- Regen Projects and Pilar phant. Patterson’s tapestries similarly Corrias Gallery threaten to unravel in the effortless drip of fringe, tassels and beads that pool onto the floor in lugubrious piles. her works in the show. These some- to examine, absorb and tease out The beauty of Patterson’s recent JUNE 2021 Newcity times exist as flat blocks of pattern, like throughout the show. Christina Quarles’ work lies in her ability to depict person- in “When It’ll Dawn on Us,” while other distinct and intricate use of paint hoods as complex and expansive times they act as floating planes that combined with her complicated and ecosystems. No single body can hold dissect the figures, as in “Never Believe impressive fusion of boundaries all of the life that she lays claim to. It’s Not So (Never Believe/ It’s Not So).” compels the viewer to question their Lived experience bursts at the tattered The latter piece is the most ambitious own boundaries, whether they are seams of her tapestry and paper work in the exhibition, as it consists of self-imposed, artificially constructed or collage reliefs. Patterson’s bodies are three large canvases, each wrapped simply imaginary. (Christina Nafziger) free from the confines of direct repre- around a wall in the middle of a gallery. sentation—flesh and form are sub- As one of the highlights of the show, Christina Quarles, MCA, 220 East sumed by vibrant textiles and explosive it depicts three flat planes that are Chicago, through September 5. paper. There are striking moments used as a device to obscure a bound- where a fully formed figure threatens ary once more. In the middle section All That She Is to appear: in a tapestry titled “…the of the painting, a square shape floats A Review of Ebony G. Patterson wailing…guides us home…and there with several limbs coming out of its at Monique Meloche is a bellying on the land…,” an acepha- surface. It is as if this solid square lous feminine body poses with arms allows bodies to pass through it, yet Over a decade ago, artist Ebony G. stretched high and hands clasped to it also functions as a window, cutting Patterson adhered to standard modes form a void. In this headless space, off our view of part of the body. The of portraiture, depicting her subjects leaves sprout, a white floret blooms boundary is broken again. Like the skin either in full-length form or from the and a hummingbird begins to flutter by. of the figures, these planes of color are shoulders up. Despite interrupting This space could have held the trace of sometimes transparent and sometimes traditions—perching her figures against bodily trauma, but Patterson instead as solid as the ground we walk upon. highly patterned grounds with flesh imbues the cavity with life, elation and Similarly to the changing opacities of often decorated or even obscured by new beginnings. skin, sometimes bodies are permitted ornamentation—she depicted un- to pass through the planes, while other abridged subjects, their limbs and Patterson’s work often deals with times they are not. heads intact. But over time, Patterson’s tragic narratives around murder, practice has increasingly refused violence and the curtailed lives of Black The skin is a surface, a threshold, a straightforward figuration. The body youth. Her work still operates within a border. Quarles cleverly merges the as a whole has been lost and her visual idiom of mourning, recalling vigils function of the surface of the skin with subjects are richer for it. and memorials, as manifested by a black funerary ribbon reading “Beloved,” as well as a wake of glittering vultures crowded at the floor. For all these icons of grief, her recent work is overwhelm- ingly a celebration of Black life and Black joy. Through signs of spring and signs of resistance, her flourishing compositions challenge what a portrait of a life can or should look like and offer a jubilant eulogy for all that the epony- mous “she” is. (Alexandra Drexelius) “she is land…she is the mourning…,” through June 12 at Monique Meloche Gallery, 451 North Paulina. 57
Review Fostering Culture “Kour Pour: Familiar A Review of Kour Pour at Kavi Gupta Spirits” (installation view). The magic of Kour Pour’s “Familiar courtesy of the artist Spirits,” his first exhibition with Kavi and Kavi Gupta/ Gupta, lies in its treatment of repetition. In twenty-one separate works, the Photo: John Lusis British-born artist presents and explores a single visual motif: the tiger. Through a preponderance of clear blacks and primary hues laid on paper and raw cotton duck, we witness this awesome creature in action and in repose, as something both ferocious and flippant. Newcity JUNE 2021 Despite the title’s suggestion, there’s geographic origin, culture is a process On entering the gallery, the first nothing diaphanous or ethereal about born of reuse and repetition. And piece, “Regula,” suggests that the Pour’s tigers. They, like the paint that therein lies the magic. (Alan Pocaro) show might be an homage to pre- gives them life and form, are firm and Columbian textiles like the spectacular opaque. Rendered in the fashion of “Kour Pour: Familiar Spirits,” examples from Peru at the Brooklyn traditional East Asian stylizations, they’re through June 27 at Kavi Gupta, Museum. The single figure is so accentuated by chromatic counterpoints 835 West Washington. eruptive, present and profound. that echo the simple colors of Miro and Down at her stomach, she holds her Mondrian. Pour achieves this concrete Joyful Threads, Wacky Images head in her hands while ribbons of effect by a handsome combination of A Review of Christina Forrer at vibrant color emanate from the severed relief printing—carving an image into Corbett Vs. Dempsey neck, suggesting