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Tony Fitzpatrick: Poet of the Overlooked Nov. 24, 1958–Oct 11, 2025 by Evelyn Daitchman On a Sunday evening in late November, an estimated 1,100 people filled the Metro in Chicago to celebrate the life of Tony Fitzpatrick. The room was packed with artists, writers, musicians, chefs, politicians, actors, filmmakers, and countless others whose lives had been touched by this larger-than-life figure. As speaker after speaker took the stage, a portrait emerged of a man who was both a paradox, yet unflinching in his convictions. Lori Lightfoot called him a big burly guy, who made delicate etchings of birds. Dave Bonomi called him a fierce protector of the vulnerable, and David Roth said he was an artist who never threw away the ladder that was there for him when he needed it. His childhood friend John Hogan perhaps summed it up best when he acknowledged the mythology around Tony: “When you hear stories about Tony, you know that some of them might be true and some of them might be BS and that there’s 100 percent chance that 50 percent is BS.” The Black Sheep with a Silver Lining         Tony Fitzpatrick was, first and foremost, a working artist. As author Alex Kotlowitz said at the memorial, “Tony saw things no one else saw. All you had to do was look at one of his bewitching, mesmerizing collages—a chicken wearing a crown, a caterpillar ogling a nude woman, angels masquerading as moths, or a mermaid emerging from Lake Michigan.” He went on to say, “Sometimes I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be inside his head, and I thought, damn, it must be exhausting and scary, but also earth shattering, wild, tender, and fanciful.”         But Tony was more than his art. He was an anchor in Chicago’s arts community, a natural showman who was deeply committed to supporting other artists. His wife Michele described Tony as someone who regularly attended openings, not only for the artists he showed at his gallery but for many others across Chicago. He was a known quantity in the city, and his presence at an opening was often noticed by artists and peers alike. Michele said he made a point of showing up even when exhausted because he wanted Chicago’s art world to be taken seriously and understood that attending other artists’ shows was a meaningful form of support.         Michele said, “Tony was known for his transparency. Once you knew him, you knew all of him.” He had a command of the English language and an exceptional ability to turn a phrase. He did not feel the need to soften or censor himself. His writing came from the gut. His language was poetic. In Alex Kotlowitz’s memorial tribute, he shared how Tony described Humboldt Park with this comparison: “Some people have churches, but I have this place where I’m surrounded by divinity,” describing the wide array of bird life who made their homes there among all those trees and people who inhabited the park. Kotlowitz followed with. “From the guy who drove the nuns bat shit crazy… loud, blustering, kind, and generous, a walking contradiction.”         His friend Dave Bonomi described Tony Fitzpatrick as “someone who loved deeply and intensely. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved dogs, birds, food, and the Chicago White Sox.” Dave also stated emphatically that Tony hated Donald Trump. When he said this at the memorial, the packed room responded with loud cheering and clapping. While Tony hated many things, he loved small things. He loved children and dogs, and he fought to protect what was small and vulnerable. One example was the piping plover, a small shorebird weighing approximately 1.5 to 2.2 ounces. Dave described Tony as a protector of such vulnerable beings. He also called him a “walking contradiction” and said a “whole team of psychiatrists could not figure him out.”           Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune, a longtime friend, watched Tony evolve over four decades. Rick recalled first meeting Tony at Nelson Algren’s memorial in Sag Harbor where a drunken Tony walked over to Rick presenting him with a portrait he drew of Algren. Rick explained “it sort of looked like a picture…it did not look like Nelson.” He asked Tony, “what did you make that with?” Tony informed him that it was made with cigarette butt ashes. This was the beginning of their lifelong friendship. He characterized Tony as an “unstructured wild man searching for a way to survive and express his feelings. At first, it manifested as art, and as crude as it was in the beginning, he became an accomplished, hardworking artist. It manifested in words as a writer and a poet who also had a way with haiku. Then it manifested in him becoming an actor.” As Rick continued describing Fitzpatrick, he said, “You had to admire all of that, his guts, his resolve, one foot in front of the other way of living and being.”         Rick continued “What really brought Tony peace was finding his wife, Michele. She did not tame the wild man. She accepted and grounded him. Prior to Michele, Tony was swimming in his vast crowd of identities. It was the grounding he found in Michele that steadied him. Together they created a family, Gabby and Max, who are now sibling filmmakers.” New York: The Ladder Extended         When I moved from Chicago to New York City in 1995, I was new to the city and still finding my way. One afternoon, while walking past the old Dean & DeLuca on Broadway in Soho, I spotted Tony sitting in the window eating a sandwich. I knew Tony from World Tattoo gallery in Chicago. He looked up, saw me, and in true Tony fashion came right outside and asked, “What are you doin’ here?”      

