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EDITION #6

April 1, 2013 · Print This Article

Dubya takes to painting

Entire world breathes sigh of relief

Many of history’s greats are known to have painted a sun-dappled landscape or two in their day. Everyone from Winston Churchill to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and even Adolph Hitler have handled a palette. Just like Van Gogh and Gaugain’s portrait exchange, Eisenhower even painted a portrait of his venerable ally, Churchill.

Surprisingly, 43rd President George W. Bush has finally managed to join their ranks, not in political savvy, but through his newfound pastime of “makin’ paintin’s.” By now the entire internet is aware that George W. Bush is a prolific artist, having painted at least 50 dog portraits as well as some landscapes and even a couple n00dz. For once, What’s the T? couldn’t be more proud of our former Commander in Chiefing, and we have created a special hypothetical art collection based on his oeuvre.

The Jogging’s oddly clairvoyant portrait of G.W. from July 2012.

In other news, everyone’s a critic.

Reading is Fundamental

Because we know that you see that red and pink equal sign when you close your eyes and, honestly, who cares about Tilda Swinton?

#best.gif

Have a cup of Green’s T.

Progress, 2013
by James T. Green

“T” around Town

Upcoming exhibition and other life changing events all taking place on April 6, 2013

The stars must be aligning on April 6th since damn near every gallery in the city is having an opening. It’s ridic. In Logan Square, it’s finally Spring and the Comfort Station is reopening with an exhibition by Isak Applin and Adam Ekberg. Chicago’s fav Italian artist living in Vienna, Helmut Heiss, has also triumphantly returned for his upcoming ACRE show at Slow in Pilsen. Happy sources report that Heiss’s contribution is large and shiny.

Furthermore, Anthony Romero and Jesse Butcher have an opening at Happy Collaborationists that we heard is inspired by hippies and mud. Word is that Haseeb Ahmed and Daniel G. Baird’s opening at Roots and Culture will dramatically change the gallery space, incorporating a fountain and maybe even fish (but don’t quote us).

Super secret sneak peak of someone’s work. @meredithandanna

Auctions have been trending, so it’s no surprise that LVL3′s 4th Annual HArts for Art is also this Saturday. Guilt free, a portion of the proceeds will benefit local not-for-profit Better Boys Foundation, but the work is going fast. Almost a week out and work by Israel Lund has already been claimed. We heard that the raffle is going to be bangin’ too.

At least the SAIC MFA show isn’t this weekend. Good luck.

The Weatherman Report

For Chicago IL

Max Pechstein, Schneeschmelze (Melting Snow), 1922 Oil on canvas (30 3/10 × 38 3/5 in), 1970

Grand Marquee on Irving Park Rd.

SMALLTIME ARCHIPHILE:

The Patio Theater

by ANDREW SANTA LUCIA
Smalltime Archiphile centers on architecture’s place – sometimes event-based, sometimes aesthetic– in usually small, marginal and forgotten incarnations around Chicagoland.

The Patio Theatre is arguably the most magnificent movie house in all of Chicago. With awesome programming by the Chicago Cinema Society, a revamped 1920′s Baroquesque interior and streamlined Deco marquee, Patio uses the vehicle of space, time and, more specifically color, to heighten its graphic grandeur.

Ornamentation and Chandelier on Ceiling

Color envelopes you in ways only rococo could – through ornamentation, stucco, mirrors, chandeliers, vaults – in variations of gold leaf, reds, blues, yellows and greens. The Patio Theater’s procession starts with its stark yellow and red sans-serif Deco marquee. Once inside, you encounter a nearly 20ft high chromatic ceiling ticketing foyer, followed by a minimally modern concession stand, and finally culminating in the most mindfucking auditorium punctuated by a starry night twice the size of the Music Box Theatre’s. It’s a series of effects that contemporary architects can’t even fathom approaching i.e. using color to form, shape, line and syncopate a procession, not as appliqué.

Patio’s use of color is palpable and interactive. The culmination of this comes in the auditorium’s screen covering that employs classic vaulting effects with an abundance of color to achieve simulacrum by easily inhabiting both traditional building technique (without traditional necessity) and pushing nuanced ornateness in graphic (without being kitsch).

Auditorium – Starry night, Chateau Window Walls and monumental vault screen enclosure

Sitting there watching a Samurai classic like Shogun Assassin on a Saturday night in Portage Park, not Lakeview, Logan Square, Southport or any other “hot spot” is an added bonus to this prismatic gem. Architecture ‘looks’ all the time and the colorful Patio Theater trumps most classic Chicago movie houses in terms of how comfortable it is in its own skin – inside and out.

