surroundings, in nature, his pets, in encounters different approaches, succeeding sometimes, after college I ended up in Denver. I was drawn with strangers. And he exhibits an unquench- and failing other times, and kind of learning in there by the weather and incredible affordabili- able thirst for knowledge and spirituality of a real time what worked for me and what didn’t. ty. I paid $175 for a room with all utilities paid higher and more intellectual order. In between and free cable! In the heart of the city. his stories about his life, we get mini-treatises I’ve always been attracted to formal simplicity on natural phenomena, metaphysical in art, whether it’s painting or writing or After that I traveled around from coast to meditations on life and love found in poetry, filmmaking, poetry, or music... That’s what coast, coming back to Chicagoland at times, and lists of things that are inspiring him. was in my blood. My comics just naturally basically following cheap rent and creative evolved that way. They were always simple— opportunities, until I ended up in Beloit ten We spoke recently via telephone but maybe crude—and gradually I found years ago. I kind of half-jokingly tell people and email. ways to refine that simplicity. Where I was I live as close to Chicago as I can afford. It’s once energized by the ugliness of a line, I a good middle ground. I’m an hour or so Do you see your life’s work basically as an began to be energized by making a more from Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, but it’s ongoing memoir, recorded as it's lived? graceful arc. I think there’s still a bit of that affordable, relatively quiet, with lots of open original crudity—the physicality of drawing space around. I miss the creative energy of Yeah, I do, at this point... At the city life, but I also don’t know if my nervous beginning it was all just doing stuff a line with ink on paper— system is capable of handling it anymore. as it came to me, without much but it’s been harnessed thought—although even at the in a different direction. There is a certain Midwestern kind of cartoon- beginning I knew I wanted King-Cat ing school—that emphasizes the everyday, to be something open enough that, I should note that this with a kind of gentle, loping humor—that I as my life changed over time, the zine was never something I think I fit into. It’s an art informed by the feel could change along with it. At some approached consciously, of the Midwest. Historically, Chicago has been point, I realized what was happening more I always wanted a center of cartooning since its very earliest with King-Cat—that it was docu- King-Cat, my comics, to days. There’s a line that runs from Clare menting, in small pieces, one just naturally be what they Briggs, Harold Gray, Frank King through to continuous stream of experience— wanted to be. I basically the Imagists (enormous heroes of mine and a and that started to become more wanted to get down on big reason I make comics) and contemporary of a conscious focus of mine. paper the comics I saw in my head. That Chicago-adjacent cartoonists like Lynda Barry, was true at the beginning and still true today. Chris Ware, Kevin Huizenga and Keiler Roberts. Early on I was living a kind of wild life—playing I’m happy to have lucked into encountering in bands, traveling constantly, drinking to For much of your life, you’ve lived just that stream. excess... Trying to cram as much experience outside of Chicago—in the suburbs, into my life as I could—so there was always Beloit. What’s your relationship to the Subscriptions and single issues of King-Cat something to write about, even if I was writing city from this perspective and how did it are available at spitandahalf.com about really mundane things like walking inform your art? around the neighborhood, or going grocery shopping. I would go out into the world and I grew up in Virtual with The Book Cellar have some experience and then almost Jefferson Park and immediately sit down and write about it. as a little kid the Book Cellar Book Club Matthew Gavin Frank As time went on, things quieted down a bit. city was all I knew. A big turning point was in the mid-nineties The summer of February 3, 7pm CST “Flight of the Diamond when my health issues began. I had no choice 1979 we moved out Smugglers: A Tale of but to slow down and tone down that kind of to Hoffman Estates, Edward McClelland Pigeons, Obsession crazy life I’d been leading. So you slow down, and it felt like living and Greed Along and naturally you start to reflect. It was in in the country. “Midnight in Vehicle City: Coastal South Africa” those years where I began to look back more There were still General Motors, Flint and in conversation with often—to write about events in my life, but working farms in the Strike That Created Kathleen Rooney with the added perspective of some years to the area, and lots of the Middle Class” help put things together. That’s where I start woods and fields to February 5, 