Ulysses Jenkins (1946-2026): Video Griot by John Thomure Ulysses Jenkins sadly passed away at the age of 79 this past February. Though relatively obscure, he was, for decades, one of America’s most poignant avant-garde artists. Primarily working in video and performance art, Jenkins’ took on the role of a griot (a storytelling and communal history tradition originating in West Africa). The griot became a lens with which he could critically examine the racism embedded in American mass media culture and create a more nuanced vision of black identity. His mission as an artist was best stated in an interview with Bomb Magazine: “What I was trying to do in my work was to say that we all have to live together, and we need to stop placing each other in circumstances that don’t make sense to anybody except the people who are doing the discrimination.”1 Jenkins’s life was devoted to building community and solidarity, frequently collaborating with artists like David Hammons, Kerry James Marshall, Betye Saar, and more. In addition to being a member in a multitude of collectives like Video Venice News, Othervisions Studio, and Studio Z, alongside a long tenure teaching at the University of California, Irvine.         Inspired by Melvin Van Peebles’s radical independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, as well as the work of Nam Jun Paik, Jenkins purchased a cheap consumer camcorder and began filming his performances. Deeply critical of how television had begun to influence the cultural perceptions of minorities through the racist stereotypes being broadcast, his video works functioned as a counter narrative to these images.           Works from this period, like Mass of Images, were satirical critiques of racist pop culture references—uch as Bert Williams dressed in blackface or Allen Hoskins from The Little Rascals—that had become engrained in the American psyche. Garbed in an eccentric outfit consisting of aviator glasses, a plastic mask, an American flag scarf, a blazer, and an Adidas shirt, and wielding a sledgehammer and a smirk, he repeats a haunting mantra condemning mass media representation: “you’re just a mass of images you’ve gotten to know, from years and years of TV shows.”2 Even as Jenkins’s demeanor becomes more frantic, he never actually destroys the televisions and liberates himself from these images. Elaborating upon the works of Frantz Fanon, Fred Moten presents an ontological issue inherent to black identity “a function of a making that is not its own, an intentionality that could never have been its own.” 3 Scholar Aria Dean raises the interesting concern that Jenkins ends the video where he began—he has the power to destroy the television images. Jenkins cannot bring himself to destroy the media representations of blackness because they are a central part of his identity, in spite of how detrimental and imposed this part of his identity is.4             Jenkins would comically expand upon the paradox raised by Dean in another early work, Two-Zone Transfer. The piece features two performers wearing Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford masks painted in blackface dancing alongside Jenkins, reminiscent of minstrel shows. There is a cut to the two parodic presidents sitting on either side of Jenkins while a Baptist minister gives a sermon about representation and verbal expression until suddenly exploding into a James Brown imitation, dancing and singing fervently. The video ends with a cut to Jenkins waking up in his bed declaring “after a dream like that I have direction, I know what I’m up against.” 5 Jenkins realizes that the images projected onto him by mass media only partially define him as a person, but they must be recognized in order to be processed and overcome.            Across the decades, Jenkins experimented with all kinds of emerging digital and video technology. 1983’s Z-Grass utilized early computer-generated animation, filtering digitally rendered drawings through a video processor to create a disorienting and garish abstraction. Similarly, Notions of Freedom superimposed motion capture animated figures dancing over archival footage as a way of discussing the historic development of jazz music. The work is a dense palimpsest of cultural references and personal expression, combining the past with the present to sketch an outline of future possibilities. In my opinion, Jenkins asserts that technology is a tool which can sketch the nuance of his identity; it can incorporate the many facets of his history and personality into layered composite images throbbing with meaning.           