There is just too much good stuff this weekend, 5 spots aren’t enough. Here’s what I think everyone should see, in chronological and alphabetical order:

Friday (4/1) -

UIUC MFA Show: Artsplosia at Co-Prosperity Sphere

Work by Will Arnold, Jung Eun Chang, Justin Farkas, Karri Anne Fischer, Motoko Furuhashi, Amy Gilles, Jim Graham, Dan Gratz, Ben Grosser, Ben Hatcher, Dan Krueger, Katie Latona, Erica Leohner, Maria Lux, Nick Mullins, Kerianne Quick, Michael Smith, Paul Shortt, Laura Tanner, Jessica Tolbert, Nicki Werner, Sarah Beth Woods, and Michael Woody.

Co-Prosperity Sphere is located at 3219 S Morgan St. Reception Friday from 6-10pm.

Weaving Healing Waters at Fill in the Blank Gallery

Work by Maria Calderon.

Fill in the Blank Gallery is located at 5038 N. Lincoln Ave. Reception Friday from 7-11pm.

That’s Odd, I Feel So Alive at Packer Schopf Gallery

Work by Casey Riordan Millard

Packer Schopf Gallery is located at 942 W. Lake St. Reception Friday from 5-8pm.

6/6/6: SIX ARTISTS, SIX CITIES, SIX CONNECTIONS at Lloyd Dobler

Work by Jeff Badger, Carl Baratta, Amanda Curreri, Joanne Lefrak, Kathy Leisen, and Dan Schank.

Lloyd Dobler is located at 1545 W. Division, 2nd Fl. Reception Friday from 6-10pm.

When the Cathedrals Were White at Thomas Robertello Gallery

Work by Peter Allen Hoffmann.

NOTE NEW LOCATION: Thomas Robertello Gallery is located at 27 N Morgan St. Reception Friday from 6-8pm.

Saturday (4/2) -

Country Club Presents ‘Abstract Location’ & Anthotypes at Andrew Rafacz Gallery

Abstract Location features work by work by Steven Bankhead, Katarina Burin, Fritz Chesnut, Jacob Dyrenforth, Freeman & Lowe, and Ryan McGinness. Anthotypes features work by John Opera.

Andrew Rafacz Gallery is located at 835 W. Washington. Reception Saturday from 4-7pm.

No Joke at LVL3

Work by Andy Cahill, Alan & Michael Fleming, Yasi Ghanbari, Danny Greene, Joe Grimm, Marissa Perel, Arron David Ross, and Michael Vallera.

LVL3 is located at 1542 N Milwaukee Ave #3. Reception Saturday from 6-10pm.

Sunday (4/3) -

Irritable Abstraction at Julius Cæsar

Work by Joe Baldwin, Timothy Bergstrom, Brian Calvin, Federico Cattaneo, Edmund Chia, Dana DeGiulio, Dan Devening, Cheryl Donegan, Judith Geichman, Andrew Greene, Magalie Guérin, Antonia Gurkovska, Seth Hunter, Michiko Itatani, Eric Lebofsky, Diego Leclery, José Lerma, Jim Lutes, Rebecca Morris, Sabina Ott, Noah Rorem, Erin Washington and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung.

Julius Cæsar is located at 3144 W Carroll Ave, 2G. Reception Sunday from 4-7pm.

Hello again ya’ll! Hope you had fun last weekend without me. I had a grand old time down in Missouri with the Zombie Squad crew, kicking it in Manbath, going to the range, and floating down and annoying low but none the less relaxing river. Oh yeah, and Motel 6 and Waffle House, the perfect bracket for any camping/road trip. I came back planning on hitting the ground running, only to find most things shuttered for the weekend of patriotic fireworks. Bummer. There are still a few things happening this weekend, but because of the small source pool, this week you get a Top 3, ranter than a Top 5. Next weekend looks like it might be busy, so perhaps I’ll be able to over compensate then. But, until that time, here’s the picks…

1. The Things I Once Owned at Ebersmoore

Gregg Evans

Photographs of objects formerly owned by the artist, Gregg Evans (or at least that’s how the story goes). Jeroen Nelemans will also be showing work under the title “Pilfer Your Land.”

