Edie Fake, Gateway (for Mark Aguhar) (Palace Door – calloutqueen), ballpoint pen, ink and gouache on paper, 2012

On view currently at Chicago’s Thomas Robertello Gallery are 15 pen, ink, and gouache drawings on paper by local artist, illustrator, and author of the Gaylord Phoenix volume of comics, Edie Fake. Titled ‘Memory Palaces,’ the exhibition is a stunning showcase of Fake’s exceptional, and exceptionally idiosyncratic, formal skills in composition, pattern-design, and color, as well as a moving meditation on loss. Specifically, Fake pays tribute to the passing of five friends, colleagues, activists, and artists (Mark Aguhar, Nick Djandji, Dara Greenwald, Flo McGarrell, and Dylan Williams) in a series of drawings titled Gateway, and to ten real or imagined spaces of queer congregation no longer, or never, existent.

Edie Fake, JANE, ballpoint pen, ink and gouache on paper, 2012

Put simply: depicted are places Fake, or the rest of us, may never go. They are hopeful spaces vividly imagined by those living in a contemporary urban environment largely ravaged and rid of countercultural nightlife by neoliberal vice and zoning laws, class-targeted antidrug policies, and corporate gentrification efforts throughout the late 20th century. As such, the collection of building facades Fake depicts – described as a neighborhood – can only be psychically located between utopian fantasy and interpretive research. Doing so foregrounds how the imagination and it’s shadow, desire, propels individual or collective searches for heritage, lineage, and belonging. What might be made possible for someone whose very personhood and politics teeters on the brink of unviability by the realization that, yes, La Mere Vipere (a burned down gay/punk venue in the now-gentrified Boystown), Killer Dyke (a radical lesbian periodical), and JANE (a clandestine feminist-led abortion service) did, indeed, exist here in the 1970s? Comprehension of these disappeared, criminalized spaces and services entails not simply an intellectual recognition, but something much more sensorial and perhaps even spiritual when translated through the prismatic hallucinations offered by Fake.

Edie Fake, The Snake Pit, ballpoint pen, ink and gouache on paper, 2012

The flatness of the paper Fake has drawn upon is only a format, as his palette of offbeat hyper-colors and remarkable geometric drawing skills translates a deeper, pulsating dimensionality, like the embedded optic phenomena of a Magic Eye poster and a horror vacui painting. A handful of the places recreated here include dance venues, sex-clubs, and art spaces, all of which Fake has foregone a faithful architectural re-approximation of in favor of getting at something much more enigmatic – the mind-altering life practices they facilitated. Representing nightlife from psychedelia through disco and punk, up to rave, Fake renders his spaces with the fluorescent sensibilities and colors of escape developed via dance-floors and acid-trips. Neon hues that should clash, but somehow don’t, cohere in vibrant mosaic facades Fake has lent to 80s voguing-hub Club LaRay and former host of 70s gay anarchy nights The Snake Pit. Seeming inspired by the hypnotic, transportive potential of repetition and detail in geometric art, Fake’s designs are infused with a mystical content in the style of Islamic tile work or Huichol yarn and bead art.

Edie Fake, Gateway (for Dara Greenwald), ballpoint pen, ink and gouache on paper, 2012

The evocation of non-Western, nondenominational, and anti-representational spiritual aesthetics acquires political significance upon realization of for whom Fake has drawn a Gateway. Fake has imagined entryways into the hereafter markedly more colorful, robust, lavish, and peculiar than the pearly ivory luster of Judeo-Christian concepts of the afterlife. Those mourned are imagined as entering a kaleidoscopic, palatial elsewhere, rightly undoing inherited notions of heaven too tidy, too conservatively patriarchal, for housing the spirit of trans-queer-feminist artist of color Mark Aguhar, the anti-racist feminist dance parties of Dara Greenwald, or the critically outsider sensibilities of punk/metal-comic pioneer Dylan Williams.

It is here where Fake’s project best comes into full relief; it is only through the physical manifestation of improbable psychic longing that another world becomes possible, knowable, inhabitable. After hours, off the books, and after life; Fake honors such phenomena, and those residing there, with an informed, aspirational intensity apparent in the meticulous, strange, gorgeous labor of his drawing.

1. MDW Fair at Mana Contemporary Art Center

Includes 75+ exhibitors, publishers and performers.

Mana Contemporary Art Center is located at 2233 S. Throop. Reception Friday, 7pm–12am.

2. Level Eater 3 at Co-Prosperity Sphere

Work by Jason Smith, Jeriah Hildwine, Jesse Avina, Annie Heckman, Jake Myers, Sam Sieger, Ben Dimock, Olivia Strautmanis, Aaron Straus, Laura Boban, Stephanie Burke and Jesse Loosebrock.

Co-Prosperity Sphere is located at 3219 S Morgan St. Reception Friday, 6pm-2am. (Please note: the author has a piece in this show)

3. COUNTRY GIRLS at Iceberg Projects

Work by Sabelo Mlangeni.

Iceberg Projects is located at 7714 N Sheridan Rd. Reception Saturday, 6-9pm.  