The Patio Theater is located at 6008 W. Irving Park Rd, Chicago, Illinois 60634.

TRENDING: Music

From the Mutiny to the Bad Seeds, music is totally trending.

Fish, the band, at The Chicago Music CD showcase at The Mutiny on Thursday Night Photo courtesy of Chicago Music CD Record Label.

Cla$$’s 3ft triangle stole the show. Photo courtesy of Chicago Music CD Record Label.

My Bad’s Scott Reeder takes a selfie with adoring fans. Photo courtesy of Chicago Music CD Record Label.

TRENDING: Music

#FREETHEUNIVERSE takes over The Mutiny Thursday night. Photo courtesy of Chicago Music CD Record Label.

Now you can stop dreaming about it. Nick Cave(s) sighting courtesy of Caroline Picard.

Everything we know about Passover we learned at Bobby Conn‘s final residency performance at the Hideout last Tuesday. His full band including Tim Jones fronted brass section was nothing short of a Pesach miracle.

Respect the crown: Kim Gordon with White/Light at the MCA last Tuesday night.



EDITION #5

March 18, 2013 · Print This Article

MCA programming edgier than a basement party in Pilsen

THE MCA IS OOC

In her recent AFC review, Robin Deluzen wrote that the MCA is “on a roll” and What’s the T? couldn’t agree more.

This Tuesday will mark the opening of Jason Lazurus’ much anticipated and hotly discussed 12×12 BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works Exhibition. The exhibition appears to actually be three in one and has more programming than Michigan Avenue has drunk people on St. Patricks Day. The schedule includes (but is not limited to) signs for strolling, piano performances, a gif film screening (April 18th at Gene Siskel Film Center/ Conversations the Edge), and sign-making tutorials. The exhibition(s) and performances will be on view through June 18th.

Next Tuesday, March 26th, Chicago’s White/Light will be performing with [freaking] Kim Gordon. The only thing more exciting would be a Sonic Youth secret reunion show, but WTT? isn’t complaining. Tickets are free (!), but space is limited. Get our your camping gear out, this will be one for the ages.

As if all that and a bag of chips wasn’t enough, Oak Park natives, Tavi Gevinson and Jonah Ansell will be at the museum on April 23rd to discuss their work on the animated short, Cadaver. No offense Jonah Ansell, but OMG TAVI! The event includes a screening of the short and a discussion with Gevinson and Ansell moderated by Heidi Reitmaier, the MCA’s Beatrice C. Mayer Director of Education.

Oak Park Suburbanites, Gevinson and Ansell

Reading is Fundamental

because we know your feed has been awash with #SXSW and #Pope Whoever updates

Local band Fish proves e-cigs still trending. Image courtesy of The Foundation for Jiggles.

Local bands play music at bar

Something other than an opening

If you’ve ever walked by The Mutiny, you’ve probably noticed the “Bands Wanted” notice prominently displayed in their front window. If you’ve ever actually been inside the Fullerton Ave bar, you probably know why.

Regardless, a consortium of artists from The Hills to The West Pilsen Sculpture Garden have somehow managed to further expand their practices and are now “with the band, man.” The innocuously named “Chicago Music CDs showcase / CD release party” promises to be a glorious happening of music and stuff.

The show will feature “emerging new chicago music and experimental performance talent” such as FREE THE UNIVERSE (members of Fish, New Capital, Auditor), Fish (members of FREE THE UNIVERSE, Auditor), Ghosts (members of My Bad) and My Bad (members of Ghosts), amongst other bands no one has ever heard of because they probably didn’t exist until this show.

At least it’s free.

Thursday, March 28th at 8PM. The Mutiny 2428 N Western Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60647.

Michelle Obama has bangs!

100 characters on 100 paintings

Brandon Alvendia’s Sofa King What?

Show was worth the trek to Bridgeport. His practice invigorates others and that’s what’s important.

Header image is a detail shot of Heather Mekkelson‘s recent installation at +medicine cabinet in Bridgeport, near Sofa King.

