1. Archival Impulse at Gallery 400

Work by  The Alliance of Pentaphilic Curators (Jason Dunda and Teena McClelland), John Arndt, Conrad Bakker, Dexter Sinister, Christa Donner, Kota Ezawa, Edie Fake, Eric Fleischauer, Stephen Lapthisophon, Jason Lazarus, Dani Leventhal, Aspen Mays, Mary Patten, Jenny Perlin, Public Collectors, Jason Salavon, Paul Lloyd Sargent, Cauleen Smith, Edra Soto, Stephanie Syjuco, Sergio Vega, and Philip von Zweck.

Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St. Reception Friday, 5-8pm.

2. Water at SideCar

Work by Tom Burtonwood, Holly Holmes, and James Jankowiak.

SideCar, 411 Huehn St, Hammond, IN. Reception Saturday, 5-10pm.

3. A Paler Shade of Yellow at Kirk’s Apartment

Work by  Larry Lee

Kirk’s Apartment, 3710 N Marshfield. Reception Friday, 6-9pm.

4. Wax/Wane at ACRE Projects

Work by Liz McCarthy.

ACRE Projects, 1913 W 17th St. Reception Sunday, 4-8pm.

5. Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers: AN AMERICAN TALE OF SEX AND WONDER at The Renaissance Society

Reading by Mike Edison.

The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall Room 307. Reading begins at 2pm.

Christopher Meerdo, "Cypher," 2011 (.aes-256 file). Courtesy Gallery 400.

Our latest Centerfield column is up on Art:21 blog. This week, Nicholas O’Brien takes a look at Gallery 400′s current exhibition, File Type, which looks at how “formats… represent ways that artwork in digital or Internet media create particular standards of representation.” Nicholas also talks to the show’s curators, Lorelei Stewart and Chaz Evans, about their ideas behind the show. A brief excerpt below; click on over to Art:21 to read the full post!

When I initially saw the promotional poster for File Type, currently on view at University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gallery 400, I was immediately intrigued by the curatorial premise posed by curators Chaz Evans and Lorelei Stewart regarding how “formats… represent ways that artwork in digital or Internet media create particular standards of representation” (quoted from the curatorial statement). The variety of artists selected for the exhibition — a combination of local, national, and international makers – would have given me enough reason by itself for me to attend the opening. As I entered the space and browsed the works on display, I felt my curiosity continue in ways that I had not expected when initially considering the above statement by Evans and Stewart. Even after I left the show, questions kept reappearing and presenting themselves to me with intense frequency. Initially, I couldn’t help but question why some works were displayed on flat panel monitors as opposed to computer screens and as I continued to peruse the show, I wondered how the mounting of a physical show reflecting on the effects of network technology on artistic inquiry inevitably varies from a digital exhibition of identical material (something that perhaps I have had more comfort in discussing as of late). Can an exhibition highlight recursive dialogues between the language of the screen and the language of the gallery? Is there a sense of irony in the idea of a file type, since a great majority of the works deal with the translation and fluidity between codecs and mediums, as opposed to the static state of objects that galleries and museums tend to support and reenforce? Without outright calling File Type a “media art show,” how does this show effect the reception of the work, or even more importantly effect my (and the viewer’s) understanding of “media art?”

As these questions bubbled around in my brain, I decided take the initiative and voice these queries to the curators themselves. (Read more).

Via Book Covers from the Reading Room

Here’s the latest, linky roundup of (good) shit that comes our way….please to enjoy:

*Wanna visit MOMA for free for a year? How to make your own MOMA artist pass.

*Or on second thought, maybe you should buy a real museum membership instead: President’s Proposed 2012 Budget Cuts NEA, NEH Funding by 13%.

*ARC Gallery in Chicago has a call out for entries to its upcoming “Sequential Art: Comics and Beyond” exhibition. This is an “open walls” exhibition, meaning all entries will be accepted. You literally have nothing to lose.

*Missed the Jose Munoz lecture at SAIC last week? Art21 has a nice, concise summary of Professor Munoz’ talk.

*Worthy of advance plugging: AA Bronson speaks at Gallery 400 next week as part of UIC’s Voices Lecture Series. Tuesday, February 22nd at 5:00pm.

*You think quilting isn’t ‘real’ art? You are so wrong, buddy. Check this out: Haptic Labs’ Custom City Map Quilts; and Jimmy McBride’s Stellar Quilts. I would love to go to bed under any of those beauties, although I’d be afraid one of my dogs would puke on it. Sigh.

*Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits at the Du Sable Museum of African American History, through March 6th.

*Who doesn’t like browsing through online photo archives? The Field Museum Library has a veritable treasure trove available via its Flickr photostream…right now, they have hundreds of photographs up, including images from two scanning projects: Urban Landscapes of Illinois and 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. (Via Things).

*Earlier this month Edward Winkleman posted on the crisis in the arts funding landscape, which we discussed in our podcast for Art21 this month. As always Winkleman’s take on the issue, along with the ensuing comments, are well-worth reading.

*Uh, WTF? Detroit May Erect Robo-Cop Statue. (Via). Whatever, I’ll reserve judgement since I don’t live there, and I really like the work that Imagination Station is doing for Detroit in general.

In my book, this is a must-see. NY avant-gallerists Triple Candie lecture at Gallery 400 tonight! Here are the details:

Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett co-founded and have served as co-directors of Triple Candie, a not-for-profit contemporary art venue in Harlem, since 2001. Triple Candie is a place-based, research-oriented gallery that produces exhibitions about art but largely devoid of it. A typical exhibition consists of reproductions, surrogates, models, stage-sets, or common objects that are displayed using a combination of rhetorical devices. Given their ephemeral nature, frequent use of historical subjects, and lack of any obvious artist-agent, Triple Candie’s exhibitions have often been referred to as “curatorial performances.” Bancroft and Nesbett live in New York City. Triple Candie was highlighted as one of twenty-five worldwide trendsetters in the September 2007 issue of ARTnews. They were co-publishers of the award-winning Art on Paper magazine until 2004. Bancroft holds a master’s degree in contemporary art history from the University of Washington, Seattle and a bachelor’s degree in painting from Michigan State University. Nesbett holds a post-master’s certificate from the Institute for Not-for- Profit Management at Columbia University, a master’s degree in art history from University of Washington, Seattle, and a bachelor’s degree in visual studies from Cornell University.

Like I said, there’s a shitload of great stuff happening in town this week. Tonight only, a video program curated by Alicia Eler and Jefferson Godard titled “Performance Anxiety” will screen at Gallery 400 at UIC at 8pm. Here’s how the press release describes it: “a program of short video works dealing with performances of cultural identity. In navigating complicated understandings of gender, race, class, sexuality, or existence in on- and off-line spaces, individuals accept and internalize cultural rules or ideologies and pass; reject them, identifying such performances as a form of cultural oppression; or even scramble and combine rules and codes in personalized constructions. Performance Anxiety (run time: approximately 50 minutes) features the work of American artists Rochelle Feinstein, Kate Gilmore, James Murray, Jeroen Nelemans, Greg Stimac and Stacia Yeapanis.”

I wrote about the films on the blog a few months back – I’m reposting a slightly revised version of that essay below, for those who are too lazy to click. (No judgment there, I myself am often that lazy). Read more