7pm CST February 24, 7pm CST to see the slight distinction between diaristic get lost in. It was writing and what you might call memoir. then I developed a Afterwords Never Too Old love and apprecia- Book Group Can you talk about the evolution of your tion for nature. In A YA Book Club drawing and storytelling style? junior high, high February 8, 5:30pm for Adults school, I took every and 7pm CST I was a punk-rock kid, so I was really into the art class they February 24, 7:30pm CST idea of spontaneity, throwing stuff down on offered, and we Racial Justice paper and letting it stand, warts and all. I would take field Book Club FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity didn’t do much refining or editing... just kept trips into the city to the ball rolling. But you do something long go to Art Expo, or February 8, 6:30pm CST enough and you can’t help but get better at it. visit the galleries in In those days there were no schools where River North. I was Go to our website for virtual event details, they taught you how to make comics. I was in an adolescent then book clubs and more! art school at NIU, getting a degree in painting, and saw the city but if you mentioned to your instructors you through romantic, Your Independent Book Store in Lincoln Square! were interested in comics back then it wasn’t artistic eyes. even so much as an eye-roll as a kind of “get Though I lived in 4736-38 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago away from me” disgust. So, with King-Cat, I the suburbs, the 773.293.2665 • bookcellarinc.com was teaching myself how to make comics as I city itself always felt went along. Basically woodshedding. The early like home to me. years of King-Cat were me trying all kinds of I always assumed I’d go back, but 51
Music Heavy Meta reflected in a lyric in “Fall Apart” (“And you may think you let me go / But there's something Daniel Knox Goes Beyond the Concept Album you should know / I’m gonna show up in a dream / You’re gonna have a hard time letting By Robert Rodi go”), and, after that, in “I Saw Someone Alone” (“I heard a voice under my bed / Sounded like Newcity FEBRUARY 2021 When you drop the needle, metaphorically evocation of our recently departed former something you once said”). or otherwise, on Daniel Knox’s new album, chief executive. “Won’t You Take Me With You,” you’re greeted There are similar resonances throughout the by “King of the Ball,” a rousing cut with a But as you listen to the rest of the album, you album. In “Fool In the Heart”—one of the highly syncopated, music-hall vibe that is notice resonances. The next tune—“Vinegar early singles from the album, and, again, a paired with lyrics describing a state of trium- Hill,” with a salsa rhythm and lilting melody tune in which an irresistible melodic hook is phant sociopathy. (“I want the piece I walked in matched to lyrics about anxiety, aggrievement used to bear a kind of Gallic wisdom and the door with / I want the dollar they started and aggression—features a passage that world-weariness—we hear this: “At the hotel the store with… What absolutely kills you recalls the assaultive vibe of its predecessor. in the parking lot / Turning around, forget makes me tall.\") It’s something you could (“Do you know what I'm thinking? / What do what you saw / The flesh and the ash, the imagine on a back-alley stage in the Weimar you think I'm about? / I’m gonna get in your money to burn.” Then in the almost liturgical, Republic, as well as a seemingly spot-on head and kick my way out.”) Which, in turn, is synth-and-feedback-heavy “Look at Me,” we get this, repeated like a mantra: “I climbed 52
into a stranger’s car / Goodbye / Farewell / What Knox is attempting is to chart an MUSIC TOP 5 FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity And au revoir.” The next cut, “I Saw Someone emotional and aesthetic landscape using a Alone,” picks up on the imagery: “I saw highly personal set of images: the departing 1 Ron Mazurek & Exploding someone alone in a parked car / That made car, the darkened shopping mall, someone Star Orchestra. Stardust. me wonder where you are / For all this time / disappearing. We talk about musicians Mazurek may be an expat these Were you a friend of mine?/ You leave a trail building a body of work, but Knox is doing so days (trading Chicago for Marfa), but where you go.” Followed by this, from “Lights in the truest sense. He’s creating a conversa- his latest album features a bevy of Out”: “I'm outside in the car / Miles from tion across his entire recorded output. (“Won’t hometown luminaries, including where you are / If it gets dark this time, it You Take Me With You” is his eighth studio Damon Locks and Ohmme’s really will be / I’ll keep you off my mind if it release—though two earlier 2020 albums were Macie Stewart, in an exhilarating, kills me”—the last phrase of which doubles devoted to tunes from “Twin Peaks” and songs adventurous, genre-embracing set. back to the imagery described in the first