Author: Ashley Cook

Remembering Bert Menco 1946–2025 by Diane Thodos To be sure, Bert Menco was an eccentric and extraordinary artist, but exactly the same could be said about his personality. Born in Holland in 1946, Menco arrived in the United States in 1982 and worked and lived in Evanston for over 40 years before returning to his home country of the Netherlands in 2023. I still recall meeting him in printmaking class for the first time in 1993. One could not miss the colorful striped scarves he regularly wore, accompanied by often equally stripy shirts or waggishly colorful sweaters. Then there was his car—the multi-colored VW Golf Harlequin that matched his scarves, shirts—and sweaters. Wherever you saw that car, you knew that it had to be him! His Dutch accent could, at times, be somewhat impenetrable in a humorous way. He was ever ready to discuss politics, life, history, art, and culture, often laced with more than a touch of wild humor. When I would jokingly ask him an absurd question, he pitched me an answer that was twice as absurd. I never forgot his cartoonishly medieval version of our fast-food restaurants where “The Burger King and the Dairy Queen live in the White Castle.” He could be soft hearted, vulnerable and, at times, shy but also doggedly persistent when he set his mind to something.           He worked as a neurobiologist at Northwestern University, securing independent research grants to study the cellular biology of taste and smell. He published over 65 articles in international journals and other peer reviewed publications in addition to receiving numerous international awards. But I knew Bert primarily as a dedicated member of our printmaking group for almost 40 years, first at the Evanston Art Center, then at the North Shore Art League in Winnetka. He spoke of us as ”a great, great group of peers, for me especially important in the absence of close family in this country.”1 He mounted more than 20 solo shows of his work and received many awards and honors for his prints in more than 100 juried and invitational exhibitions. He often worked on large etching plates some which could take half a year to finish. Our whole group would wait in anticipation to see what new images he had arduously worked on as they came off the printing press—though sometimes his experimental print techniques could ruin the blankets. I never forgot when he put a small wasp’s nest through the press because it was made of “paper.” The result was an unforgettable mess. Yes, it was gross but also funny. His sense of humor was truly inimitable.           Bert was an irreplaceable part of the Chicago area art community—a kind of self-invented institution. He brought a European bohemian sensibility that kept us connected in a way that only he was capable of creating. Endlessly curious and social, he cultivated friendships with people from all walks of culture and life, always ready to talk about the best local museum shows, plays, and performances that were worth seeing. His prodigious appetite for literature inspired my own reading lists, whether it was Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, or Thomas Piketty. His house was like a small museum—a living slice of European culture, filled with books, prints, and paintings, including a sizable collection of prints by the surrealist Czech artist, Jiri Anderle. Then there were the curious mementos, ceramics, and assembled objects, such as a bizarre looking warrior mounted on a stuffed chicken that was itself mounted on bull’s horns. Nobody who visited his house ever forgot the warrior on the stuffed chicken!         He was a true supporter of the arts, organizing many group shows of local artists that gave the far-flung branches of our community opportunities to get to know each other. “This is a very honest artist’s town” Bert said, “with an incredible amount of talent, probably because so many of us have to struggle very hard to make it even a little bit.”2 He also got a number of our prints into the 10th Douro Printmaking Biennial in Portugal, transporting the work there himself. With ever a soft spot for culture and art in distress, he singlehandedly organized a local benefit to raise money for the Iraqi National Museum after it was looted in 2003. Ever active in politics, he would frequently fire off eloquent angry letters and emails to politicians against the defunding of arts, the war in Iraq, and of course, the fascist turn of our government. Bert would encourage us printers to continue our conversations after class, sometimes staying at a café or restaurant till two in the morning.         Bert was always passionate about his art influences, especially the works of Northern European old masters such as Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Modernist art inspired him as well, including the works of Marc Chagall, James Ensor, and the German Expressionists. Nearly every year, Bert would leave for his studio apartment in Amsterdam, making the rounds throughout Europe to see traveling exhibitions featuring his favorite artists, always recounting his adventures when he returned.           Of course, his art revealed deeper dimensions to everything we knew about him. The faces of his enigmatic characters are sweet and bitter, charming and grotesque, with dreamy expressions and sad eyes. They dwell in realms of fractured fairytales that scramble religious cultures and their iconography. Madonnas, harlequins, angels, devils, jesters, and imaginary beasts make regular appearances. It was easy to see the influence of the Belgian artist James Ensor (1860—1949) in Bert’s work, well known for his portrayals of bizarre masks and wildly grotesque caricatures that act out scenes of human absurdity and folly. Like Mark Chagall, Bert’s art often expressed the precarious lives of the European Jewish Diaspora, relating to the difficulty of everyday existence and the use of fantasy to express imagined means of escape. This comes as no surprise given

“Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI November 2, 2025–March 1, 2026 by Sean Bieri You should have been there, man. That’s the vibe upon entering Cranbrook Art Museum’s exhibition “Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters”—the feeling that you missed out on a cool thing. All around is evidence of what must have been a wild and crazy scene going down around the University of Michigan in the mid-1970s. Tacked up near the entrance are Xeroxed flyers for phony lectures (“On Squares Interceding with Isosceles Triangles Throughout Art History.” “Theraputic Uses of Necrophilia,” etc.), that take the piss out of campus life while advertising strange theatrical performances. There are also actual flyers for midnight offerings of “insane music,” “crazy movies,” and “bizarre entertainment,” plus video clips and Polaroids documenting just such happenings. There are drawings hanging on the walls—portraits of Rat Fink-inflected weirdos by Mike Kelley and slinky, mysterious femmes by Niagara—plus mass media-mutilating collages by Jim Shaw and Cary Loren. And there’s a cluttered vitrine, standing in perhaps for a college apartment’s coffee table, one of a number of tableaux in the exhibition brimming with 20th century pop detritus/treasure: lurid horror comics and pulp crime novels; “Cootie” bugs, creature feature figurines, and corny rec room sculptures of pin-up girls and hobos; psychedelic rock show bills, and a looseleaf sheet sporting a hand-scrawled band logo and multiple cigarette burns. To the layman, it’s clutter; to the artists, grist for the mill. You probably think you had a good reason for not getting in on any of this, for not making the scene. Maybe you were nowhere near Ann Arbor or Detroit in 1974. Maybe you had to work the next day, or school—possibly grade school (I couldn’t go because my dad wouldn’t give me the car, mainly because I was seven). Maybe you were too cool, or not cool enough, or maybe you had “good taste.” Excuses, excuses. The fact is, you blew it, man—you should have been there.           