ART-PRESENTATION: Chicago Invites Chicago
In the late ‘60s a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago started to exhibit at the Hyde Park Art Center they became known as the The Chicago Imagists. There are three distinct groups which outside of Chicago are indiscriminately bundled together as Imagists: the earliest was the “Monster Roster”, then the “Hairy Who” and finally the Chicago Imagists.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Lelong Archive
The group exhibition “Chicago Invites Chicago” at Galerie Lelong in New York highlights the wealth of contemporary artistic practices within a city that has fostered significant artist groups. Three Chicago-based artists were asked to invite another artist from their community whose practice they admire to show in the exhibition. McArthur Binion presents new work from his “DNA: Seasons” series, featuring hand-applied oil stick over copies of his birth certificate and address books. The resulting autobiographical abstractions forged from his personal narrative set him apart from conventional Minimalism, while still employing formal techniques of the movement. For the exhibition, Binion has in turn invited painter John Phillips. The undulating, brightly colored shapes that occupy Phillips’ flat, enigmatic backgrounds recall the unwavering optimism of American Pop Art. His work “My Daddy Drives a UFO” (2008), a song by the American punk band The Cramps, humorously call attention to the forgone era’s artifice. Samuel Levi Jones deconstructs and manipulates books such as encyclopedias and textbooks, to critically explore systems of knowledge and power. These examinations of the bound books’ formal qualities question the assumed authority and infallible knowledge of historical material, especially in relationship to the recorded history of women and individuals of color. Jones extended an invitation to Bethany Collins, with whom he shares a concern for issues of social justice and the power of text and language. Collins, examines how language and word politics drive race relations in the United States, for instance the lack of nuance when racial identity is divided into binary words such as “black” and “white”. The exhibition features two large-scale floor drawings by Tony Lewis created from roofing paper, tape and dense layers of graphite. One drawing unfurls into a sculptural, topographical form while the other remains folded like a blanket, both creating three dimensional forms that differentiate from his earlier explorations using graphite to disrupt the linear structure of politically-charged words. Lewis has invited Nate Young, who presents new drawings in handmade wall frames that unfold like triptych altar paintings. The artist intentionally creates an association between these objects and religious architectural elements.
Info: Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, New York, Duration: 30/6-29/7/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.galerielelong.com