composed by Mister Rogers.) The result is the two paragraphs of this review. establishment not merely of a musical identity 2 Emily Kuhn. Sky Stories. but an emotional and iconographic one as well. The jazz trumpeter-bandleader- What becomes clear on repeated listening (I’ve Knox is playing a very long game, one that has composer’s lush, unabashedly only had the chance to go through it three now—more than a dozen years into his charming debut showcases two times, so far—I expect further revelations as I career—begun to pay off. distinct ensembles: a double- live with the album over the coming weeks) is trumpet-driven quartet and a that Knox is creating something marvelously The song in the current set that best embod- chamber-jazz nonet comprising new: a meta-narrative, in which events and ies this is “Girl from Carbondale,” which is all string quartet, vocals, trumpet, images, largely autobiographical, are refracted about memories—and not merely those of saxophone, bass and drums. differently through individual songs and the title character. “This is the part about the musical stylings. After even a single focused house I never saw,” Knox sings; “Outside of 3 Wrong War. Fixed Against listen, you come away with an understanding pictures and memories / And a Christmas on Forever. If any period has of what Daniel Knox is singing about—not so TV / Glass of wine / Half full / All day, all night warranted a revival of primal-scream much a clean, linear, narrative comprehension, / It was something that could start a fight / Or punk, it’s this one. Wrong War was but a constantly shifting, highly subjective forget about the whole thing / And tell a story formed in 2019 by former members emotional one. Knox is mining his experiences over by the sink.” of Current, Ottawa, Calvary, The not simply for material, but for a stab at poetic Phenoms and Salvo Beta; this universality. When he recounts a bout of If I’ve made too lofty a case for this new blistering debut was released, suicidal musings—“Crash your car into the album—though make no mistake, it takes fittingly, on Election Day. side of the road you stupid old man / If you extraordinary vision and persistence to think that gets you where you're going / If you achieve something new in the singer-song- 4 Matt LeGrand. Matt LeGrand. think it makes you more than just a / Fool in writer sweepstakes at this late stage of our Chicago’s self-anointed the heart”—it informs what we hear when he exhausted mass culture—let me conclude “Prince of Pop” makes a good case later sings, “I drive a lonely road / Sing in a by extolling Knox’s voice. It’s a baritone of why you should bend the knee. In meaningless code / Backwards and forwards / such profound ripeness, it almost sounds— his suave, self-titled EP, he coos and Following orders / Look for my hand in the for a few bars, anyway—like someone’s croons through a half-dozen cuts of night / I thought you just might.” Each song is having you on, in a sort of, “What If Morgan seductive, state-of-the-art urban self-contained, but there are wormholes that Freeman could sing?” kind of way. But you pop. connect them, forming a cat's-cradle of soon enough lock onto the sheer silken parallel universes. splendor of this amazing instrument. Knox's 5 Nino Augustine & Lester vibrato can, on first hearing, be uncomfort- Rey. De Paseo a la Luna. Two Your first thought here may be, as mine was, able; it’s very wide, not at all the fashion. But Latin music masters bring Panama “Ah, concept album!” But that term—never you find yourself happily succumbing to it; it and Puerto Rico together for a entirely satisfactorily defined, although has the same kind of comfort as a blanket tropical-infused “illustrative journey everyone pretends to know what it means—is that’s been through the wash. There’s an to the moon” that incorporates jettisoned when you note additional resonanc- ecstatic comfort, even as it comes apart in Afro-fusion, R&B and electronica. es to tunes outside this set, from other, earlier your hands. Beauty, after all, is fleeting. Daniel Knox albums (such as “Blue Car” from That’s the appeal of Daniel Knox: he gives his self-titled 2015 album: “You can't win / The you the terror and the wonder of everything car will return / With no one behind the wheel / falling apart… and crystallizes that moment Then drive away”). of transcendent dissolution. 53
