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.