Destroy All Monsters took its name from a 1968 Toho kaiju flick in which Earth’s most famous behemoths—Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, et. al.—are summoned to demolish the cities of the world. Likewise, Loren, Niagara, Kelley, and Shaw rose from the depths to stomp hell, artistically speaking, out of conventional societal norms. A countercultural arts collective formed during America’s post-hippie cultural doldrums, a proto-punk “anti-rock” band at a time when rock music was decidedly overripe (“We wanted to kill James Taylor,” said Kelley), DAM set itself up in a Victorian house dubbed “God’s Oasis” (a moniker swiped from a previous occupant) and proceeded to take up seemingly every medium they could get their hands on. Musically, they took inspiration from iconoclasts such as John Cage and Sun Ra, and from Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto “The Art of Noises,” which urged musicians to explore the sounds of machines and urban life to create new forms of music suited to industrial realities. DAM’s earliest music was a screeching, droning, lo-fi cacophony layered with B-grade horror movie monologues and sci-fi warbles and whoops (search for their 1974-76 album on YouTube). Films shot by Loren to accompany the band’s music (as seen on a DVD compilation, Grow Live Monsters, released in 2007) were equally frantic: 8mm approximations of drive-in exploitation flicks starring costumed band members, Frankensteined together with found footage and embellished with psychedelic video effects. Loren’s photographs here from the God’s Oasis era reveal, among other oddities, a near-naked Shaw wearing an ersatz space helmet with a long plastic tube dangling between his legs, and Niagara sprawled on a cellar floor beside a kitchen knife, her bare midriff smeared with stage blood. (Cranbrook kindly warns visitors entering the gallery that the show contains images of sex and violence.)             DAM’s visual art continues the chaotic theme, as seen in Destroy All Monsters Magazine, a promotional vehicle for the band that also functioned as a record of the collective’s graphic activities. A sampling here of thirty pages from the original zine’s six issue run features Niagara’s trademark drawings of elegant vamps; irreverent collages (e.g., Jesus summoning a fleet of 1950s gas guzzlers from the Samaritan well); and of course zombies, vampires, werewolves, and mutants borrowed from movie magazines and comic books, all crammed onto the page, overlapping and fighting for space in classic cut-n-paste zine style, where legibility sometimes comes in second to attitude.             By 1978, personnel changes had left Niagara the only charter member of the Destroy All Monsters band (she was joined by members of the Stooges and MC5, who took DAM’s music in more straightforward punk-ish directions). They disbanded in 1985, but the original lineup returned in the ’90s for a series of concerts and re-releases of their ’70s material. DAM has persevered in one form or another since, sometimes producing new works such as the sculpture toward the center of the gallery—a foamy, yellowish glob of goo. Conceived of by Loren and Kelley and first built according to their faxed instructions for a show in Japan in 1996, this version (there have been a few around the world) was made by Cranbrook students specifically for this exhibition. It consists of a pile of plush and plastic toys, plus a small video monitor, glopped over with polyurethane foam. A wall plaque calls it “part structure, part landscape, part mediation on memory, the psyche, and spirituality.” In the context of a Destroy All Monsters exhibit, though, it can’t help evoking for me the titular alien from the 1958 horror picture The Blob, an unstoppable entity that swallows up whatever it encounters and incorporates it all into its monstrous matrix—not-unDAM-like idea, after all.             With many comebacks, reprints, re-creations, and compilations over five decades, the precise timeline of the whole DAM project sometimes got muddled for me—but then, that’s what Wikipedia is for. The

“REVELATION” Works by Jordan Nassar James Cohan at 48 Walker Street, September 5–October 4, 2025 by Paul Moreno I first became aware of Jordan Nassar when he was a young queer artist making artist’s books and zines. When I look back at his work in that milieu, I see a thread that connects to the art presented in “REVELATION,” his recent exhibition at James Cohan. Artist’s books and zines have the quality of objecthood. The viewer may get lost in an image within a zine, but that zine does not blend in and become part of the wall. The image in a zine is always an image in an object that has weight in your hand. Conversely, it is very easy to forget, when looking at art hanging on a wall, that the images you are looking at are not just images but are physical things.         Interestingly, what immediately struck me about was the presence that the works had as objects. The pieces on display, though hung on the wall, were not paintings or works on paper, but five large assemblages of textiles and a pair of impressive mosaics. When looking at these pieces, I found my mind pondering what their internal structure might be, imagining the weight they must possess, contemplating, in the case of the mosaics, how the walls supported this installation and how the works activated the room.         All the textiles were composed of various panels of hand-embroidered cotton on cotton. In each of these, one panel depicted a landscape. The other panels contained intricate geometric patterns. An elegant relationship was created between the geometric panels and the landscape panels through the use of the patterns.           In the geometric panels, there are, in fact, two patterns—one that is created by the areas that are embroidered as opposed to the areas which are not. For example, in When the sun does justice to life and death in the middle of the sky / a mask of steel descends over its face, two large panels consist of what I perceive as a feather-like pattern. The line work of the pattern is created by leaving thin lines of supporting fabric unembroidered. In the top panel, the vertical rows of “feathers” are chocolatey brown. The negative space is a steel gray. In every fourth row, the negative space is an electric blue. In the panels below it, the color pattern is reversed, feathers are gray and the negative space brown, and, in this panel, every fifth row of negative space is the electric blue. But the overall outline “feather” pattern remains the same and, in fact, remains the same in the third panel—the landscape panel. Here, the arbitrary color pattern of brown and gray disappears. This panel contains a depiction of a mesa of rich desert colors—ochre, fuchsia, gold, orange, sage. The mesa is surrounded by a perfect blue sky, an egg yolk sun, and a childlike grass green ground. However, the feather pattern continues and gives the landscape a veil, as though looking through a lace curtain or through the mistiness of recollection.           This play with pattern suggests a sense of whimsy, even while, the works simultaneously feel austere and minimal. There was a part of my eye that longed for the “feather” pattern in each panel to align perfectly with the next panel. But the fact that it doesn’t certainly felt like a choice made by the artist, or, a consequence of the nature of the materials themselves which were “made with the participation of Palestinian craftswomen living and working in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron.” In a piece like War in the Vacant Sky, where multiple patterns are employed on seven panels that surround an eighth which depicts a crescent moon, the juxtaposition of patterns that abut each other adds a certain charm or air of chance.           