The Video Griot trilogy presented an expansive vision of the potential of video to rewrite a racist history of exploitation into a history of resistance, survival, and global interconnection. Self Divination described the geographic and cultural origins of the African Diaspora. Mutual Native Duplex outlined the ongoing mutual aid alliances discovered between the Indigenous peoples of America and the African Diaspora brought to the country under the cruel auspices of the North American slave trade. Jenkins traced the cultural ruptures and transformations brought on by colonialism.           The final part of the trilogy, The Nomadics, frames the many communities of color living across the world as part of an extended multicultural whole. The trilogy of works encapsulates Moten’s conception of the ontological experience of blackness as an identity which resists assimilation through its multifacetedness. Across his diverse body of work, Jenkins prophetically drew out the contradictions of mass media culture, issues that have only grown more pressing over the past several decades. His attempts to create a more inclusive and expansive idea of identity amidst our media dominant culture points towards a path of using technology to better our society. 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.   Notes 1. Jareh Das, “Ulysses Jenkins,” Bomb Magazine, Oct. 30, 2023. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2023/10/30/ulysses-jenkins-jareh-das/ 2. Ulysses Jenkins, Mass of Images. 1978, Video transferred to DVD, black and white, sound. Hammer

Gone but not forgotten: Jerry Peart (1948–2025) A sculptor’s appreciation. by Neil Goodman I met Jerry in the early 1980s when I first moved to Chicago. Although he was only in his early thirties, he was already a successful artist. I remember a conversation from many years ago at the Richard Gray Gallery on Michigan Avenue (where he was showing). I was between sculpture commissions, somewhat frustrated at the lack of steady work as well as the difficulties of production. He was kind, patient, and encouraging. Equally, he was tough-minded about the life of an artist and the rigors of being a sculptor.         Jerry Peart died last year at the age of 77 due to complications from a brain tumor. Jerry was born in Winslow, Arizona, and received his BFA from Arizona State University and his MFA from Southern Illinois University in 1972. Although he moved to Ashland, Virginia, in 2001, he is principally remembered as a sculptor at the forefront of the Chicago “heavy metal” movement from the 1970s through 2010.          Starting with his early years at Construct Gallery in the 1970s, Jerry quickly made a name for himself. Construct Gallery was founded by John Henry and included a stable of other sculptors (Mark di Suvero, Kenneth Snelson, Lyman Kipp, and Charles Ginnever). The premise was that artists both manage and run their careers. Equally, the Construct Gallery artists would both place and sponsor exhibitions of large-scale outdoor works, partnering with architects, commercial real estate developers, and institutions. Although Construct had a short run, its footprint was large, as they were at the forefront of so many public works.         In 1977, Jerry joined forces with Paul Slepak and Tom Scarff in buying an abandoned CTA power station on North Avenue and Sedgwick Street in Chicago. Considered at that time to be a tough neighborhood due to its proximity to the notorious Cabrini Green housing projects, the area still had the advantage as a prime location in relationship to the city. Sedgwick Studio had a large, cavernous interior—ideal for sculptors who specialized in monumental works. Additionally, the studio offered both living and working facilities. Although Jerry and the other two principal founders have since passed, the studio retains its vigor and swag, with a new set of owners and occupants, including the well-known public sculptor, John Adducci.         Paralleling Jerry Peart at the time was a cadre of other heavy metal and materials sculptors in Chicago. The most prominent were Richard Hunt and John Henry, but other artists included John Adduci, Mike Baur, Michael Dunbar, Barry Hehman, Virginio Ferrari, Jerald Jacquard, Terry Karpowicz, Steve Luecking, Tom Scarff, Barry Tinsley, Steve Urry, and Bruce White, amongst others. Each artist forged their own unique identities and ways of working, and in total, contributed to a vital and visible sculpture community. In all respects, both the scale of their works and ambitions as sculptors were well suited for the “City of Big Shoulders.”           