ARTS & CULTURE

Reviews

RConfronting police brutality and state violence

Painter Hubert Neal Jr. comes home with “Thoughts and Prayers.”

Rarely is an exhibition title as apt as this one. In his first hometown solo show, up at Povos in West Town, Hubert Neal Jr. dissects a uniquely American social sedative: that preventable mass violence is both an anomaly and an acceptable price for freedom. Neal probes that foundational falsehood with his figurative paintings, rendered in vibrant acrylics. His style is as potently individual, and immediately recognizable, as Kara Walker or Keith Haring, with a political acuity in the spirit of both those artists.

A graduate of the Chicago Academy for the Arts, Neal is based in Los Angeles but turns an unsparing eye on violence all around the globe in “Thoughts and Prayers”: the war in Ukraine, Haitian immigrants terrorized at the U.S.-Mexico border, and police shootings of unarmed African American men. Neal’s police paintings depict officers in solid blue, not the skin tones of his other figures, and eerily grinning as they commit unspeakable acts of violence. Other paintings are more parenthetical but no less chilling. In Club Robb Elementary at the Uvalde Resort, Texas (2023), officers smilingly drink beer and play craps, a biting commentary on law enforcement’s more than hour-long delay in stopping a gunman’s rampage at Robb Elementary School last year. The work’s dissonance between breezy repose and horrific carnage is as stark as pleading for reform and, instead, getting thoughts and prayers. —HANNAH

EDGAR “THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS” Through 7/30: Sat-Sun noon-6 PM, weekdays by appointment, Povos,1541 W. Chicago, povoschicago.com

R Process is the metaphor

In Elnaz Javani’s textiles, identity is constantly being reworked.

Experiencing Elnaz Javani’s solo show, “Dwelling Places,” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid is like plunging into a sea of turquoise and dusty pink; swimming through convoluted seagrass, shadows of the past, and specters of near-forgotten selves; and, in the end, emerging to the surface of the water, a bit disoriented, but resolved.

Hanging textile-based works barely dri from the wall, with the exception of a small one docked quietly on a pedestal—products of complex and elaborate processes involving various methods of dyeing, printing, sewing, and embroidery. These works unite and accentuate one thing: process is the metaphor. One of the most remarkable moments is located in Coming Undone and Midnight Sun, where swatches appliquéd to the backing fabric are the outcome of repeated sublimation printing. Swirling marble patterns resemble the reflection of a burnt sunset on a wrinkled lake, a sublime sum of fractured lives that are sometimes at odds with each other.

Dyeing, done by submerging the textile with opaque liquid to alter its color but not its texture, is not unlike the body’s instinct to adapt while preserving what’s innate. Techniques of layering and self-referencing, spotted frequently in Javani’s new works, corroborate this metaphor. In Piscina, a small humanoid figure with three arms, located in the upper right quadrant of the composition, carries traces of multiple revisions: a handpaint dye that gives them a dark, forest-green silhouette; a white partial outline resulting from bleach; and, if you look closely, a thinly machine-sewn thread of yet another shade of sea-foam green that completes the rest of the contour. Similarly, in Conquered, a human figure is embroidered on top of a dye of similar shape, the latter of which is most visible by its aberration beyond the contour of the figure firmly demarcated by the embroidery. Each addition (or in the case of bleaching, subtraction of the color) contributes to or tweaks the overall outlook of the figure. Identity is constantly being worked and reworked, always a little awkward here, a bit ill-fitted there, but ultimately—and quite naturally—becoming a unique assemblage, beautiful in its own right. —NICKY

NI “DWELLING PLACES” Through 8/5: Sat noon-4 PM and by appointment, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, 2233 S. Throop, #419, tigerstrikesasteroid.com

RUnveiling the depths

Leasho Johnson unravels vast territories of identity.

Before even entering the gallery, “Somewhere between the eyes and the heart” pulls you in. Leasho Johnson’s densely textured paintings vary in scale. The dark color palette and shiny pitch-black silhouettes are interrupted by bright splashes of color: vivid pink, yellow, blue, and tangerine. The Jamaican-born, Chicago-based artist’s subjects are abstract enough for their facial features to be indistinct, but figurative enough to feel their piercing eyes look into your soul. The tension goes both ways.

Johnson’s work—spanning formats and media from painting and collage to sculpture and murals—is a deep dive into the culture and experiences that have shaped him. Growing up Black, queer, and male in a small Jamaican town, the artist was heavily informed by early childhood memories, his country’s postcolonial condition, and dancehall street culture that encompasses music, fashion, drugs, guns, art, community, technology, and more. The artist describes it as “vibrant, dynamic, and o entimes controversial.” The energy of Black queer love is palpable throughout the show. So is the exploration of the vast territories of identity.