Ebersmoore is located at 213 N. Morgan, #3C. Reception is Friday from 6-9pm.

2. This is Still Life at Monument 2

Sandy Kim

Contemporary artists working with the still life. The exhibition is curated by Ghazal Hashemi, and includes the work of Wilford Barrington, Amir H. Fallah, Ian Hawk, Bruce Ingram, Sandy Kim, Jason Lazarus, Maximilian Schubert, Dylan Walker, and Harley David Young.

Monument 2 is located at 2007 N. Point St. Reception is Saturday from 2-6pm.

3. Contemplations & …Sorry I Didn’t Have Time to Google You at Julius Caesar

Two shows for the price of one: Gil Rocha’s Contemplations, and …Sorry I Didn’t Have Time to Google You, a group show featuring the work of David Jourdan, Lisa Holzer, Kitty Kraus, Chiara Minchio, and Stefan Schuster. And, and, and, a good place to have a 4th BBQ!

Julius Caesar is located at 3311 W. Carroll Ave. Reception/BBQ Sunday from 4-7pm.

Chicago artist and recent SAIC grad Dana DeGiulio has a new show up at Julius Caesar, the alternative space she co-runs with Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Diego Leclery, Colby Shaft and Hans Peter Sundquist. I’d seen several presentations of DeGiulio’s work before this show, each somewhat different from the other: her 2009 solo exhibition at Carrie Secrist Gallery was formal, framed, lovely and “proper;” in contrast, the group of works selected for the SAIC exhibition Picturing the Studio last winter contained sketchy, exploratory scrawls as well as a tongue-in-cheek key code linking gestural motifs to emotional states (you can see examples of this in the Documentation section of DeGiulio’s website). DeGiulio’s latest solo show, titled Erect, contains a sculptural frieze/wall relief, a video, and a large black X made from an acrylic pour stuck directly to the wall. I met with Dana one Friday afternoon in the gallery to talk about the work in her latest show. It was the first time we’d met. The intimate scale of the space and (lucky for me) the opportunity to talk with her for an extended, unbroken period of time made it feel like a studio visit. It’s funny – I’ve had several conversations with different people recently about the difficulties of talking or writing about works of art, about how impossible it can be for language to embody the experience of art. This can be frustrating (especially for me, because I identify so strongly as a writer) but it can also be liberating, depending on how you look at it.  Dana and I talked about this during our in-person conversation. I think the Q & A that followed, which was conducted like a written conversation over email several days after we first met, explores the language/experience schism (for lack of better terms) further, and in ways that were inspiring and invigorating for me personally. I’m really grateful to Dana for the time and consideration she took in answering my questions. Dana DeGiulio’s show is up through May 30th at Julius Caesar Gallery, 3311 West Carroll Avenue. Viewing hours are every Saturday and Sunday, 1-4pm, and by appointment. That means only two weekends left to see it,  so get yourselves on over, pronto!

CI: The title of your show at Julius Caesar is “Erect.” Each of the three works on view appear to play with a dialectic of erection/deflation, of standing upright/crawling, holding/dropping etc. in some way. For me this dynamic raises larger questions about what it takes to continue to hold something up (be it a structure of belief, an artistic practice, a category, a routine, a relationship): does it require faith, distraction, will, laughter….all of these things? And in turn, the works in the show also seem to meditate on everything that has to be ignored or shut out in order to maintain that erect state, that disciplined and even militaristic stance of attention. So for me, the exhibition begs the question: at what point is it okay to let go, to deflate, to give up, to put down your hand, to turn away? It’s a question that I suspect is a personal one for you too, but also one that may relate to what happens in the studio, in your studio. Your thoughts?