The textiles occupied one room of the gallery while in an adjoining room two mosaics filled the walls. The mosaics are quite an interesting project. Nassar recreated, or perhaps better said, reinterpreted or reimagined, two Byzantine mosaic artifacts from the fifth or sixth century which are presently located at BenGurion Airport near Tel-Aviv.             Bisan (Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out) (Deuteronomy 28:6) portrays a diagonal grid pattern of shell pink, pale blue, and ashy green. Each square of the grid contains a green and teal bird, reminding me of both Monk Parakeets and Pigeons. A burnt orange and gray mosaic frame runs along the edges. The quote from which the piece takes its title is inscribed in Arabic at the top. In the original mosaic, the birds wear red ribbons; Nassar eliminates that detail.           The second mosaic, Bethlehem-In-The-Galilee, was installed in a corner, with part on one wall and part on the adjoining wall. It hangs sideways, vis-a-vis the original, which may have been a decision based simply on making it fit. That choice however does bring every detail of the work to eye-level. It is also useful to keep in mind that this is all relative given that the original was installed as a floor. Within a frame of intertwined green, orange, and grey running key patterns are grape-vine medallions, each containing birds, animals, or flora. At one end, there is a sort of Palladian window or fan. All the elements are fanciful, colorful, and delightful in the way they add a peculiar soulfulness to the austere white cube gallery.           Together, the textile works, with their Palestinian origin, and the mosaics with their Byzantine lineage, combine the force of their pure physicality to create a palpable sense of place. By placing these selected works in this space, the artist has accomplished the creation of a site—not simply the display of

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding Murals by Adam Cvijanovic Site specific installation at St Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC by Paul Moreno The newly installed set of murals at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, here, in New York City, is not a typical installation for me to take on as a writer about art. Befittingly, I will start with a confession: I am a practicing Catholic. Further, I am an employee of the Archdiocese of New York. I also, for a few years, served on a committee to commission new art for parishes therein. Given all of this, my reaction to these murals is not simply formal. I don’t think that anyone’s reaction could be as this is not artwork made in a conventional context.         It is difficult to presume that these murals are not part of a legacy-building effort by the current Cardinal of New York, His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who commissioned the work. The murals occupy the cathedral’s narthex. (A catholic church traditionally would have its central axis run east/west with its main entrance at the western end. In modern cities, this east/west custom cannot always be followed and nowadays the narthex can face “liturgical west,” which is the name given to wherever the main entrance faces, so long as it is opposite the Altar, or “liturgical east.” In the case of St. Patrick’s, the narthex does face “Manhattan west” (about 29° north of true west). The narthex is a transitional space in a Church, a zone that exists between the outside world and the sacred space. Rules for art in this space are interesting in that those depicted need not be saints or holy people.         In the case of What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding, the 12 panels of the murals depict two groups of immigrants including some important historical Catholics. On the uptown wall, there are Europeans arriving by boat in a breezy and sunlit scene. Above these figures is a depiction of the Apparition at Knock —a nineteenth-century holy occurrence in which a group of Irish villagers witnessed a vision of The Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, John the Evangelist, as well as a lamb upon an altar, and a host of angels.           The immigrants depicted on the downtown side are people of color in contemporary dress, seemingly gathered and waiting, carrying tote bags and shopping bags. Among these people, the artist inserted a portrait of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, a turn of the century Sister known for her work with the poor, orphans, and immigrants. She was also the first sainted American citizen.         On the western wall, there are two quintettes, one on either side of what was once the main doors and is now a large window. One is an image of first responders to 9/11 above whom floats an angel holding a police officer cap and a fire fighter helmet. The other is a group portrait of five important American Catholic figures including Archbishop John Hughes, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha— the first Native American Saint, Venerable Pierre Toussaint—philanthropist, Dorothy Day— activist, writer and Servant of God, and Al Smith. They stand below an angel holding St. Patrick’s cathedral itself.             When viewing the part of the mural depicting these important Catholic figures, I felt for the first time, my heart reacting to this mammoth work not as a commission but as a work of art. I was suddenly very aware of the moccasins worn by St. Kateri Tekakwitha. They are leathery brown and dotted with beads that form white flowers with bright yellow centers. This small detail felt thoughtful and careful. I was then drawn to the large black boots worn by the first responders and then the bright sneakers work by the immigrant children. These figures’ feet are at viewer eye level in the murals. But the murals have a slight forced perspective that I associate with posters for soviet propaganda or superhero movies– the lowest parts of the figures are enlarged, and the upper parts reduced, giving the figures a towering quality. The subjects’ faces and postures convey a dignified humanity, but the composition elevates them to the heroic and compels the viewer to see the subjects’ strength.         The painting in and of itself is adroit in the best way. The artist, Adam Cvijanovic, displays a great deal of skill and commitment to the subject, prioritizing the story and references above his own showmanship. His painting is somewhat loose and has an easy confidence. It is exciting without tiptoeing into daring; it is what a person without a lot of exposure to art might assume portraiture at the turn of the twenty-first century might be, and therefore, these images possess a quality of having always already been there. This is a smart tack to take when adding new work to a sacred place that is approaching its 150th year.         The cathedral is a tough place in which to pray, let alone look at art. It is the Grand Central Station of Churches. When I visited during the first week of Advent, in mind to write about these murals, I arrived during Mass which provided an audial backdrop to the busyness of tourists walking their self-guided tour through the cathedral, surrounding those attending the Mass with an equally loud commotion. I watched people look at the murals, some taking a moment to ponder or read the signs about them, some not really noticing, some looking at their phone. I stood back and looked at the murals as a whole. I noticed how beautifully the artist’s addition of goldleaf rays shimmered —the holy spirit, I thought —but also an elegant architectural nod to the art deco Rockefeller Center across the street.         After having seen them, I was speaking to an artist friend about the murals. He joked

