Exhibitions of Note Alberto

ARTS & CULTURE

REVIEWS

RWhat makes America what it is Abstraction and freedom take root at Ralph Arnold Gallery.

Curator Matt Morris’s “In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is,” up at Loyola University’s Ralph Arnold Gallery, is a full-hearted and generous analysis of Kim Krause, Morgan, and Sabina Ott’s bodies of work. The exhibition is strikingly expansive, explicitly positioned within the histories of modernism and postmodernism. Morris centers each artist’s work as an educator to present abstract art, specifi cally abstract painting, as a pathway to freedom for the individual and collective.

With an exhibition title taken from Gertrude Stein’s thoughts on the possibilities of an American character, Morris explicitly situates each artist within the midwest in order to constructively interrogate art making, art labor, and artistic expression throughout the 20th and 21st century. The work itself is lusciously rendered and touches on everything from America’s post-WWII expansionism to the dot-com boom, a cornucopia of references and touch points that serve as guideposts. A radical sense of play and joyful mess creates a through line from which viewers consider how visual abstraction defi es reductive defi nition. Such freedom in turn presents compelling possibilities for art making and community in a region that has suff ered uniquely from economic despair, racism, queerphobia, and sexism due to its derisive status as “fl yover country” and all attendant material disadvantages such a moniker implies.

An exhibition formed by and through a compelling hybridity of thought defi es rote analysis but does depend on a generosity of spirit, a willingness to teach possibility and openness. Morris accomplishes just this in a show that opens eyes and horizons. —ANNETTE LEPIQUE IN THE UNITED STATES… Through 1/25/23: Sat noon-4 PM, Ralph Arnold Gallery, 1131 W. Sheridan, luc.edu/ralpharnoldgallery

RFinding power in pushing back At FLXST Contemporary, seven artists fi nd community in the margins.

There is power to be found in pushing back, there is community to be made in forming resistance. In “A Rebel’s Fantasy” at FLXST Contemporary, curator Michael Rangel brings together seven artists from Chicago and beyond to remind us of the pure joy found in relishing rebellion, in pushing against the regulations, expectations, and constraints that bind us. With an eye on the “outsiders, the weird ones, the queer, and the monsters,” the exhibition forms a safe space for those of us on the margins, a place for experiences to visually overlap and intersect.

The mixed media paintings of Humberto Maldonado remind us that, in order to rebel, there must be something to rebel against. In works such as How’s Your Head?, Maldonado off ers us that something—the restricting and damning industry of organized religion— by physically using religious tokens such as cross necklaces in his queer-centered paintings. Enrique Nevarez’s textured paintings also borrow religious iconography while rendering ultra-feminine, highly-saturated scenes of pink frosting-like paint and glitter. These works show a world where religion and playfully sexual beings can exist in tandem instead of in confl ict—no matter the sexual preferences or kinks.

Sexual/sensual bodies also have a place in Brianna Noble’s work, which not only allows femme Black folks to take up space and agency, but also simply lets them just be sexual according to their own rules. There is so much joy present in the works in the exhibition that we almost forget that this is meant as a “rebellion.” Unfortunately, other people’s pleasure, the act of being joyful, is o en seen as a rebuttal, an act against a regulation or constraint that existed before us, made by others without our consent. Whose rules? Not ours. There is an air of hopeful resilience in the works that, one day, these acts won’t be a rebellion—they will simply be. —CHRISTINA NAFZIGER A REBEL’S FANTASY Through 12/31: WedFri 2-5 PM, Sun 2-5 PM, FLXST Contemporary, 2251 S. Michigan, Ste. 220, flxst.co

RMuseums are everybody Alberto Aguilar turns a solo exhibition into a collaborative thought experiment.