DD: Okay.  What a lovely hell of a question.  Hesitant to affix words here not because they’re specious and bullshit, but because I’m compelled to obfuscate, diminish, wad up whatever phenomenological speechless impact the work might present: because I’m suspicious and a little arch when I’m frightened.  Our initial conversation was so reactive and immediate and fluid and dialogical, this format makes me a little nervous (for opposite reasons): I want what you’re suggesting to be true.  I have to engage my humility.  Claudine, the generous empathic subjective read imbedded in the question is yours: and it’s one of the possible reactions I want (because empathic, etc).  Speech is noise, utterance (yeah yeah ripeness) all.  What can I provide here?  A sloppy poetics, a quietus, a sort of yearning vitriol, a failed teenaged attempt to shatter a window.  And I want to give those things: because beauty does what gravity does, out of love.

CI: The video titled “The Cry Collapses to Form” is a performance piece conducted in private (ie w/o an audience) that has a distinct narrative arc. It begins with you standing against a wall with a very large stack of books on your head, keeping this pose for as long as you can. When a tipping point is reached, when the books begin to wobble, white paint begins to splatter down from above, onto the stack of books and onto you. The column of books then topples.  There’s a really great and silly slapstick moment right after this when the very last of the paint goes “splat!” and hits your cheek – it’s like a pie in the face. But you are laughing, which makes it clear this is not about humiliation. Instead the piece, which is only about 3 minutes long, builds up to those final moments when an almost ecstatic release is reached. The final brief shot gives us a momentary glimpse of the sky. It’s not a simple clear blue sky but one that’s overcast, with sunlight visible through the clouds — its more complicated than blue skies. To me, this closing frame/shot delivers another type of slap in the face, this time aimed at viewers. But it’s more like the kind of slap that the Zen master gives the initiate, the kind meant to wake you up.  Why did you include that last shot of the outdoors? How did the idea for the piece come about?

DD: I can really hold things, and meant the last shot as operational, to break the diegesis of no-audience endurance exercise, trying to slap I into We.  Women, artists, writers, bipeds (in general), are habituated to erect, and history demands holding, and lying about the weight of what holding, and I want to construe holding and standing as decisions.  I don’t know that our spines automatically compel us upward, and that stakes perpendicularity at all as an elected position, an opposition: the X intersection of spinal plumb-line and ground as ambivalence.  I’ve crawled and liked it.  As per ideas, I guess, I just recently (really) realized that I’m a woman.  Those caryatids: looking at reproductions of the Erectheum I thought: my god that’s me, women can’t stand without being instrumentalized, without becoming columnar (historically, as exemplary warning or tribute).  So, in the video, there’s the symptomatic (not flinching from your own time: Hugo describing the endotic condition as an asphyxia, seeing the outside inside of yourself, unable to help it) versus the metaphoric (deliberately employing performance strategies requiring a degree of temporary physical exertion to represent and correspond to an actual metaphysical agon).  That actually fits with everything I make, and ends up funny.

There’s collapsing to form and persisting to form.  The point is, you’re right about the double-slap, and the not-humiliated, because fraught participation in these dialectics is elective, and the punishing marks of this elected also, a consequence and gift.  Reactions are surplus.

CI: On the wall, a long frieze titled “What was lodestar now is feet (the Pergamon Altar)” skitters between the mediums of painting and sculpture. From a distance the forms appear to be three-dimensional scribbles, but when you get closer you see they are diminutive human figures and horses, or more accurately fragments of people and horses. Few if any of the human or animal figures stand upright, like classical Greek sculpture. Instead, they’re either bent over, or they’re limbless and amputated. Depending on the angle from which you look at the piece (or pieces), they either take on recognizable forms or look like inchoate blobs of paint. The title makes reference to the Pergamon Altar. Can you explain your interest in it?