Stage Brian Loevner Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux Newcity FEBRUARY 2021 Cruel to “A life well lived, as pertains to an arts commitments, and by remounting them in Be Kind? organization, is measured in the audience open-ended commercial runs. It sounded like it reaches, the cultural and educational a great idea, but the market ultimately failed Veteran theater executive mission it serves, the artistry it achieves, to support it. Before long, he was at Second Brian Loevner issues a bold and the many ways large and small City as managing producer, overseeing all manifesto for these times that it enriches its community. As with theatrical production in Chicago for the any person or movement, though, comedy behemoth. By Brian Hieggelke organizations necessarily and naturally come to an end.” Since then, Loevner took his experience 54 and hung out a consulting shingle under the —from “Cultural Triage” rubric of BLVE, with clients that include a wide range of organizations including Teatro I met Brian Loevner more than a decade Vista, Windy City Playhouse and the Poetry ago, when I was editing Newcity’s Stage Foundation. With so many clients in the section and spending a lot of time in theaters. performing arts, he’s had a front-row, if He was the executive director of Chicago not a boardroom seat at the carnage the Dramatists, bringing a blunt business pandemic is wreaking on the industry, which perspective that stood in stark and necessary he says has “some of the most resilient, contrast to the artistic director and face of smart, bighearted people in any arena.” the organization, the much-beloved Russ Tutterow. I was impressed with Loevner’s But beyond cheering for their survival, he ability to combine passion for art with a foresees the demise of many performing arts level-headed instinct for survival and growth. organizations as the effect of the pandemic plays out, and he believes that more is needed After almost a decade at Chicago Dramatists, than waiting it out with streaming events and Loevner left to start Chicago Commercial prayers for foundations to toss life preservers. Collective, a for-profit producer that aimed “It is vital that leaders not merely engage in a to take advantage of nonprofit theaters’ reflexive scramble for economic survival, but propensity to produce hits that had to close consider deeply existential questions about the before their time, owing to subscription-series
present viability and prospects for the survival people don’t like to hear about people STAGE TOP 5 FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity of organizations,” he writes in a white paper, closing down, or merging; it is somehow “Cultural Triage: Considerations for Funders indicative of weakness. I want to encourage 1 Fillet of Solo Festival. and Performing Arts Leaders in a Time of all types of partnerships. Mergers, co-produc- Lifeline Theatre. The twenty- Upheaval,” co-written with Ian Belknap. tions, operational collaboration, cohabitation, fourth-annual storytelling festival neighborhood partnerships. And yes, there presents fifteen storytelling It’s a bold manifesto, aimed primarily at is always reticence to change, but in this collectives and sixteen solo foundations and other funding organizations, moment, the potential fallout of following performers together, and includes the folks Loevner considers big-picture the status quo is huge. immigration stories curated by Moth stewards of “the broader cultural and Slam winner Nestor Gomez, LGBTQ performing arts ‘ecosystem’.” He suggests As for sunsetting, yes, no one wants to talk stories from OUTspoken!, and local two possible solutions to the existential inferno about closing down, and someone I talked live lit favorites. February 8-28 lit by the pandemic: merge or die gracefully. to did accuse me of trying to set up “death panels” for arts organizations... But closures 2 Here Lies Henry. The cost-saving benefits of a merger, in are going to continue in our community, and I Interrobang Theatre Project. consolidating the more mundane aspects of feel like we have a duty to help organizations Daniel McIvor’s Jeff-nominated operating a nonprofit, are apparent, but his to leave the industry with honor, respect and one-man play about the big imperative to help organizations recognize openness. We don’t know what audiences questions—life, death, beauty, the inevitable cycle of life before the house is will look like over the next two-to-five years. truth and lies—streams through the on fire is sure to be controversial, as reason- Things may go back to normal, but that month of February. February 5-25 able as it may be. might be short-lived. And whether it is or not, we should be prepared to help organiza- 3 Bechdel Fest 8: Realign. It was something I wondered about a decade tions that have to make a decision as difficult Broken Nose Theatre. Named or so ago, when I was in theaters four nights as closing down. after the famous Bechdel-Wallace a week (or more), as I observed that the Test, the annual festival gathers Darwinian nature of Chicago theater in the Think of “Cultural Triage” as helping the arts femme, female, trans and queer nineties had given way to a long period of ecology. For example, if a neighborhood has writers and actors in short plays organizational stability, as many companies multiple arts organizations, dance, theater, about topics other than men. Which celebrated fifteen, twenty or more years in visual art, museum, all nonprofits facing turns out to be quite a lot of things. existence. So many theater companies in change from the