My interest in writing about Jerry is partly to acknowledge a sculptor who might be looked upon as an artist whose time has passed. Many contemporary sculptors would probably see him more as a period piece, with work reminiscent of a horde of other artists that have worked in a similar style. But if you start where he began, you might see him through a much different lens. Creating a monumental sculpture is daunting for even the most experienced sculptor. Considering that Jerry was largely solo and creating these works at a young age, his expertise had to include design, color, fabrication, engineering, installation and painting. In today’s sculpture community, only a handful of working artists have a similar skill set.         Jerry’s colorful painted sculptures predate Frank Stella’s later work, although both share some similarities. As a colorist, Jerry seemed influenced by Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Alexander Calder, and Joan Miro. Equally, the bright paint lends an automotive quality to his work, perhaps dating to the car model kits that were prevalent in the late 1950s through early 1960s. Peart’s swirly evocative forms also have a psychedelic quality, as if sculpture on an acid trip. When I look at a Peart, I see a certain exuberance and optimism as they twirl and swirl with boundless energy. They are cut and flowing painted ribbons of aluminum, with color that animated both shape and form. Perhaps some of this explains his popularity at the time, as they are fun to look at, crowd pleasing, daunting in scale, and a gestural counterpoint to the stark modernist buildings of that period.           Of the many sculptures in his career, the two that I am most familiar with, are Blue Geisha (1985) and Falling Meteor (1975, Nathan Manilow Sculpture Garden, “the Nate”). Blue Geisha is close to O’ Hare (Bryn Mawr Avenue) and visible from both the CTA and expressway. Towering close to forty feet, it is a sculpture of immense scale, yet it possesses a delicacy and weightlessness that defies its massiveness. Jerry’s choice of largely one color, as opposed to several, was unique to this work. Blue Geisha is the perfect counterpoint to the two staid office buildings that flank it. In his oeuvre, this sculpture remains one of his most powerful and ambitious works of art.           Falling Meteor at “the Nate” is a burst of energy, evocative of a meteor falling through the sky. Like Blue Geisha, the sculpture is mostly monochromatic, yet likes its namesake, its radiant color animates the surrounding landscape.           Although there are numerous other notable works, Wild Flower (2011), installed at the Nicholas Conservatory I Gardens in Rockford, Illinois, is more typical of his style in that it juxtaposes abundance of color with with gestural and arabesque planes. Perfect for a conservatory, the bright dynamic colors are a stunning metaphor

Borders of Figuration—Painting & Drawing from the University Art Collection Wayne State University, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, January 23–March 7, 2026 Curated by Christopher Stackhouse by Sean Bieri Entering Wayne State University’s exhibition Borders of Figuration at the school’s Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, you find yourself walking in on a conversation between two shaggy-haired dudes leaning on a bar and chatting over smokes and beers. It’s a painted plywood cutout made in 1972 by Charles B. Cobb, titled simply John and Michael: Cass Corridor Residents. The sleepy-eyed “John” is John Egner, and his Bud-sipping friend “Michael” is Michael Luchs, both prominent artists in Detroit’s storied early1970s Cass Corridor scene. The pair could be seated just down the street at Cobb’s Corner, then the watering hole of choice for Corridor artists and owned by Charles’s brother, Robert, who adorned the place with art made by the locals.           Kitty-corner from this laid-back tableau is a depiction of a decidedly less pleasant “conversation” over drinks between two strange characters. In a 2004 painting by the late WSU instructor Peter Williams, a Black man in a heavy coat sits up in bed in a semi-conscious state, surrounded by (has he just vomited it up?) a red slush of twisted faces and pop-culture litter: a McDonald’s cup, a cigarette, a mid-century chair, and other stuff. A pink-faced bald man in a white coat—like something from the Twilight Zone, with red eyes, a piggish nose and no mouth—cradles the sick man in one arm and lifts a glass of water to his lips. The title, Barcelona, suggests the painting might merely describe an illness contracted on a European vacation, though it’s hard not to read cultural and racial tension in the image.           