‘The Alley’

SMALLTIME ARCHIPHILE:

The Fireside Bowl

by ANDREW SANTA LUCIA

‘Over the line’ and ‘Hey motherfucker, we’re that Spic band’ aren’t two expressions you might simultaneously hear unless you like The Big Lebowski and Los Crudos. But you may have heard it at some point in the 1990s while bowling your mediocre 104, eating a pizza and watching an iconic hardcore punk show at Fireside Bowl. Seldom do you get the productive slippage between national slacker pastime and radical teenage angst that would have been a mainstay at Fireside. This modern gem modularly clad in red-and-white metal tile façade, symmetrically planned with bowling on one end and horizontal circulation on the other, activating corner spaces where the action happened – stage left and bar right – looks more like a Firestone than a punk bowling alley.

Los Crudos show, 1999

Beginning with its 40 ft signage that is part pop-advertising, part surrealist call-to-bowl, Fireside’s modernism plays out in typical plan, allowing basic front-to-back bowling to occur next to stage dives, dog piles and circle pits in a circulatory space no wider than 15 ft – folding slow-paced sport and high-energy hardcore into the same form. Sporting seedy bar décor and MS-DOS-like scoring machines, Fireside’s ability to transport you to a time you never experienced is uncanny. Built in the 1940s, no doubt typified by modernist aesthetic leanings, Fireside is a monument to simplicity of a pre-digital era, where you could’ve killed two birds – bowling and slamdancing – with one roll.

Night shot of Fireside facade

Fireside still has shows, although not as iconic or plentiful as this show list from the mid 90s. Take a gander, go to Logan Square and be a shitty bowler, while this building still exists between eras, pastimes and subcultures, easily annihilating any validity to cosmic bowling.

The Fireside is located at 2646 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60647.

Alvendia and Sofa King proprietor Christopher Smith speaking with a visotor at the opening.


Comfort Station regains will to comfort

Local Hang to Offer Year-long Programming

The much-beloved Logan Square Comfort Station is much-missed during the winter months when the tiny art shelter is too cold to host their usually full schedule of exhibitions, screenings and musical performances. As a result of actual community effort, the 1915 structure is embarking on a much needed and environmentally friendly weatherproofing, funded in part by a Kickstarter and in-partnership with Logan Square business, Biofoam, a sustainable insulation company.

Limited Edition Print by Sonnenzimmer available through contribution to LSCS Kickstarter Campaign.

Not only will the Comfort Station get a physical makeover, their programming returns on Saturday, April 6th* with the exhibition “Sounds from the second floor: Isak Applin and Adam Ekberg”. What’s the T? has also heard rumors of a brand new website and more new programs for the Station’s 2013 Season.

Comfort Station Logan Square has impressively reached their Kickstarter goal with over a week to go, but if you donate now you still have a chance to get the most Logan of Squares tote bag possible and your name on a list alongside Chicago art luminaries and trendsetters (this reporter included).

* Which is, thankfully, not in conflict with the April 7th two-hour Mad Men Season 6 premiere.



REVIEW: Apartamento Magazine

December 17, 2009 · Print This Article

Apartamento Magazine #4

Apartamento Magazine #4

Apartamento Magazine, a bi-annual interiors journal, began in 2008, but seemed like folklore to most stateside bibliophiles, as it was incredibly hard to find. They had no known US stockist. Issue #1 was totally and completely sold out forever within months of its release. Post Poetics had Issues #2 & #3 for a while and I would frequently look at the page, tempting myself to buy the magazine, but the $30 international shipping permanently deterred me.

The first time I held Apartamento in my hands was just two months ago. A friend let me borrow a few of the past issues. It was as gorgeous in person as it looked in the photos I’d seen online. Thanks to art direction from designer Omar Sosa of Folch Studio and photographer Nacho Alegre, Apartamento is an object of immense beauty.

Interview with renowned designer Enzo MAri

Interview with renowned designer Enzo Mari

Issue #4 features watercolors of artist studios (Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Kiki Smith) by Grillo Demo, an interview with CFDA award winning jewelry designer Philip Crangi’s about his New York factory, an essay by Chloe Sevigny about her “70s preppy Connecticut” apartment, a photo tour of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s Northhampton home, and a kids supplement curated by Reference Library’s Andy Beach with contributions from Geoff McFetridge, Enzo Mari, and more.

With the tagline  “an everyday life interiors magazine,” I was expecting Apartamento to be a sneak peek into regular, real normal, everyday interiors. My tiny apartment, a bus driver’s home, the tenants who have lived in the same building for over 30 years. Apartamento is kind of like that, except if those things looked ten times better.

Issue #4 is OUT NOW and available worldwide through Bruil.