Yoko Ono: A Primer by John Thomure In light of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s retrospective of Yoko Ono, it seemed appropriate to present an introduction to an artist who pioneered a unique approach to conceptual art. As a member of Fluxus, an international avant-garde movement that wanted to expand what could constitute artworks and how art could be presented, she was integral to the New York art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Her loft apartment became a hotbed of emerging practices, attracting performance artists, musicians, composers, writers, and more. She ought to be revered as a household name. However, Ono has unfairly been derided and falsely accused of breaking up The Beatles. She has been demeaned, reduced to a footnote of the 1960s culture due to, I believe, sexist and xenophobic sentiments. Such discriminatory perspectives vulgarly deny the recognition she more than deserves. This primer will elucidate Yoko Ono’s philosophical background and development, as well as key works which reflect her intellectual acumen.         Ono’s art challenges the boundaries of what could constitute a work of art. Her pieces are ephemeral and paradoxical. As Marxist theorist Theodor Adorno contended in his monumental book Aesthetic Theory, “Artworks participate in enlightenment because they do not lie: they do not feign the literalness of what speaks out of them… The unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as imminent problems of form.”1 The experimental forms found in Ono’s art speak to a transformation which occurred in society during the latter half of the twentieth century. As the capitalist mode of production expanded globally, aided by the rapid development of technology, the experience of daily life grew increasingly digitally augmented. The layers of experience introduced by this augmentation from films, music, television, the internet, smartphones, and virtual reality fragmented our experience of existence.           An early work like Painting to be Stepped On provides a relatively straightforward model of Ono’s conceptual operations. She placed a slight scrap of painting on the floor; a freeform rhombus with a stalk jutting out into a fluke-like shape. The title invites participation from the viewer to intervene. Discarded on the floor, the dark scrap is ancillary to the interaction of the viewer stepping on the painting. The essence of the piece was meant to be found in the idea presented by the artist instead of the object on display. She would push this idea further in her series of Score Paintings. These paintings consisted of poetic instructions, neatly written out in pencil, carefully aligned by an erased grid in the center of a rough, porous sheet of paper. The instructions read like a Zen koan—inscrutable yet charged with implied meaning.   PAINTING TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN YOUR HEAD Observe three paintings carefully. Mix them well in your head. Collect the figures you remember. Select a number that you associate with it. Place the number on a canvas. Instead of paintings, you may use photographs, wrapping papers, newspapers, recipes, etc.           By closely examining this particular Score Painting, Ono breaks down the act of appreciating artworks. Initially, the viewer is asked to observe three different paintings and memorize as much detail from them as possible. Next, to mentally recount these details, the figures that remain from our observation. Finally, to construct in the mind a new painting, a collage collated from careful observation and recollection. This is the process by which we de facto understand and exist in the world. Ono’s work positions interpretation as a gesture of participation, invitations to flex the imagination.         Much like other early conceptual artists, Ono sought to democratize art, to liberate it from the confines of institutions like museums and galleries. In reaction to the strict materialism of Abstract Expressionism, the initial impulse of conceptual art was to question the frameworks within which art was exhibited and understood. Her contemporaries like Lawrence Wiener and Sol Lewitt also aimed to achieve both a universality and a specificity through reducing art to an idea expressed in language. Others like Joseph Kosuth raised age-old philosophical questions regarding the fraught relationship between subjects, objects, and linguistic representation. While this kind of art may appear silly or trite, the underlying deconstruction of logic was profoundly rigorous.         Her conceptual installation Blue Room Event which elaborated on the Score Paintings and is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago, was a prime example of this early conceptual art, consisting of sentences written on the gallery walls. The prompts describe events, qualities, and states of the room which had to be imagined—“stay until the room is blue,” “a statue was here,” or “this room gets as wide as an ocean at the other end.” It remains an empty room regardless. However, Ono is encouraging the audience to imagine and change the state of the room in their mind. It opens up an interesting question about the necessity of fabrication in art.         The barebones presentation of Blue Room Event recalls the later works of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who precisely examined and unpacked the way in which reality and experience are mediated and expressed through thought and language. Wittgenstein proposed that words were the method by which we communicated our conceptual interpretation of the world to others. However, the way we use words in different situations is dictated by various sets of rules. These rules change depending on the situation, and by extension, the meaning of words change under different sets of rules. Wittgenstein designated these interactions as “language games.” Miscommunication, therefore, is born out of the misalignment of languages games. One person is playing a particular language game, while the other is playing a different one. Neither can communicate because they are using the same words, but under conflicting rules of usage. 2         Thus Yoko Ono, much like Wittgenstein, investigated the way in which we discover

“Theaster Gates: Unto Thee,” A Collection of Collections Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, September 23, 2025–February 22, 2026 by Michel Ségard …Chicago artist Theaster Gates takes into his care collections of objects amassed or discarded by others. Through artistic intervention, he reveals their latent cultural value, elevating the objects to an archive that holds truths largely overlooked by history or institutional structures. By reinvesting in these objects, Gates has built a practice that centers what he refers to as “material redemption.”1   This quote from the introductory wall text of Gates’s exhibition clearly states the artist’s motivation. We are presented with a collection of collections that document his two-decade tenure with the University of Chicago, along with a few other collections that are essential to the artist’s psyche.         The first piece in the show is 2025’s Salon Mantle. It is comprised of Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square (1961) (the first work of art that Gates bought as a young man), materials from the late Japanese journalist Ei Nagata, wood-fired stoneware, a slab of marble from a demolished building, and a letter Gates tried to translate into Japanese, all on a steel base. It feels like a mantlepiece in someone’s home with mementos of dear friends or relatives on display, encapsulating what Gates appears to want you to feel about the entire exhibition—a sense of history and family.           