Ruben Aguirre : Tectonic Reflections at the National Museum of Mexican Art

 

Isn’t this how a community art center is supposed to work? An old master (Dan Ramirez) is introduced to a young master ( Ruben Aguirre) at an opening (at the National Museum of Mexican Art) - and soon they begin to collaborate on a new exhibition for that same venue. 

 But it gets even better. Aguirre is not all that young (b. 1979) and he has created over 30 outstanding murals mostly throughout the Chicago area. This exhibit marks a turning point in his career as he begins to work geoforms on a more intimate scale in his studio - just as Dan Ramirez has been doing for over fifty years. Yet these two Mexican-American abstract painters are also quite different. Ramirez cultivates the meditational qualities of stillness and luminosity - while Aguirre has always been about the thrilling, dynamic excitement of graffiti. Now we have Ramirez curating Aguirre’s debut as a fellow studio artist. 

 Gallery signage tells us these paintings “invoke poetic contemplations of origin, self-awareness, our connection to the Earth, and our impermanence.” I have some difficulty, however, in not seeing them primarily as decorative accents. Unlike Aguirre’s murals, they do not overwhelm with power, awe, and beauty. Unlike Ramirez’s panels they do not pull me into a world of transcendent meditation. Mostly what these new pieces do is make me feel good - which is not a bad thing. They give a rush of optimism as they fit so smoothly into contemporary interiors. They declare civilization a success - just as interior views depicted in early Renaissance painting once did. 

 Social Optimism is contrary to the political and identity issues that now dominate the mainstream artworld. These paintings offer the satisfaction of living among energized people in a good time and place. They do not feel personal - like so much American abstract painting of the past 70 years. They’re more like the floral motifs of upholstery or architectural ornament. With their strong inner dynamics, Louis Sullivan would have approved. Yet still I wish they had the cosmic wonder produced by Aguirre’s murals. Perhaps, someday, they will. This is only Aguirre’s first show of studio paintings.

Chicago Cultural Center : An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman

 

Leslie Baum

Diane Christensen

Selina Trepp

The three Michigan Avenue galleries in the Chicago Cultural Center usually present separate artists in three separate shows. Currently, however, three artists have been combined into a single exhibition called “An instrument in the shape of a woman” - suggesting a feminist theme that might make the show politically appealing. But that is rather misleading. None of these artists represent women or issues specific to them.

Selina Trepp and Diane Christiansen appear mostly interested in sorting out their tumultuous modern urban lives. Clashing forces within their works make them uncomfortable with surrounding space. The ever changing disruption of abstract animation video is appropriate for this kind of self expression and both artists practice it - though only Trepp brought video to this show. The third artist, Leslie Baum, has also collaborated on animations, but she has contributed something quite different to this exhibit : some really beautiful paintings.

Baum doesn’t belong in Chicago. She has neither the teenage angst of Imagism, our local speciality, nor does she practice the conceptualism favored by university art departments. She doesn’t even have a BFA, much less an MFA. But you tell she has seen a lot of painting. Seven of her watercolors entered the collection of the Art Institute in 2005. They are awkward, shy, and hesitant. As found online, she still occasionally practices a kind of minimalism. But as she has put it :  “after the 2016 election, my work changed. I wanted to immerse myself in beauty and connect with something larger than the present moment, to not lose perspective.” And indeed she has!

She’s gone in a vibrant, even ecstatic, direction based, presumably on the unique plein air practice featured in this exhibition. She begins by inviting both artists and non-artists to join her at a garden-like location. She sets them up with materials for watercolor and everyone paints away while socializing. She calls these events “dates” and she calls her resulting work. “Shaping the day paintings”.

Some of her companions’ watercolors also appears in this show. They’re enjoyable but mostly just highlight Baum’s extraordinary virtuosity. This is her game and she has mastered it - both in on-site watercolors and the larger acrylic and oil pieces done later in the studio. Immersed in early modernist painting since childhood, she draws on its compositional vigor and experimentation to joyfully respond to moments spent in gardens with friends. Wasn’t this also a pastime for aristocratic Chinese ink brush painters back in earlier times ?

Unlike conventional plein air painting, Baum and friends pay more attention to the surface of the painting than to representing a particular place in the world. Baum’s appetite for design is voracious. Will she keep it up when she returns to solitary practice in her studio? Will other talented artists join her painting parties and kick-start a new aesthetic movement in Chicago painting? It seems far-fetched, but beauty in art has always been something of a miracle.

Igshaan Adams

 

Igshaan adams (South African, born 1982) qualifies for museum display by just about every criteria now trending in the mainstream artworld. Person of color ? Check. Gender fluid ? Check. Postcolonial country? Check. Multi-media? Check. More about concept than form? Check. More like an investigation than a declaration? Check. None of which is necessarily bad - just as the reverse - which would have been typical for the artworld one hundred yards ago - was not necessarily good. 

 
And his work is politically progressive - at least regarding the oppressed people of his South African township who are the subject of his suggested narratives. (The intended buyers, of course, are the global elites) 

If you wish to explore “the potential of transdisciplinarity through the use of theories of diffraction, and postcolonial feminist subjectivity”, “Desire Lines” is the series for you. 

The design of these woven pieces begins with worn patches of cheap linoleum cut from the kitchen floors of low rent apartments. In the background is a rather tedious, repetitive , geometric design. In the foreground is a pattern of wear in those areas where people stood most often. Coincidentally, I have similar worn patches near the sink and stove on my cheap kitchen floor - and I can report that it is indeed unsightly. Or actually, that is an understatement. My worn linoleum is damn ugly,- like a smooth young face half eaten away by dreadful infection. 

But Adams is quite an aesthete. Though his designs begin with the ugly, the finished pieces have a lush, gentle, understated beauty. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of filling the cracks of broken pottery with gold, he has made the best of a bad situation. But why start with a bad situation if you have the option not to? Gallery signage tells us that “Adam highlights the material aspects of these lived spaces as well as the personal stories they hold.” But this is just art-talk nonsense. Worn linoleum tells us nothing about those who repeatedly stepped on it - though it might suggest something about those who want art to echo it. They prefer comfort to thrill. They would rather accommodate than seek. And on top of that, Adams’ Victorian aesthetic overwhelms the senses rather than surprises them. 

 
This installation includes “sculpture clouds” of tangled wire that rise off the flat fabric on the floor like clouds of dust. Signage does not explain them, though in other exhibits they have been said to represent the barbed wire that once transcribed the township neighborhoods.  A few other pieces, especially a giant rose called “Al Muhyee - giver of life” present other directions Adams has taken in his work. 

The Art Institute of Chicago has a gallery devoted to fabric art and historic examples have often been used to look up and glorify the top of the social order rather than to look down and empathize with the bottom. That’s fine with me since I prefer to see others as beautiful rather than see myself as compassionate and politically correct. But I do hope the museum has acquired a piece or two by Adams to cultivate contrast in future group shows. Viva la difference !

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