Their proximity in the gallery puts these two conversations in conversation with each other. (One possible thread: the “story” of that storied Cass Corridor scene has largely featured white artists in the leads, despite Detroit’s demographics; bringing Black artist Williams into the discussion up front expands the narrative.) This sort of juxtaposition is a tactic curator Christopher Stackhouse uses throughout Borders of Figuration, mixing and matching pieces culled from the Wayne State collection to highlight formal, historical, and thematic connections and contrasts. Much of the work is hung in tight clusters, salon style, so compositional elements, stylistic quirks, and color relationships create a “discussion” between the individual pieces.         I was an intern for WSU’s art collection a few years ago, writing for their website. I’m familiar with several of the pieces in this show and most of the artists; a few were even my teachers when I was getting my BFA in the late 1980s. When the curator of the Wayne State collection, Grace Serra, met me at the opening she said it must be like “seeing old friends.” She was right, but there was a sense of seeing them in a new light—“together again for the first time,” as it were.           Take “Salon 1,” as the first of these clusters is labeled on the guide sheet, an asymmetrical grouping centered around John Hunter’s 2011 painting, Seated Man #2. Two other figurative paintings, one to the lower left and one to the upper right of Hunter’s work (Untitled [Portrait] by Robert Wilbert and Charles Pompillius’s Clare & Jordan, respectively), feature seated women whose gestures suggest a diagonal line connecting the three works. Two landscapes on the other two corners (Edward Levine’s Rooftop and James Pujdowski’s Brush Fire) do likewise in the opposite direction, drawing an “X” more or less centered on the seated man’s white t-shirt. Above these, a tightly framed “portrait” of the head of a hammer, in grays and browns on a blue background, by Kathleen Rashid, echoes the head of the pensive central figure. The group of five paintings on the right is tapered, seeming to trail behind Seated Man, giving “Salon 1” a leftward thrust, following the man’s gaze. All twelve paintings in the group hang together thanks to a shared palette of greens, browns, orange, and blue. It’s almost as if Stackhouse has created a new work in “Salon 1,” collaged together from the various paintings he’s found in the WSU archive.           “Salon 2” and “Salon 3” share a corner nearby, and here again Stackhouse’s compositional choices guide us through the images. The angles of Lila Kadaj’s expressive brushwork in her untitled painting of a cherub direct one’s eye up and to the left, from a circular saw blade painted in swirls of color by John Egner, to a small, unassuming self-portrait by Richard J. Bilaitis, then to a scruffier, gloomier picture (painted on an oddly-shaped piece of masonite, perhaps off the back of some appliance) by Miriam Marcus called Stood Up, in which a dejected young man stands alone in an indifferent urban environment. Eyes downcast, he seems to regard the somewhat lumpy subject of Brenda Goodman’s scribbly portrait of someone named Dorothy; Dorothy in turn glances out at us, as if to ask us to get a load of the cocksure, cigar-puffing suit looking down his nose at us in Carol Wald’s colorful Portrait of a Stockbroker.         Some local legends are represented here with rather uncharacteristic works. Gordon Newton, the poster boy for the Cass Corridor scene, is maybe best known for grungy assemblages like the one hanging in the lobby of a nearby theater, consisting of a stuffed sailfish attached to a Big Wheel and adorned with maracas and tin foil. Nancy Mitchnick is a painter known, in part, for large, expressionistic images of some of Detroit’s many dilapidated, abandoned houses. Each artist is represented here, however, by a row of five floral studies: impressionistic watercolors of flowering potted plants by Newton, and vigorous charcoal drawings of lilies by Mitchnick. The two groupings harmonize with one another from opposite sides of the first floor of the gallery.