To the left of the piece on the adjacent wall is an installation of three paintings and a long credenza. The credenza is from the Johnson Publishing Company. Above it, on either side, are three paintings by Gates, from left to right: Painting for My Father, Roof Portrait, and Defend the Black Community. It was mentioned to me by one of the curators that Gates did not think of these as paintings because of the materials used: rubber, wood, copper nails and, on the center one, felt and bitumen. Gates’s father was a roofer and the first two were created in his memory. Gates’s trepidation about calling them paintings was because he used tar. There is nothing wrong with these materials in contemporary painting; they have been used a number of times before, especially tar. Donald Sultan produced a whole series called The Disaster Paintings using tar and latex paint on Masonite. What is significant here is the homage Gates pays to his father by bringing the roofing materials into his art. Displaying them along with the Johnson Publishing credenza further ties Gates’s heritage with the sophisticated publishing and art world.           At the opposite end of the gallery spanning the width of the room , Black Revolution in Color is made from silkscreened images from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Sadly, it is placed so high that one cannot make out the images in any detail. Still, with the Johnson Publishing credenza placed on the opposite wall, this piece makes a fitting bookend to the exhibition. Below this mural is the Glass Lantern Slide Archive. This collection of 72,000 glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago Department of Art History was put in Gates’s care in 2009. He has since digitized the entire collection, samples of which are shown in the darkened room behind this wall. What we see is the card catalog-like cabinets that once housed the slides stretching all the way across the wall between the viewing room doors and, from a distance acting as an enormous plinth for Black Revolution in Color.           In the darkened viewing room are the pews from the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel which were removed for more flexible seating during a 2013 renovation. One can sit in these pews and view a sampling of the Glass Lantern Slide Archive. We can see what the University’s pedagogical approach was in the twentieth century. For me, it was also a nostalgic event; my sister was married in Bond Chapel in 1976.           Along the south wall of the gallery to the right of Art Histories: A Reprise and framed by doorways to the rest of the Museum’s gallery space is Slate Roof. This work  is made of a selection of slate tiles from approximately 9,000 donated to Gates by the University from an early 2000s renovation of Rockerfeller Chapel (the place where I was married in 1970). In memory of his father’s trade as a roofer, Gates has had that selection of tiles reassembled into a massive sloping roof-like structure. The piece is both large and small in scale. It occupies an entire wall of the gallery, yet the individual tiles are less than a foot square and show the wear and tear of 80 years in the weather, each telling an individual story of endurance. This dual scale perception occurs in many of the pieces in the exhibition. In the Glass Lantern Slide Archive, for example, we see the sweep of the drawers, then we are led to examine the individual drawers that resemble the traditional library card catalog. And in the two collections of books, we are caught by their expanse, and then become curious about the individual volumes.           On the north wall of the gallery between two doorways is a long four-shelf collection of books titled Walking Prayer, all in the same dark blue binding with gold embossed phrases on their spine. These phrases coalesce, sometimes clearly and sometimes not, into a kind of poem, full of shifts and non sequiturs: “In My Dreams / Don’t Change / Remain the Loyal / Colored Girl / I’ve Always Known / Holy, in Deed / Holy, in Color / Holy, Among Your Brothers and Sisters / Holy, Holy, La Toya / Holy Torkwase / Holy is Your Name / Holy is Our Love” reads one section; “It is Time for a New Order / And Lord Knows I Hope to See It

Raven Chacon: American Ledger No. 3 The Renaissance Society in association with the Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago, November 2, 2025 by John Thomure Originally commissioned by the Renaissance Society for their exhibition “Nine Lives,” Raven Chacon’s American Ledger No. 3 was unable to be staged due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly five years later, the Renaissance Society and the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago finally presented this third addition to his American Ledger series. The previous American Ledger scores dealt with reinterpreting significant events in American history and the third iteration is no different. This version was dedicated to Chicago journalist and anti-lynching activist, Ida B. Wells. The piece had a multifaceted presentation: a score printed upon a flag placed on the ground between the two female choirs, four xylophones, four large bowls filled with pennies, and a supplemental newspaper containing a collage of source materials with Chacon’s commentary. Everyone in the crowd discussed the entangling of these different aspects, drawing connections between the disparate elements of the piece.         Chacon’s score, printed on a flag, was sitting on the ground, surrounded by lines of folding chairs and an audience huddling together against the encroaching cold of winter. The score’s graphic visual language reconstituted common symbols and shapes culled from American history and Western music theory in order to call into question the dominant narratives of American society. Contemporaneous with these visual motifs, Chacon isolates sonic motifs in the enactment of the score as well. As the music developed, these disparate and scattered themes are knotted together into a powerful piece of indeterminate music (a compositional style pioneered by John Cage which sought to compose found sounds and chance operations into a music piece).           The four phases of American Ledger No. 3 were heralded by a single isolated drum hit—bang! The initial phase was inaugurated by the entrance of twin female choirs who lined up facing each other. They began tossing pennies toward four miniature xylophones arranged upon the corners of Chacon’s score. The sparse metallic percussive soundscape was occasionally punctuated by the soft euphonious ringing of the xylophone keys. The wind rustled as the onlookers whispered and gossiped, shifted around for warmth, and emitted a murmuring hum which lingered alongside the music.           Bang! The second phase began with the parallel lines of performers moving inwards towards each other. They started to intermittently sing a swath of chants. The muddled chorus was both pleasant and unpleasant in equal measure, changing from moment to moment. This music embodied a particular mono-no-aware (the pathos of things) attitude, or an appreciation of the impermanence and transience of life. The xylophone notes rise and dissipate, caught amongst the sea of percussive noise; the melody being treated with the same importance as the environmental sounds. The high-pitched rhythmic percussion and melodic xylophones acquired greater form and definition over time. The layers of sonic activity slowly became more dense, comparable to a fog. A definitive melodic theme began to gradually emerge amidst the chaos.         Bang! The third phase began. The music became more compacted and steady pulsating chords emerged from the lapping rondos sung by the opposing choirs. The tempo increased as a second drum stamps out a simple beat. The music now churned.         Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The two lines moved right up to the edges of the score and the voices began repeating their lines in harmony as a singular sonic unit. The waves of sound rolled over the audience until the drummers walked away. The singers departed sporadically following the dissipating drums. The singing and drumming grew fainter and fainter the farther they drifted away until it was silent.           