unknown of future ticket January 29-March 26 Chicago spring from and cling to the vision income, might they benefit from considering of their founders, and those founders were some consolidation of efforts? Sharing 4 Festival on the Square. aging. Would the organizations outlast them space, operations, fundraising, marketing or Congo Square Theatre and make the transition to new leaders, new production teams might be options. Bringing Company. The three-day benefit visions (and, one would hope, more leaders together not just similar organizations, but festival features collections of color)? organizations that serve the same audiences, of ten-minute plays by Black and can benefit from collaboration. playwrights, conversations with I was curious to hear more about how artists and a performance by Red “Cultural Triage” is being received, so I How has your proposal been received? Clay Dance Company. February 4-6 reached out to Brian with a few questions. So far, the proposal has been generally 5 Bolero. Joffrey Ballet. New Tell me about the genesis of the received well. There are always outliers and choreography by company “Cultural Triage” document. folks who simply don’t want to talk about member Yoshihisa Arai to Ravel’s anything that they don’t agree with, but iconic score will livestream from I have had a long relationship with the concept most foundations, service organizations and the Black Box Theatre in Joffrey of lifecycle in the nonprofit arts world. Since politicians that I have talked to have been Tower, along with a new short work the days of starting my own theater company respectful and supportive of the ideas. I have by rehearsal director Nicholas Blanc. in Chicago in the mid-nineties, I had been also spoken with a lot of press agents and February 12 wondering why arts leaders don’t have a other people who serve the arts community, better sense of what options they have and there is a lot of support for this kind of when their organizations need to make huge work in that part of the industry. changes. So when the pandemic hit, I was desperate to find ways to help all of my friends Any new clients? Or enemies? and favorite organizations. I thought that trying to promote these ideas, but instead of Most folks going through these explorations talking to them about it, talking to foundations, don't necessarily want publicity for the service organizations and municipalities about process, so I’ll hold off on naming names. what they can do to build support, funding But my team at BLVE is working with a few and programs to support organizations organizations that are ripe for reinvention. considering transformational change. As for enemies, none that I know, but when you're slinging wild notions of change in the You have a couple of suggestions that community, you always find some detractors. might be controversial for some, especial- ly arts leaders in the affected organiza- Our next step in the “Cultural Triage” process tions—specifically the suggestion that is to do data gathering with some perform- some organizations should merge and ing-arts organizations (and pay them to do it) that others should “sunset,” that is, go and find out what assets they have to reinvent out of business. Can you elaborate on themselves. Hopefully we can do that quickly your thinking here and use examples? and present that data to foundations and service organizations to inspire them to make I think sometimes the controversy is more funding and programs available to organiza- about the language than the concepts. Some tions that really want to explore change. 55
Reviews Bisa Butler. “The Safety Patrol,” 2018. Cavigga Family Trust Fund. © Bisa Butler Newcity FEBRUARY 2021 56
Art years of her artistic journey. Butler (Emily Jacir, “Where we come from,” Reviews brings presence and transparency to 2001-2003, detail: “Mahmoud”). Such A Vibrant Perspective “craft art” and women who quilt, two smoothness is suspicious: a line is a A Review of Bisa Butler aspects that are often overlooked in the strong form of argument. As montage at the Art Institute canon of western art history. Butler con- did to the moving image, the line’s solidates these concepts in her work juxtaposition, isomorphism and “Bisa Butler: Portraits,” on view at the with each thread. (Caira Moreira-Brown) temporal order makes the most Art Institute of Chicago, lets the viewer disparate expressions look like they into the artist’s vivid, multicolored Bisa Butler: Portraits,” through have always belonged together. But perspective, shown through more April 19, 2021. The Art Institute of here is the strength of “The Location than twenty quilted works. The walls Chicago, 111 South Michigan. of Lines”: the show does all but limit are adorned with large-scale textile a logical, historical or biographical portraits of African-American people. Presence, Distance, relationship between the works. The The painter-turned-mixed-media-quilter Lines on Paper next thing you know, you are in an