Dona Nelson: The Individualism of Dona Nelson CANADA, New York, NY by Paul Moreno I first came to the work of Dona Nelson in the early 2000s. Her work follows in the tradition of American abstraction. I saw an artist however who was challenging the notions of austerity, and dare I say, taste. In her recent exhibition of paintings, created in the past year or so, Dona Nelson continues to fascinate me with her dedication to rigorous painting, her exploration of paintings as objects, and her jazz-like sense of art making.         Each painting starts with a melody introduced by a large-scale drawing that is created by applying long ribbons of cheesecloth–soaked with acrylic medium–to the canvas, sometimes in an orderly design, sometimes in loose, quick, meandering gestures. This creates a linework of ridges, a topography, that guides watery and richly colored acrylic paint that is poured or splashed on the canvas, to create drips, pools, even swamps of color. The cheesecloth strips are removed, revealing, tagging back to the original drawing, the tune, and letting it emerge through the layers of improvisation she has superimposed upon it.           To employ this jazz metaphor is not a random choice. The title of this exhibition was chosen by Dona Nelson as an allusion to pianist Gil Evans’s 1964 album, The Individualism of Gil Evans. The press release for the show references how “the music on the album is distinct from song to song, playing fast and light over many different motifs, timbres and emotional registers.” This is also an apt description of the work in the show, consisting of ten paintings, each unique in mood and melody, but united in a voice singularly Dona Nelson’s. Further, her selection of paintings and the careful and creative way in which they are displayed result in a concert in which the works complement each other— conveying both the elegant control with which she paints as well as a sense of whimsy with which the individual canvases sing.         One painting that truly struck me was Monday. It was placed about 5 feet away from the wall and was elevated about a foot off the floor on a simple cool gray metal stand. It was further supported by two poles attached to the top of the painting and the wall, creating a sort of passage behind it. The front of the canvas is wild with line and color. If you go through the spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet—they are all there. The direction of the drips mostly seem to pull toward the center of the work. This is in tension with the line work, created by the aforementioned application and removal of ribbons of cheesecloth, which feels like it moves from the center outward. This movement and countermovement are balanced by the placidity of large, steady, blotches of color in terra cotta, spring green, mustard.           As I spent time with Monday, an additional compositional element emerged from behind all the lines and pools of color. The center portion of the top third of the canvas has a murkiness, a greige shadow haunting the area. This becomes brighter and lighter in the middle of the painting. Then from behind that, a brilliant blue brings a levity that gives way to the creaminess of untouched canvas. This gesture, functioning almost as an underpainting, moves subtly and sublimely from dark to light—like a ray of light seeping from behind a cloud.             The back of the painting is a single explosive note that has somehow been singled out from every other element in a tune. It is a giant splash of sky blue that cannot be hemmed in by a square line of unpainted canvas which the blue paint penetrates in splashes and splatters. It is the same blue that emerges so gracefully on the front of the painting, but here you see its force and machination.           I have just spent three paragraphs describing only one of the paintings in this show. I feel this speaks to the complexity and nuance that each of the works contain. Each painting is as beautiful as it is challenging. Another example of this is River. I was told two things: that the artist made a choice during installation to hang this painting with the front of the canvas against the wall, and that the front is also quite astounding. The side with which we are presented brought to mind a question I have had before when encountering Dona Nelson’s paintings. How does she make it work? This painting is a cacophony of garish color. It is littered with little remnants of cheesecloth. It is at points muddy and dull and at others glittery, or even, as thick, shiny, and viscous as syrup. It is a mess. It is also beautiful and eloquent—worked to a point that it could contain no more, but at which every little gesture, not to mention the aggressive ones, all serve to seduce the viewer into her world, to listen to her music.           Placed between the two paintings I have just described there is an interlude, Through the Day. This canvas is smaller than most in the show. Despite its yellow and orange burst-of-sunshine color, the painting is a little quieter. Throughout the canvas there are remnants of an imprecise grid upon which the composition hangs, or maybe, the grid is itself unraveling as we move our eyes from the upper left to the lower right. Looking at the painting, I thought about how the paint appears to be soaked through from behind—or seems to be stains that were to some degree washed away.         As I moved through the show of her paintings, I found myself thinking a great deal about the process, imagining how they were made. Her work evokes