In the newsprint pamphlet, Chacon asserts that this latest edition of the American Ledger series is concerned with how to reconcile our conflicting ideas of truth. My interpretation of American Ledger No. 3 is that the truth has become a complex subject in our current society, obfuscated by both the rise of technology and the deeply entrenched political divides which grow more distant and extreme by the day. How do we arrive at a consensus of truth? Chacon’s concept of truth is fragmentary; it is communal and emerges from a multitude of perspectives much like how the music itself developed.         Chacon states that he is hoping to discover in this piece, “an approximate shared understanding of the truth.”1 His marriage of experimental musical forms with his own radical politics of social justice is a refreshing and unique approach that was able to call into question predominant narratives of American society. Evoking Wells’ journalistic activism against brutal racial violence, Chacon revealed how the mythic symbols, images, sounds, and ideals of America are predicated on perpetrating violence against minorities.         American Ledger No. 3 began as chaotic noise but steadily grew into a desperate chant. The performers established connections, relationships, and solidarity the same way the vocal melodies and ringing xylophone notes concentrated into an epic demanding harmony. It was an apt sonic metaphor for the fraught and disorienting times we are living through across the world. The graphic symbols and sonic textures were arranged into new forms which compel the audience to think and consider their relationships to society. This performance affirms a composer who will clearly come to define avant-garde music going forward. John Thomure is a performance artist and writer currently based in Chicago. His performance and writing practices fixate on local art history, ecology, and exploring underappreciated artists and their archives. Footnote:  1 Excerpt from American Ledger No. 3 Pamphet

“Sarah Whythe—And the Space Between” by The Adoptea, Chicago Art Department by Michel Ségard Five artists have formed a collective to help them cope with the phenomenon of being uprooted from their native culture by virtue of adoption—something partially familiar to this writer, being a first-generation immigrant. They call themselves The Adoptea. The Adoptea are working to change the “sugar-coated narrative of adoption.” In their pamphlet that accompanies the exhibition, the group states that they “encourage civically minded work through critical discussion and ask participants to think about and examine questions of belonging and the politics around adoption.” “Sarah Whythe—And the Spece Between” is just the kind of show for which the host venue, Chicago Art Department (CAD), is known.           The first piece upon entering the front gallery of CAD is by Sarah Whythe, an interdisciplinary fiber artist and painter. Whythe is the co-curator of the show along with Maya Ortiz Saucedo. She grew up in Viginia and Texas before coming to Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work in this show focuses on the complex, and sometimes fraudulent, paperwork involved in adoptions from China. In Grain of Salt, she presents us with two vertical sets of shadow boxes filled with photos and documents, all encrusted with varying amounts of salt that obscures their contents. According to the paperwork in the shadow boxes, she was abandoned when she was two days old. At 21 months, she was adopted from Jiangxi Province, China, and brought to the United States. The sides of the cases are upholstered with fake Chinese silk, emphasizing the questionability of the contents inside. She states on her wall text: “What does it mean when you can’t even trust the paperwork that validated your existence within the system? Who are you? and who am I?”           Solpheria presents us with about two dozen sketches held together with various tapes and stickers with images on them called The Self Is Constructed Not Found. The whole ensemble has the feeling of a teen girl’s bedroom decorated with sketches of Barbie-like idols, trinkets, and the occasional idyllic landscape. Embedded in this collection are little emojis and soft swirls that extend onto the wall. It is all very cute and adolescent. The pamphlet accompanying the show states that Solpheria is inspired from early internet culture, the Chicago DIY scene, and personal intersectional identities. They claim that the work is created “to serve as a focal point for self-reflection.” But that would be for a limited audience. To this octogenarian, it shows an adolescent female struggling to find their identity in a jumble of social media imagery. The work does not really reflect upon the unique struggles of being an adoptee.             Jazmyn Yun Babler presents us with a video of a woman braiding her hair. Titled Self Organizing/Stuck in the Unknown, the piece indirectly addresses the theme of the show. The person doing the braiding is struggling to keep the individual bunches of hair together as the braid remains unfinished. The low resolution of the video, along with it being shown on an old CRT TV, enhances the struggle and the occasional tangle of hair that interferes with the braiding. This is a metaphorical interpretation of Whythe’s piece Grain of Salt and gives us a more emotional sense of the struggle and frustration of an East Asian adoptee.           In her imagery, Quin Steinmetz takes a more direct approach to being an adoptee. In both Self Portrait and Buy a Baby, she bluntly depicts the corrupt, clinical, merchandising system of adoption from East Asian countries. On the wall text, she refers to the “red thread of fate” which comes from the Chinese proverb about the unbreakable red thread between two people fated to meet. It implies that: “In the American sense, the red thread connects the orphan child to a deeply footed, and unbreakable, thread that remains connected between the child and their birth mother forever, even if they never meet again.” Steinmetz’s images show just how brutal this can be. A self-taught painter, her less than perfect execution adds to the tension of content.           Maya Ortiz Saucedo is the co-curator of this exhibition. Their installation, Sediment, consists of a video monitor laying on a bed of sand, all under a large plywood panel that is held up at an angle with cables from the ceiling. The video depicts Saucedo trying to upright the panel with her back. The angle at which it is displayed is the angle at which they were able to right it. The black and white painting on the panel, called Margin of Error, includes the words “Child in sta_e custody” and, beneath it, the same phrase written backwards along with other fragments of text. Behind the text, but in front of a man in the background, is a skeletal figure—not quite a body, not quite a skeleton–seemingly pulled up by a thin gnarled hand. This is perhaps the most powerful image in the show (along with Buy a Baby). Here we see the underworld-like, dark side of the adoption process. The video installation symbolizes Maya’s attempt to get out from under this shady process. But the painting is more powerful than the installation and could easily stand on its own.         This exhibition is part of a popular trend that focuses on shows emphasizing social issues over aesthetics. It has a rather make-shift appearance brought about by unsophisticated facilities and the slight disrepair of the CAD space, along with the wide variety of technical skills of the participants. This further places the focus on content rather than aesthetics. It is hard to critique such a show; one is left to judge the skill at which the social issue is communicated/portrayed without judging the legitimacy of the issue.