a meditation practice. a pliable surface such as wood or It gives hope that this body of work linoleum and covering it with pigment— Paint seems the natural medium for will be more cosmic and less comic and straight-ahead paint application: expressionist art. It can be brushed, than our local fifty-year tradition of a material fusion of east and west. sprayed, thrown, dripped, squeezed, Imagism. Yet it is precisely that tradition And while Pour’s formal themes and troweled—you name it—all instanta- which the artist invokes in the title technical approach is unmistakably clear, neously, and it can feel that way, too. piece for this exhibition, “November their meanings are more ambiguous. More laborious and often-collaborative Calling April (Zurich to Chicago).” It graphic media, like mosaic, stained presents the only text included in any Over the course of the past decade, glass, or tapestry, not so much. But of Forrer’s tapestries, here or online: the artist’s creative practice has been when those media do give a feeling of “RING!” goes the cartoon telephone driven largely by appropriation. In its spontaneity—wow! That unexpected that’s receiving the call. And the postmodern sense, appropriation is a thrill can overwhelm anything else the exhibition is accompanied by a darkly radical act. It productively destabilizes image might convey. And so it is that humorous cartoon zine that serves bourgeois notions of originality in an pious medieval church windows can as its catalog. The artist was born effort to resist commodification and attract secular viewers in the modern in Switzerland and now lives in Los expand the possible. In its contempo- era—and Christina Forrer’s tapestries Angeles, but her inner edgy teenager rary sense, appropriation is typically can captivate me despite my puzzle- has always been Chicagoan. preceded by the adjective “cultural” ment and discomfort with most of the and it is leveled as an indictment. narratives presented. They feel so These are pieces that may appear much more fresh and alive than, for awkward from a distance, yet this Pour, and by extension his works, example, the expressionist tapestries viewer couldn’t help being drawn evade these charges partly as a of Ernst Kirschner, probably because closer to their vibrant surfaces and consequence of his status as an Kirschner’s were woven by a hand enveloped by their luxuriant, colorful immigrant, but primarily as a result of other than his own.“Winter” is the only world. It’s a world of self discovery his interest in, and compelling use of, conventional narrative here: snow is and merry, big-toothed creatures, the notion of fostering. “Foster means falling, a warmly dressed skater slides threatening not because they are cruel, taking care of something that isn’t across a frozen pond, a wolf howls at angry or malevolent, but just because necessarily yours. It means nurturing the moon, a house cat stares out from they are anxiety felt by a child. We something temporarily in your care,” a nearby tree. No special knowledge have entered a nursery of fairy tales he says. For Pour, using images that of art, myth or psychology is required. for children rather than a temple of aren’t one’s own isn’t visual or cultural It’s what you might call folk art, and it mythology for adults. That doesn’t piracy, it’s a charge of responsibility. feels warm and cheerful. In fabric art, make the visuality any less virtuosic. there are no hard edges, no continuous Forrer is a master of formal energy. Whether in his application of Persian lines and no pictorial space. But But it would make the content more miniatures, Japanese Ukiyo-e, or as Forrer’s interwoven threads give a disposable, if you ever manage to in the case of the current exhibition, pretty good idea of what’s happening. outgrow it. (Chris Miller) Chinese and Korean tigers, Kour’s What’s especially remarkable is the seriousness of purpose is exemplified raggedy profile of the frigid skater’s “Christina Forrer: November Calls April,” by the multiplicity of works on view. face. It projects so much excitement, on view at Corbett vs. Dempsey, This isn’t some aesthetic smash-and- wonder and action. 2156 West Fulton, through June 12 grab, but rather a sustained engagement with visual ideas that undercut the notion that employing the imagery of other cultures is simple theft. Kour’s work shows us that no matter its ethnic or 58
50 The 2020 Design Issue DECEMBER 2020 DESIGNERS OF THE MOMENT NEWCITY 1 MAY 2020 SEPTEMBER 2020 DISCOVERFEATURING MARIA G A S PA R AND FALL THE CITYARTS BENEATTHHEPREVIEW SURFACE WHAT’S GOING ON ARTISTS, POETS AND WRITERS RESPOND TO June 2020 NOVEMBER 2020 RACIAL INJUSTICE AND POLICE BRUTALITY JULY 2020 WHAT’S GOING ON JUNE 2020 Newcity TORONZO CANNON 1 A SPECIAL ISSUE: GUEST EDITED BY Scoop Jackson A ND Tara Betts JUNE 2019 FEBRUARY 2021 WHO REALLY BOOKS IN CHICAGO 35th Anniversary Spectacular + EVE EWING APRIL 2020 CHICAGO’S DFroiondk &50 Mariya Russell OF KIKKO FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity 1 Subscribe at Newcity.com/subscribe
CHICAGO COMICS OPENING SOON: LIVE JAZZ IS BACK! FATHER’S DAY AT THE CHICAGO COMICS: 1960s JUN 1–AUG 31, 2021 MCA STORE TO NOW Our free summer jazz series Looking for something JUN 19–OCT 3, 2021 returns to the terrace on Tuesday unique? Find gifts by Dive into the stories and art evenings. Reserve your spot local makers that are form of Chicago’s vibrant and find this season’s schedule sure to delight. Shop at community of cartoonists. at mcachicago.org/jazz. mcachicagostore.org. Reserve tickets in advance. MUSEUM OF #MCAMadeYouLook MCA CONTEMPORARY ART mcachicago.org/Look CHICAGO mcachicago.org/look
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