redefines the use of fabric by giving it A Review of The Location exhibition room with Sol LeWitt and meaning beyond the utility form. of Lines at the MCA Ana Mendieta, sharing space through poetics rather than contrivance. The artist learned to sew from her A line is a geometrical form connecting mother and grandmother, which two points. A trace drawn by the tip LeWitt’s untitled wall-mounted prints echoes the deep lineage of quilting in of a pencil or a printer’s needle on the from 1971 are iterations of straight lines American history. Her use of layering surface of paper or canvas. A line is on paper; the location of lines, there, fabrics, and building on top of the a division of text, conditioned to the a position on a sheet of paper, a textiles, is parallel to the figures she space of a page; it is a unit of poetry, command to place a point on the depicts. The African-American faces that we see are a part of history, some Francis Alÿs, “Retoque/Painting,” forgotten, but still reminiscent of the 2008, Francis Alÿs /Courtesy the narrative in our ever-changing society. artist and David Zwirner These life-size portraits have a familiar feeling to the viewer. Butler creates an alternate universe, where color and texture take precedence over the perceived notions of Blackness. The absence of Blackness in the figures’ pigmentation is recognized as an emphasis on overlooked attributes that racism creates. Butler employs the emotional response to color psychology in each portrait. The viewer reacts and responds to how the pigments make them feel, opposed to how our racialized view of color might. The potency of each of the gazes in also called verse. There is a line of xy-plane. Compared to LeWitt’s honest FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity these portraits is tantalizing. Her ability thought, a causal line and a line of exercise, Howardena Pindell’s lines are to generate warmth from the quilts battle. A line of speech in theater or a trick. “The Video Drawings” (1975- without touch creates emotional history. “Here is where I draw the 1976) show dozens of arrows resem- vulnerability within the viewer. Butler, line:” a limit. A line on a map, imagined, bling vectors, drawn over photographs mentally a painter but physically a and sometimes built on the ground: of moving images from the television, quilter, takes her portraits from rare a border. and thus superimposing the schematic black-and-white images of African- mechanism of the line on the hypnotiz- Americans. This is evident in “The The line of blue tape in Edward Krasins- ing, dynamic forms on the screen. Safety Patrol,” which was purchased ki’s “Intervention” (Interwencja) sets the In their composition, these arrows by the Art Institute and is on view for gesture of the exhibition. The strip that pretend to describe or to plan the the first time. The quilt illustrates seven escapes from the frames in Krasinski’s image underneath the acetate, while children against a floral background work extends a line-like reading through in fact they do not. in various emotionally provoking the mostly wall-mounted pieces. The stances. Each of their faces is accent- works connect in pairs, transitions on In the 1974 video-performance “Body ed in different bright pigments. There the image of the line, first in the open Tracks,” Mendieta makes two blood-red is a sense of lightheartedness juxta- floorspace, then leading into the gallery lines with her hands as she slides down posed with authority. The child in on the second floor of the museum. a wall. Mendieta’s works often trace the front takes jurisdiction over the the shape of her body, on dirt or with other children’s space in a protective There is a pleasure in reading that line: blood, reconnect the body to nature manner. This is just one of many quilts a cadence that is comfortable to the (as the artist understood it), and protest that offers perspective into the com- eyes, seeing the shifts in the meaning violence against women. They have plexity of children, with the added of a form-word from printmaking to been associated with Santería practices layer of being Black. video-performance, a median line on present in Mendieta’s Cuban cultural a street in Panamá (Francis Alÿs, basis. But they are also conceptual and, “Bisa Butler: Portraits,” the artist’s first “Retoque/Painting,” 2008) and a line in a sense, minimal. The “Location of solo museum exhibition, encompasses of bill-payers in a Palestinian town Lines” reveals the line as an expansive twenty-two pieces that cover twenty 57