Rectangles of Negativity A review of “Dust Jacket,” works by Nick Schutzenhofer, at Mickey, Chicago by Curtis Anthony Bozif There is a work of the negative in the image, a “dark” efficacy that, so to speak, eats away at the visible.1      – Georges Didi-Huberman The significance of images is on the surface.2       – Vilém Flusser   There is a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans have evolved to see and that we call visible light (roughly 750–380 nanometers). At one extreme is an even narrower band we call violet (roughly 430–380 nanometers), the shortest wavelengths our eyes can perceive. Beyond that is ultraviolet light; shorter still are X-rays; and, at the far end of the spectrum: gamma rays—the stuff of radioactive decay, supernovae, and quasars. Nick Schutzenhofer’s spare but deep palette—on display once again in his third solo exhibition at Mickey in Chicago—is dominated by this color, poised at the very limit of our perception. It permeates the room and unites a body of work remarkable for the variety of materials and techniques deployed in its creation, as well as the ways it interrogates, even antagonizes, visuality as we know it today.           A rectangle of negativity, full of emptiness, frontal, obtrusive, and imposing, it featured prominently in Schutzenhofer’s previous solo show and has become somewhat of a signature motif for the artist. Centered all the more for being slightly off-center, in Untitled (53 x 66 ¾ inches) it presents as a plum-gray stain around which orbits a constellation of gestural marks the hue of a Concord grape’s waxy bloom. To the right is a spasm of slashes, dabs, and daubs that coalesce to become a figure, if just barely. Pressed precariously between the void and the edge of the canvas, on the cusp of oblivion, it reminds me of a Michelangelo non finito, abandoned in its struggle to emerge from the stone in which it is trapped, as much as it does the poor astronaut in Stephen Hawking’s example of how a black hole warps space, time, and the mind. As they approached the event horizon, the boundary of the region from which not even light can escape, time would slow down for the astronaut, though they wouldn’t notice it at first; but as they were stretched and crushed, disintegrating into a stream of subatomic particles, to the distant observer, the astronaut’s image would remain frozen. “Thus, by jumping into a black hole one could ensure that one’s image lasted forever, but the picture would fade very rapidly and grow so dim that no one could see it.”3         It is this painting that beckons to me from across the gallery. The void within the picture upon the wall inside the room: if not infinite, it is still some kind of regress that I fall into. Containing both figure and void, the representational and the non-objective, it is the crux of the exhibition, and it nearly brings me to tears.           There are other paintings, of course. In Untitled (48 ½ × 58 ¼ inches), the rectangle of negativity is an area of wash, a zone of erasure. It is set within a field of marks whose juice-like fluidity contrasts their conspicuously mechanical application. The ribbony strokes, one right after the other, of about the same width and length, hang vertically, while the marble-dust ground radiates as if behind amethyst crystals. Dilute as it is, the paint pools, throwing into stark relief the rich crenulation of the sewn and impastoed substrate, much like a rubbing might. A draftsman at heart, Schutzenhofer half-jokingly describes his method as “six months and fifteen minutes.” By this he means that the majority of the time he spends on a painting is in preparing its surface. Compared to the deliberateness with which his substrates have been built, what happens on top, the drawing, appears utterly spontaneous, almost evanescent.           The painting’s neighbor on the wall is the smaller Untitled (27 ⅛ × 34 ½ inches), a seemingly half-finished genre scene in which one figure, eyes closed, dissolves into a shadowy chair, while another figure stands awkwardly against a pushy block of alizarin crimson. In such proximity, the rectangles of negativity in the two larger paintings become figures in their own right, or signs for figurability as such. In the blankness of the rectangles lies the figure’s potential: the possibility of figure and ground; in the residue the rectangles frame: the figure disfigured, reconstituted, dispersed, becoming ground—more regress.           Two paintings, both untitled and measuring 53 × 67 inches, are distinct for the encaustic in which they are encased. Each features a quasi-floral motif inspired by Édouard Vuillard’s depiction of wallpaper, wherein pattern as ground envelopes the figure; or dissolves the distinction. In one, the floral motif is partly obscured by a piece of cardboard—a literal object interrupting the pictorial space—that seems to have absorbed some kind of an accident in sap green; in the other, the floral motif hovers over a caliginous blob, a lava field of mars black, ultramarine, lavender, and periwinkle—a hot mess. In this pair, chaos, if it doesn’t reign, at least has more of a say in the matter. Clumsy and disorganized, they’re less successful individually and for that reason are supported rather than complemented by the works with clearer internal logics in their approach to material, process and form.           If there is a way in which the brute materiality of Schutzenhofer’s art can seem self-conscious, even over-determined, it may have something to do with how it calls forth the digital—and, by extension, Big Tech—if only by sheer contrast, a point I will return to later. In Untitled (18 ½ × 22 ½ inches), itself the size of a rectangle of negativity, the organic overflows the grid. A structure of repeated cells, removed by the artist, has created a crumbling