For “Yo Soy Museo” at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago artist Alberto Aguilar mines the relationship between the museum and the artist, cannily playing with notions of display and presentation. Having the distinction of being the fi rst exhibition in the museum’s history to not have to take out a single loan agreement, “Yo Soy Museo” presents and re-presents artifacts from the museum’s archival holdings, trinkets from employees’ work spaces, catalogs from previous exhibitions, and other museum ephemera all intermingling with Aguilar’s own photographs and works that similarly consider the potency of the everyday objects in the spaces we inhabit. Record covers from the museum archive, selected on the basis that they feature a human face, are hung on the wall and then partially obscured by hanging prayer fl ags, an installation analogue to the 27 self-portraits of Aguilar in which his face is obscured by a seemingly random object (a basketball, a cardboard Pacifi co box, etc). While the many objects that populate “Yo Soy Museo” have their own respective strength, Aguilar’s move in this exhibition has less to do with fi nding meaning in discreet artifacts. Rather, the deeply relational system Aguilar evokes insists that exhibition is everywhere, that possibilities for the cra ing of new meanings and art making can occur with a slight variation in the habits of creative approach. —CHRIS REEVES YO SOY MUSEO Through 2/12/23: Tue-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th, nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org

RThank you and be happy Thomas Kong makes buoyant artwork from packaging waste.

”Thank You for Shopping With Us,” a pop-up exhibition featuring Chicago artist Thomas Kong and curated by S.Y. Lim, conjures a holiday spirit from unnoticed everyday materials: packaging waste. Kong takes over the corner atrium at the Design Museum of Chicago with rows and rows of plastic thank-you bags that hang across the fl oor-to-ceiling windows. Each bag serves as a canvas for a unique and colorful collage. Kong, who also runs the convenience store Kim’s Corner Food in Rogers Park, is dexterous at putting excess into artistic use. Various cardboard papers are cut and arranged into abstract but curious shapes; some elicit their previous packaging duties, others stay completely anonymous. One of my favorites: a penny trapped inside of a plastic clamshell case, on top, a green leaf taped to white paper, below, a small orange block—is it a price tag? A post-it? Origin unknown. It’s plain and simple, almost deadpan funny. Stacks of heavily decorated plastic crates comfortably occupy the angular gallery space as free-standing sculptures. The crates declare they are “property of KDP.” But in response, Kong covers up most of the label, leaving only KDP’s bubbly logo hanging like a pilcrow. A new paragraph of glyphs and symbols begins. What remains most memorable are small stickers that read “be happy,” which quietly appear in many of Kong’s compositions. Happiness, as the artist tries to tell us, is o en hidden—amid the hurry of everyday life—in plain sight. —NICKY NI THANK YOU

“Yo Soy Museo,” new works by Alberto Aguilar, continues through February 12, 2023. MICHAEL TROPEA

FOR SHOPPING WITH US Through 1/31/23: Every day 10 AM-6 PM, Design Museum of Chicago, 72 E. Randolph, designchicago.org, free

RUndulation of things A group exhibition at Apparatus Projects delights in the details of objects.

Something is afoot at Apparatus Projects, namely the beguiling “The door you open is determined by how you twist the knob. The room you enter is determined by how you open the door,” including artworks by Yani aviles, Mira Dayal, and Micah Schippa steeped in the delirious so-muchness of things and not-enoughness of words.

Enter (no knob-twisting required) to Schippa’s standout, a hammered copper bell nesting in a gash in the gallery wall, romantically contracted to remain in place as long as the building stands. Linger for aviles’s looping sound piece, bells bathed in atmospheric noise, emanating from a closed door (this knob doesn’t twist either, I tried). An army of clues accompanies this vaguely spiritual chorus—a box of leaves “shipped west” (aviles), facsimiles of artwork glimpsed in apartment listings (Dayal), clock guts dissolved in fake tears (Schippa). The result: a show about the lives and languages of things—everything from talisman to coincidence, all phenomena speaking in a perhaps divine register. “Signs have always been the language of the Gods,” reads an apt Hölderlin quote in the exhibition text.

I’m reminded of Nabokov’s 1948 story “Symbols and Signs,” whose protagonist is affl icted with “referential mania,” delusions that the external world refl ects his inner life, causing the devotion of “every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things.” Nabokov’s objects control, the exhibition’s objects supplicate. The room, a er all, is determined by how you open the door. —EMELINE BOEHRINGER THE DOOR YOU OPEN . . . Through 1/15/23: Sat-Sun noon-4 PM, Apparatus Projects, 1524 S. Western, Ste. 406, apparatusprojects.com. v