DD: Yes, inchoate: all perverse, imperfect, gestures recorded, suspended pre-form or falling away from.  The real Pergamon Altar is this tremendous broken antique frieze, plundered from Turkey and reinstalled in Berlin.  It’s the fracture, the interruption, the abstraction via subtraction by time and vandals of faces, genitals, entire torsos; so these expressive parts persist: reach, hold, torque, strain, almost ache, it’s the Gigantomachy, a battle, so all mortal active verb, the reduction of specific bodies to urgent acting fragments.  For me, the interest is in the resistant elastic potential of what’s left.  It helps posit all attempted effacement as redaction, collaboration.  Sometimes only half a shoulder remains: I’m really stunned and moved and excited by what (in an apparent crisis of absences) narrative, psychological, and affective force that shoulder contains.  I copied it to be able to start to see it.
I’m starting to learn to think of stillness as not-death.

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Ok, so for those of you who don’t know yet, CAA (College Art Association) has dubbed Chicago worthy for it’s pedagogical adventures, and has settled in our fair city for the weekend. As a member of CAA, I’ll be cruising from lecture to lecture the next few days, trying to suck up as much strange knowledge as I can while the circus is in town. But I’m not the only one excited about the CAA crew. As a result of the conference, just about everyone else in town is trotting out something or other, much of which is AWESOME! As a result, I bring you The Biggest Top 5 You’ve Ever Seen! Rather than picking individual galleries for the Top 5, I’ve corralled a Top 5 of places (in no particular order) you should go this weekend. Hope ya’ll enjoy.

1. Pilsen

The self-proclaimed Chicago Arts District is holding it’s monthly 2nd Fridays round of openings. Here’s the places I’d go if I were you:

Chicago Art Department – 1837 S. Halsted. Cultural Excavation, work by Christopher Piatt, Ben Valentine, Wayne Bertola, Virginia Broersma, Allison Rae Butkus, Seth Gershberg, Jennifer Hines, Jennifer Jackson, Sarah Leitten, Amanda Paulson, Aaron Wooten and others. Reception Friday, from 6-10pm.

ROOMS Gallery – 645 W 18th St. ORACLE:CHANNELING, with Marrakesh & Todd Frugia. Performance Friday, from 8-10pm.

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Here’s what I’d go to, if I were you…
1. Co-Prosperity Sphere

Bert Stabler is bending you brain this 4th of July with SALAD-CHURCH-EXERCISE: A show about self-improvement through self-denial. With work by over 20 local artists, a massive salad potluck, and taglines like, “While large-scale organs of control, such as schools, hospitals, and prisons, enforce the social contract through a restriction of choice and a remote delegation of authority, personal or cultural techniques for redirecting and mastering libido, the inner primordial chaos we carry within, can be found in the options represented by salad, church, and exercise.” How could you go wrong. You can take the Orange Line to Ashland, Saturday from 2-6pm.

2. Julius Cæsar

For the day after Independency Day, lets raise our torn jean jacket clad arms an Question Authority! Mmm…high school. But seriously, Kaylee Rae Wyant and Jerome Acks are doing something cool over at Julius Caesar called Hear Here. Framed as work “examining the many ideals and complexities encompassing freedom, democracy and revolution” it should be interesting to contemplate after a flag choked day of “patriotism”.

3. BEN RUSSELL

How many ways can you put your own name on a show? Well, if you are Ben Russell, as many as humanly possibly. How is “Ben Russell, presented by Ben Russell, at Ben Russell” for ya? Weird thing is, it ain’t a solo show. Ben Russell is a new space in Pilsen, go there and check out work by Marco Kane Braunschweiler, Martine Syms, Paul Chan, Miguel Cortez, Roxane Hopper, Julie Rudder, and Kelly Kaczynsk are doing their performance piece at 9pm the opening night. Drop by for the Sunday opening from 6-10pm.

4. MCA

As a celebration of the closing of the Bucky Fuller exibition, the MCA is hosting Jen & Ira & You at the MCA Meet Buckminster Fuller Meeting the Hippies in Golden Gate Park, a performance piece by Jennifer Karmin & Ira S. Murfin. Ever wondered why hippies loved this son of the atomic age? Well, here’s your chance to find out. The performance is free with the cost of admission, so if you get into the MCA free, you’re good to go.