Dinorá Justice: “Entwined” Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA by Emelia Lehmann Tucked inside a former chapel of the neo-Gothic Church of the Covenant on Boston’s Newbury Street is a charming contemporary art gallery, Gallery NAGA. The ornate stone church exterior belies the cozy and simple exhibition space inside—indeed, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled through a trefoil arch doorway into the gallery one cold November night. Nothing is more Boston than making innovative use of old places and things. Founded in 1977 as the Newbury Associated Guild of Artists (hence, NAGA), the female-owned Gallery NAGA has been supporting and promoting New England and Boston-based contemporary artists for almost 50 years. Their current exhibition, “Entwined,” showcases new work by Brazilian-American artist Dinorá Justice, on view from November 6 to December 20, 2025.         Since 2016, Justice has been working on a series called Portraits that reimagines depictions of female forms in the canon of Western art history. For centuries, male artists have been painting women in revealing and provocative poses, creating adaptations and derivatives of their peers and predecessors—from Titian’s Venus of Urbino (c. 1534) to Ingres’s Grande Odalisque (1814). Building on this tradition, Justice revisits famous works of art and uses swirls of color and patterns to reposition the female form into an updated, contemporary context. She also replaces elements such as furniture, tapestries, and interior settings with nature-based surroundings motivated by her interest in ecofeminism.           In “Entwined,” Justice pulls inspiration from her recent residency in Vienna and her engagement there with Gustav Klimt paintings. She adapts the Austrian artist’s opulent paintings (which often position semi-naked female forms in sensual situations), reconfiguring his well-known style with her own collage-like technique of painting. Where he used gilding and patterns to create richness and complexity, Justice introduces her own references to Brazilian textiles, jewelry, and flowers. While her paintings contain obvious references to his famous works like Death and Life (1910/1915) and The Kiss (1908-1909), Justice melds Klimt’s perspective with her own to offer a new lens into art historical interpretation today.           Portrait 92, After Klimt (2025) illustrates Justice’s process of adapting historic works for a modern audience. Those well-versed in Klimt’s oeuvremay recognize the allusion to his 1905 work, The Three Ages of Woman. To start, Justice created a warm marbled background full of movement to serve as the backdrop of her work. She preserved the outlines of Klimt’s three female figures, painting in hair falling over their foreheads and shoulders, and using layers of floral and geometric patterns to map out the curves of their bodies. The shape of a figure’s hunched shoulders and protruding stomach are brought into view, as are the press of a head against another in a close embrace—just as in Klimt’s work. However in Justice’s work, the figures are only ever silhouettes, lacking the folds of skin and facial features. Viewers might imagine any woman—any person—occupying their nebulous forms.             During his lifetime, Klimt was notorious for his erotic (almost pornographic) imagery. Justice’s technique complicates this interpretation by blurring the lines between figures and obscuring their more sexual elements. Portrait 102, After Klimt (2025) features what look to be a pair of figures locked in a tender embrace, adapted from Klimt’s The Kiss (1908-1909). However, as with Justice’s other works, the forms lack any recognizable features and their faces meld together through the swirls of the green and pink marbled base. Instead, a hint of their embrace is brought into focus through the bright yellow-and-red floral pattern that encircles them like fabric and the defined waves of their hair woven with flowers.             Other works show a clearly defined figure—with continued references to Klimt’s paintings and the stories that inspired him. Portrait 101, After Klimt (2025) copies the overall subject of Klimt’s Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1901). The front-facing silhouette, the dark cloud of hair, the shawl wrapped around her shoulders, a gold armband and choker necklace, and the male head clutched in the figure’s hands all recall Klimt’s painting. However, Justice’s use of bold colors and vibrant patterns diffuses some of the violence and sexuality that pervades Klimt’s work, where a half-naked Judith exultantly holds the decapitated head of Holofernes to her hip. In Justice’s painting, Holofernes’s head becomes an obscure object carried by a mysterious, faceless figure framed by cheerful sunflowers. Who is this person? And what does she hold in her hands?           Many of Justice’s works are more akin to portraiture—missing, of course, the identifiable features of the sitter. As a viewer, I wondered whether Justice had individuals in mind as she painted these works. Two favorites are Portrait 103, After Klimt (2025) and Portrait 99, After Klimt (2025). Both depict a feminine figure set against a backdrop of flowers, her womanly form created through the illusion of draping floral textiles. Justice introduced material items sparingly to further build the identity of these two women—a choker necklace, a headscarf, some bangles along a wrist, a ring, an earring articulating the delicate (and otherwise invisible) shape of an ear. Despite this, they remain unknown—perhaps even universal—figures, representing any and all women.         Justice’s practice of reimagining great works of art to reclaim female form is fascinating and, as a viewer, I enjoyed the thrill of recognition when I spotted the parallels and transformations of Klimt’s work within hers. Once her technique is understood, the works may seem a bit formulaic—marble the canvas, trace the outline of figures, paint plants, flowers, patterns, and jewelry to define an arm, neck, head… etc. But despite the obvious references to famous works by male artists, each of Justice’s paintings are unique and present a view of a strong female form emerging against the backdrop of a wild and chaotic world. She challenges representations of the female form that have so long dominated the