4. Seeing Things at Thomas Robertello Gallery

Work by Mike Nudelman.

Thomas Robertello Gallery is located at 27 N. Morgan St. Reception Friday, 6-8pm.

5. Under One Sky at Kasia Kay Gallery

Work by Erika Harrsch.

Kasia Kay Gallery is located at 215 N. Aberdeen St. Reception Friday, 6-8pm.

1. Black Thorns in the White Cube at Western Exhibitions

Curated by Amelia Ishmael, with work by Alexander Binder, Vincent Como, Terence Hannum, Karlynn Holland, Elodie Lesourd , Aaron Metté, Grant Willing, and Tereza Zelenkova.

Western Exhibitions is located at 119 N Peoria St. Reception is Friday from 5-8pm.

2. Lookin’ Out My Back Door at Thomas Robertello Gallery

Work by Michael Nudelman.

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

3. Sirianni/Lane at NEW CAPITAL

Work by Michael Sirianni and Matthew Lane.

NEW CAPITAL is located at 3114 W. Carroll St. Reception is Friday from 7-10pm.

4. Riffs at The Renaissance Society

Work by Yto Barrada.

The Renaissance Society is located at 5811 S. Ellis Ave. Reception is Sunday from 4-7pm, with an artist talk from 5-6pm.

5. Light Show at Roots & Culture

Work by Arend deGruyter-Helfer, Brook Sinkinson Withrow, Miah Michelson-Jones, Micah Schippa, Tom Harrington, and Sara Condo.

Roots & Culture is located at 1034 N Milwaukee Ave. Reception is Saturday from 6-9pm.

1. Society of the Spectacular at Co-prosperity Sphere

Work by Eric Fleischauer, Jesse McLean, Steve Ruiz, Doug Smithenry, Theo Darst, Todd Mattei, Morgan Sims, Aaron Orsini, and Adam Rux. Curated by Jake Myers & The Octagon Gallery.

Co-prosperity Sphere is located at 3221 S Morgan. Reception Friday, 7pm-12am.

2. Schematized at Firecat Projects

Work by Justin Amrhein.

Firecat Projects is located at 2124 N. Damen Ave. Reception Friday, 7-9pm.

3. Tetragrammatron Archive: The Robert Joseph Bell Institute for the Advancement of the Future at Thomas Robertello Gallery

Work by Jason Robert Bell.

Thomas Robertello Gallery is located at 27 N. Morgan St. Reception Friday, 6-8pm.

4. Morbid Curiosity at the Chicago Cultural Center

Works from The Richard Harris Collection.

Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington St. Reception Friday, 5:30-7:30pm.

5. Not Cool or Stoic at Slow

Work by Chuck Jones and ACRE resident Matthew Schlagbaum.

Slow is located at 2153 W 21st St. Reception Friday, 6-9pm.

1. Transmissions From The Outpost at Thomas Robertello Gallery

Work by Adam Ekberg. In the project space: I Believe in Harvey Dent or Three Months in Valparaiso, work by Jason Robert Bell

Thomas Robertello Gallery is located at 27 N. Morgan St. Reception Friday, 6-8pm

2. Future Perfect at Co-Prosperity Sphere

Work by by Judy Natal.

Co-Prosperity Sphere is located at 3219 S Morgan St. Reception Friday, 6-9pm.

3. Rodney Graham at Donald Young Gallery

New photographs, sculptures, and paintings.

Donald Young Gallery 224 S. Michigan Ave. #266. Reception Friday, 5-7pm.

4. PHONEBOOK 3 at Threewalls

Release Party for PHONEBOOK 3

Threewalls is located at 119 N. Peoria. Party Saturday, 8-11pm.

5. The River Rats at Western Exhibitions

Work by Ryan Travis Christian, with collaborative work in Gallery 2.

Western Exhibitions is located at 119 N Peoria St, 2A. Reception Friday, 5-8pm.

+1 – The MDW Fair at GeoLofts, opening Friday at 8pm. Open to 11pm. $5, free beer.

Participating curatorial groups and galleries: 2612 Space, 65GRAND, ACRE, Alderman Exhibitions, antenna, ANTIDOTE, Bad at Sports, Chicago Artists, Coalition, BOLT Residency, Chicago Urban Arts, DEFIBRILLATOR, Devening Projects + Editions, Document, Drawn Lots, Green Gallery, Happy Collaborationists, Harold Arts, High Concept Lab, The Hills, Hinge Gallery, Hungryman, Iceberg Projects, Itsa_pony, LVL3, Trevor Martin, Abr Gallery, North Branch Projects, Nudashank, Old Seoul, Packer Schopf Gallery, Peanut Gallery, Pentagon, portage ARTspace, Reference, Reuben Kincaid, Roots & Culture, Sixty Inches From Center, Small Space, Spudnik Press, threewalls, Uncle Freddy’s Treats, Linda Warren, Western Exhibitions, What It Is, and Propeller Fund grantees 2010.

GeoLofts is located at 3636 S. Iron At. The MDW Fair will continue through Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6pm.