His approach to color and figuration in painting: charcoal—layers and layers of it. Color emerges from the blackness of his canvas in the form of watercolors,

COURTESY ELNAZ JAVANI

rience that is “THE RIDE” because Fingerhut’s work is singular. Coded over a period of two years, the executable poem combines multisensory physical elements with Fingerhut’s so ware to form an installation that challenges and expands, with generosity and humor, what it means to be a reader, an observer, a person.

Do I slam into hyperbole with my fawning over “THE RIDE”?

Probably.

Does such sentiment negate the possibility that it is all true?

Not in the slightest.

Did “THE RIDE” move me, surprise me, shake me, serenade me, confound me, change me?

Yes. Yes to it all. —ANNETTE LEPIQUE “HALCYON.EXE: THE RIDE” Through 8/10: Thu and Sun 4-6 PM, or by appointment, Sulk Chicago, 525 S. Dearborn #209, sulkchicago.com acrylic, and DIY natural dyes. Between figurative and abstract forms, Johnson’s exhibition becomes intensely personal; fluid and open to interpretation, it grants the viewer the freedom to explore different paths, consider possibilities, and unconditionally connect with the work in their own terms.

“Somewhere between the eyes and the heart” serves both as a reminder of how far we have come and how much further we can go. At the intersections of Blackness, queerness, and the self, Johnson breaks down the barriers between high and low. Fusing pop culture and fine art literally and metaphorically, he first becomes vulnerable, then consumed, and eventually liberated. Same goes for the viewer. —VASIA RIGOU

“SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE EYES AND HEART”

Through 8/12: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Western Exhibitions, 1709 W. Chicago, westernexhibitions.com

R Inside the currents of life

Mark Fingerhut’s so ware poem challenges what it means to be an observer.

On a page in Donald Barthelme’s 1974 book Guilty Pleasures, there is a collage of a collision between two ships. Under the graphite lines of their hulls, the words “not our fault!” ring like a bell. In artist Mark Fingerhut’s so ware poem “HALCYON.EXE: THE RIDE,” currently up at Sulk Chicago, two cargo freighters, with a matterof-fact exuberance, have the following exchange:

HEY!

HELLO?

CAN YOU HEAR ME?

LOUD AND CLEAR

IT’S BEEN SO LONG

Fingerhut’s work has been compared to David Foster Wallace’s infinitely fragile, connected worlds and James Joyce’s playful verbal recursions and forms maddeningly aware of their own pre-inscribed bounds.

I pose Barthelme—the 20th-century writer of short stories filled with linguistic games, psyches, and narratives formed through and by fragmentation—as a third example, as his work comes close to capturing the funny, devastating, and moving currents of life, all undulating within Fingerhut’s motherboard.

However, this proximity fails to capture the expe-

RBuild your own narrative

“Drink from the river” shows that the personal and the universal are not so far apart.

Exploring intimacy, memory, and human connection through personal experience, Brenda Draney employs a less-is-more approach to painting. Here, absence and presence don’t seem to matter. Born in Sawridge First Nation, by the town of Slave Lake in Alberta, Canada, the Edmonton-based artist uses thick brushstrokes to depict aspects of contemporary Indigenous life. “Drink from the river,” on view at the Arts Club of Chicago, serves as a lens to nostalgia.

Utilizing white space as a conversation starter between her and the viewer, Draney intentionally leaves her work open to interpretation. Still lifes, figures, and mundane objects become more than vivid canvases featuring vignettes of everyday life—the carefully constructed compositions are set around a focal point that challenges the eye and the mind with things apparent and, importantly, with things le unsaid.

Between the tangible and the intangible, Draney’s work transports the viewer into a very personal place: the artist’s own childhood memories, histories, experiences, relationships, and cultural influences. Domestic moments—an unmade bed, a living room featuring nothing other than a floral upholstered couch and a chair, a naked woman getting ready in the bathroom, a joyous couple having a beer—invite an almost voyeuristic approach. Allowing one into the intimate corners of another person’s life (in this case, the artist’s), “Drink from the river” shows that the personal and the universal are not so far apart—that strength and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin.

Perfectly-imperfectly positioned onto sparsely painted canvases, Draney’s subject matter has a fuzzy, dreamlike element to it—as if she only vaguely remembers details. Memory can be tricky and elusive like that. But the artist’s work does not aim to lead the viewers along a predetermined path. Instead, it is meant to let them roam, reimagine, and ultimately reconstruct what they think they’re looking at—and that might even be looking back at oneself. —VASIA RIGOU “DRINK FROM THE RIVER” Through 8/15: Tue-Fri 11 AM-6 PM, Sat 11 AM-3 PM, Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario, artsclubchicago.org v