Judy Ledgerwood at Rhona Hoffman

Yoni

It’s impossible not to smile at the mischievous presence in Judy Ledgerwood's eight paintings now showing at Rhona Hoffman Gallery. And not just because, like everything in last summer’s “A Sag, Harbored” show at Western Exhibitions, all of the paintings smile back at you with a drooping sag across the upper edge. They are right at the edge of tedious repetition and wanton self expression— – of banality and obscenity‚ – of sloppiness and precision. They share the casual goofiness of a daycare center, yet also suggest the conceptual rigor that‘s sought in contemporary art. Whenever my eye tries to escape an annoying pattern, there’s always a drip, or a slurp, or an aberrant lump to give it some welcome relief. And then there are the two orifice-centric pieces that are blatantly sexual. Even before reading the title, “Yoni” was relentlessly pulling my consciousness into the bottomless pit of tantric female energy. And then there’s the muscle bound vagina of “Sheela”, - whose title might well refer to Ma Anand Sheela who was convicted of bio-terrorism against the entire population of a small town in Oregon that resisted the residency of her ashram—. (it’s recently been the subject of a Netflix documentary.) Girls will be girls! It’s a wild story of sex, religion, violence, and boundary crossing - all of which is suggested by Ledgerwood’s painting.

Although less naughty, most of the other pieces are just as fun and playful. “Eye Opener” is a woozy arrangement of lines and polkadots. The pattern would feel too tightly ordered except that some elements are beginning to wander off, and uniformity is occasionally broken by variations in thickness of paint. Similarly, the stultifying grid of “Grandma’s Garden” is relieved by discrete variations in size, angle, and luminosity. “Grandma” is obviously a serious abstract painter when she’s not tending garden,and she mounts an even more flamboyant attack on a checkerboard grid in “Tiny Dancer”. Though strictly maintaining certain rules of an overall pattern, every other choice in color, thickness, and placement feels whimsical yet correct. The only clunker, for me, is “Hopscotch Chelsea Rose” where the variations in color and tone fail to relieve the tedium of a strictly orthogonal, evenly spaced grid.

These paintings are far less overwhelming, more intimate, and less casual than Ledgerwood’s room size “Chromatic Patterns for the Art Institute of Chicago” that serves well as a Feminist assault on the hierarchy of art and craft, – especially now as it’s Bacchanalian vines envelop the walls of that patriarchal institution with the neoclassical facade.. Such provocation was a primary agenda of the The Pattern and Decoration Movement founded in the 1970’s. It remains well represented in major Chicago institutions with Ledgerwood at Northwestern and Michelle Grabner at the School of the Art Institute. Each of these paintings, however, appear to be doing what paintings, especially Chicago paintings, have often done in recent decades: amuse, entertain, and thrill with a prankish attitude and skillful execution.

Judy Legerwood’s “Far From The Tree” shows through May 19 at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 1709 West Chicago.