Considering Divorce? Edward Krasinski, We Can Help. “Interwencja” (Intervention), COLLABORATIVE | PRENUPTIAL 1983. Collection FAMILY | DIVORCE | MEDIATION Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 1983 / Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago VIRTUAL concept, showing some of its line simultaneously as a CONSULTATIONS incarnations among needs for measure of distance and a form AVA I L A B L E . of contact; a unit in writing and CALL historical, affective and unre- an abstract trace on the real TODAY. solved expressions. world (the Arabic word “khat” Strategic support, creative guidance, effective leadership: these are the qualities In Latifa Echakhch’s “All Over,” means both line and handwriting, there are no moving bodies, no or the art of calligraphy). In we offer our clients as they work spoken or written language. But “Road Lines,” a series of five through their challenges. prints by Zarina, the lines of partially woven strings hang CHICAGO & EVANSTON from a steel frame, creating the roads are etched in as in an aerial map, but scored by the 847-733-0933 | [email protected] appearance of an unfinished BrigitteBell.com | BrigitteSchmidtBellPC piece, behind which the weaver dark residue in the Nepalese handmade paper used by appears. In these works, you glean the subject and the body the artist, disturbing the responsible for the creative act. single-mindedness of roads, distributing its destinations by You glean a presence. loss. “One who broke away Presence, in those works, is from the caravan and got also situatedness: the work disillusioned by the faith,” exudes a subject with a space, reads the Urdu couplet by Allama Muhammen Iqbal in or a place, or a language of departure. In part, this exhibition, the last picture of the series. which gathers works from artists While going through the from or working in South and Central America, India and the museum’s collection, curator Line Ajan was struck by the title Middle East, illustrates how geographical situatedness and of LeWitt’s book “The Location embodiment appear together in of Lines” (also on view in the contemporary artistic discours- gallery). Today, or for her and for me, the locations of lines es from the global South. are sites; to point them out On a second level, the exhibition would be to find the places of is a visual essay, wherein each lines created and traced to divide land, resources and work is an exercise and a people. The show goes a step rejection of the line’s straight- further, exploring lines as ness, a piece of an argument graphic and political mark-mak- on the line’s relationships to reality. The variations in LeWitt’s ing, as division, but also as connection, holding an ambiva- artist book themselves quietly lent relation to distance. Within undermine the singular, “the location,” presenting mathemat- and beyond this museum, it is ics as infinite variation, becom- the diasporic presence and the Newcity FEBRUARY 2021 situatedness of many lines that ing drawings. “Measures of can sustain this ambiguity. Distance,” a 1988 video work (Marina Resende Santos) by Mona Hatoum, shows lines of Arabic writing, taken from letters exchanged between “The Location of Lines,” curated by Line Ajan, Museum Hatoum and her mother of Contemporary Art, Chicago, over the image of the artist’s 220 East Chicago, until mother bathing. The sound February 21, 2021. The is a voice-over of the letters museum is temporarily translated into English. In this closed due to the pandemic. context, the video offers the 58
50 Perfect Visions: Feb 2020 Eleven Leaders on How the Twenties Will Roar in Chicago DESIGNERS OF THE MOMENT DTHISECBCOEIVTNYEERATTHHENewcity_Feb_2020_final.indd1 1/19/20 10:06 PM SURFACE OCTOBER 2018 SEPTEMBER 2017 newcity Art 50: Chicago’s December 2017 FIL5M0 Visual Vanguard 33 VISIONS FOR THE NEXT CITY & Fall Arts Preview & Chicago Architecture Biennial & Art Leader of the Moment: Deana Haggag Bing Liu feb cover+FOB.indd 1 1/20/19 4:50 PM THE 11/16/17 9:46 AM MAY 2020 DESIGNED OBJECTS ISSUE Newcity-DO-Cover-171116-1-AM.indd 1 JUNE 2019 WHO REALLY BOOKS IN CHICAGO + EVE EWING Newcity_NOV_BOC_FOB-3.indd 1 10/15/18 1:55 AM Subscribe at Newcity.com/subscribe
MADE YOU LOOK PHOTO: Carolina Caycedo, still from Apariciones/Apparitions, 2018. Single-channel HD video, color and sound 9:11 min. With: Marina Magalhaes (Choreography), Isis Avalos, Samad Guerra, Celeste Tavares,Bianca Medina, Jose Aviles, and Natali Miciche. Commissioned by The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and the Vincent Price Art Museum. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. THE LONG DREAM FAMILY DAY TALK: CAROLINA CAYCEDO NOW THROUGH MAY 2 SAT, FEB 13, 10 AM–NOON THU, FEB 11, 6–7 PM VIRTUAL VIRTUAL The sprawling exhibition Free for families! Explore an Celebrate the opening of Carolina featuring more than 70 artist-led livestream, storytelling Caycedo: From the Bottom of the Chicago artists in our physical workshop, and art-making River with a lively conversation and digital spaces has been activities created by Chicago between the artist, MCA curator extended. See the world, artists for people of all ages. Carla Acevedo-Yates, and Wayuu Chicago, and yourself anew. RSVP for pre-event reminders. #MCAMadeYouLook MCA MUSEUM OF mcachciago.org/look CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO mcachicago.org/look
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