What We’re Doing This Weekend 4.17-4.19

Friday

• Luke Dowd: Happy Happy Sad Sad

Opening!

April 17 – May 30, 2009
Tony Wight Gallery
119 North Peoria Street, #2C
Chicago, IL 60607

Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 5 pm

from the press release:

“London-based artist Luke Dowd’s patterned depictions of diamonds engage the volatility embedded within notions of value. Using screen-printing as gesture, Dowd creates subtle gradients which imbue his images with a faux luster mimicking the qualities of actual gemstones. These painted diamonds appear to reflect and refract light, just like the real thing, pointing towards the sheen of high culture and status, both implicit and inseparable from the value system to which we collectively subscribe. However, these images are also able to extend beyond the role of pure representation, as they address the fictional nature inherent to our conceptions of value.”

• Also opening at Tony Wight: Olio

April 17 – May 30, 2009

From the press release:

“The title of the exhibition makes reference not only to the heterogeneity inherent to the medium of collage, but also the heterogeneous nature of group exhibitions. Included in the show are works by Tamar Halpern, Pablo Helguera, Arturo Herrera, Shinique Smith, John Sparagana and Dannielle Tegeder.

Since its appearance in the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque, through the Neo-Dadaist assemblages of the late Robert Rauschenberg, the collage impulse has provided both an immediacy and malleability which has been frequently engaged and reinterpreted in subsequent generations. While the works in Olio are not necessarily pointed homages to earlier collage, they are each forthcoming in their indebtedness to the medium. By feeding common or popular imagery through various procedures-cutting, pasting, scanning, layering-these artists complicate the immediacy of their original materials. The resulting artworks skew our normative reception of otherwise familiar images.”

• Version Fest Fundraiser at Country Club Chicago

April 17th, 2009
7:00 PM – 11:59 PM

1110 N Damen
Chicago, IL 60622

A raffle/auction party to raise funds for the 8th annual Version Fest.

Saturday

• Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe

March 14 – June 21, 2009

MCA
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL

From the website:

“A man of remarkable prescience, Fuller’s credo was “more for less,” and by the late 1920s he recognized the need for environmentally sound design that would benefit the largest segment of society while using the fewest resources — a decidedly contemporary concern. Believing in the interconnectedness of all things, Fuller’s ambition in life was to close the gap between the sciences and humanities for the genuine good of humankind. His work has extensively influenced the artists, designers, architects, engineers, environmentalists, and mathematicians of today.”

• Opening night film: Salt of this Sea (Milh Hadha Al-Bahr)

8:00 pm

Gene Siskel Film Center

164 North State Street
Chicago, Illinois 60601

Part of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which starts on Saturday and runs through April 30th, director Annemarie Jacir will be at this screening to engage in a discussion after the film.

From the website:

“In part a road movie, the story follows American-born Soraya (Hammad) from her contentious entry into Israel to reclaim her grandfather’s bank account, through stolen days of freedom on a trip to Ramallah, where the reality of her family’s missing legacy sets in. Soraya’s determination to assume a Palestinian identity and history finds an ironic counterpoint in the resolve of her Palestinian-born new lover Emad (Bakri of THE BAND’S VISIT), to leave it all behind.”