Detox with exciting Chicago art exhibitions
In 2018, the name of the game was “toxic.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word saw a 45% rise in searches on its website last year, and while “toxic” typically modified nouns like “waste,” 2018 also saw the rise of “toxic masculinity” and “toxic relationship.”
With that in mind, perhaps 2019 is the year of “detox” — it is January after all, and we’re supposed to be making resolutions to run or something.
Chicago’s art galleries and museums are a great place to begin that cleanse. The most exciting art of early 2019 blatantly dissects gender, sexuality, race, history and community, purging the poison that often lies in convention.
“Chicago Works: Jessica Campbell”: The art world loves pretentious hierarchies, and one of its most useless is the line between artist and cartoonist. Flipping the bird at this binary (among others) is the Chicago-based Jessica Campbell, whose candid, crunchy solo show at the MCA reimagines the life of Canadian painter Emily Carr. Campbell deploys comics and textiles in an institutional setting to critique the traumas and trash of gender. Through July 7 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave;
mcachicago.org
“Dandies, Debutantes and Dancers: Southside Chicago Nightclubs in the 1970s”: Michael Abramson was a hometown hero who rose to acclaim in 1970s as the photographer of South Side nightlife. Shot in black and white, his intimate portraits capture the patrons of various ballrooms and strip joints, the fabulous fashion, the energy of an underground, a decade before total crisis struck the queer community. Rangefinder puts on a retrospective of this work, preserving a worthy, wild history. Through Feb. 23 at the Rangefinder Gallery, 300 W. Superior, 2nd Fl.; www.tamarkin.com/leicagallery
“Out of Context”: The newest show curated by Sabrina Greig brings together a trove of artists who investigate the meanings of borders, boundaries and even pop culture. They ask what it means to take familiar signifiers and subvert their fixed definitions. How far can we stretch a rigid image or idea before it becomes abstract? Through Jan. 24 at Chicago Artists Coalition, 2130 W. Fulton St.; www.chicagoartistscoalition.org
“Polymorphism: Queer Encounters of Intimacy in Games”: Where were you the first time you played “Grand Theft Auto” and encountered sex in a video game? In an industry that often shows very narrow images of sex and intimacy as rewards for completing certain tasks, queer video game artists are working to pull affection and sexuality from hetero margins. This work receives rigorous documentation at the Video Game Art Gallery, opening up the electric medium to the narratives of longterm romance, intimacy with multiple partners and casual sex. Jan. 18-April 28 at VGA Gallery, 2418 W Bloomingdale #102; www.videogameartgallery.com
“Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black”: The newest from photographer Dawoud Bey, a recent MacArthur “genius,” reimagines sites from the last stages of the Underground Railroad, a hard pivot from his revered portrait work. Black-and-white landscapes — gelatin silver prints — offer subdued stories of escape, secrecy and freedom, paying homage to Langston Hughes and the “twilight uncertainty that those fleeing slavery confronted as they traveled northward.” Jan. 11-April 14 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.; www.artic.edu
“Rebuilding the Present”: With David Lynch behind the scenes and in the show, Weinberg/Newton puts on a show that engages a spectrum of meditative practices, ranging from paintings to audio works, with the suggestion that meditation is both an act of self-care and social justice in a chaotic world. Jan. 18 through April 13 at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, 300 W. Superior St., Suite 203; weinbergnewtongallery.com
“The Beach Chicago”: An enormous, immersive art installation from New York designers Snarkitecture, “The Beach Chicago” will fill a ballroom with more than a million antimicrobial and recyclable plastic balls, along with all of the accouterments you’d expect from a day at Hollywood Beach — no sunscreen necessary. It will also include a pier hovering over the “sea,” from which onlookers can view the entire project. Jan. 19-Feb. 3 at the Aon Grand Ballroom Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave.; navypier.org “Stateless: Views of Global Migration”: Taking the numbers and narratives that typically appear above the fold, “Stateless” seeks to humanize the statistics and issues of human migration and displacement. Eight contemporary artists bring their lenses to the exhibition, rifling through concepts of collective trauma and the endurance required in mass movement. Jan. 24 through March 31 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave.; www.mocp.org
“Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/ Giuffrida Collection”: Pulled from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection, the major, intergenerational exhibition explores the relationship between Black artists and abstraction: What does the refusal of representation mean in a world where representation is denied? What kind of creative freedoms does disembodiment offer and how can it preserve histories? Jan. 29-May 19 at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave.; smartmuseum.uchicago.edu