Antonius-Tín Bui: “here, there is a different kind of sun” at Monique Meloche, January 31–March 14, 2026 by Andrew Hart Benson The end of February in Chicago is always bleak. The dark, cold, and windy cityscape makes even the bravest midwesterners tucker into their homes for the season. In my travels from the northside to West Town, I push myself against the wind in search of sanctuary. I’m welcomed into Monique Meloche by the burning of incense and the ethereal ambience of the musician MIZU. The white walls and minimalist structure of the gallery give poly-disciplinary artist Antonius-Tín Bui a blank canvas to create their own sanctuary for the gallery’s visitors.         In the world that Bui creates inside the walls of Monique Meloche, they navigate the complexities of ancestry, queerness, and sex. Bui presents two collections of pieces (and their individual worlds): a monochromatic fairytale of romance and a lascivious queer rendezvous. Although the two collections differ in their visual aesthetics and craftsmanship, both share similar complexities.         In the larger room of Monique Meloche, hand cut, blue pieces depicting mythical creatures and women in love hang like illustrations from religious stories. Just like stained glass windows or statues in religious buildings, these pieces tell the story of our ancestors. The pieces are a combination of intricately cut paper, cyanotypes, and airbrushing.           A reference to the poet Donika Kelly, When the fact of your gaze means nothing, then you are truly alongside, shows a creature wearing a beautiful gown with a staff and horns. The blues get lighter at the more proximal parts of the figure, in an effort to show the hues of its innermost spirit. While the staff is mostly colored with darker blues, and tiny strands of paper and cyanotype. The paper cuttings around the staff in particular are so thin they seem fragile.         Similarly, in no need for heaven, this is how it started: way out beyond below, the sweet of your lips dipped in promise there are direct references to spirituality. The piece shows two female presenting people embracing each other. The title speaks about sexual chemistry and not needing heaven. Although the title references the presence of spirituality in its mention of heaven, it proceeds to neglect any rituals to it. The piece argues that the figures can exist without heaven, that they only need each other. It recognizes a belief system without giving it any other power. Interestingly, in the title, “this is how it started” suggests that love, regardless of its form, is how “it started”.           Antonius-Tín Bui directly recognizes religion and its ideals but doesn’t subscribe to the traditions or conformity it establishes. Secondly, Bui portrays intimacy, especially between queer people, with delicacy that strikes to the core of queer liberation. These ideas continue in the explosion of color and pleasure in the rendezvous pieces.         In juxtaposition to the deep-somber blues of the previous collection, this other set is filled with more loud forms of spirituality and intimacy. The pieces range in levels of intimacy and explicitness. In skin was where you belonged, a who you were with, a reason someone might, disguised in the color of the background, is the active penetrator in a passionate act between two people. Even though the receiver is clearly depicted there is specific color emphasis on the penis and testicles of both participants. Whereas in Touching you I catch midnight as moon fires set in my throat, the foreplay is between two lovers, with little detail besides their bodies, hair, and penis. The title of the piece is from a poem by Audre Lorde.           The most explicit between the four pieces is Reading clouds beyond the road I calculate our distance, survey the space between our clothes where rising curves and mountain tug for air, touch, release. The piece, a direct quote from a poem by Melvin Dixon, blends all of elements of the similar works and transcends it to the highest degree. 13 (maybe 14) participants are hand cut and collaged using handmade paper, porn magazines, photographs, joss paper, and gold leaf. The silhouettes showcase the various roles and dynamics within group intercourse. With even closer inspection the clippings of porn magazines give a meta meaning to the pride and honesty in showcasing queer sex.           Around the edges of the piece, there is subtle burning, a nod to the spiritual practices of joss paper. Also known as incense paper, the use is an Eastern spiritual tradition for respecting and providing prosperity to the deities and ancestors who have passed away. This is a much more direct reference to spirituality than the previous collection. The burning of the piece directly honors our queer ancestors. Bui wouldn’t burn the entire piece and destroy their work, obviously. But the intention to only burn the edges of the piece preserves the artwork but also preserves the acts of our queer ancestors. It holds the existence of queer pride and sex in the present day. Queer people will continue to exist, they will continue to have sex, and they will continue to express themselves in a society that wasn’t built for them, that we’ve had to build ourselves.         Similar to the other collection, there is a delicacy woven into the intimacy of queer love. The burning suggests that this pride is also so delicate, as if one wrong move ignites the fragile landscape of queer rights, burning it to ash and scent. Although it is ceremonious to burn pieces of joss paper to honor the deceased, burning these pieces would burn sexuality, sex, expression, and desire–and the memory of those things.         In conjunction with queer pride, there is also an anxiety to preserve queer culture and refuse to let go of our history. We

Irreverent, Challenging, the Mangler of Metaphor An Interview with Mike Cockrill by D. Dominick Lombardi D. Dominick Lombardi (DDL): The year after you moved to New York, John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman. I remember that December 8th, 1980, evening all too well. I was in my studio when I heard the devastating news over the radio and immediately felt dizzy, so I just laid down on the floor. I didn’t wake up my partner, Diane, thinking she should have one more night’s sleep without knowing. I’ve never analyzed how much that event changed my work. However for you, that agonizing night left an indelible mark on your painting style. You note on your website your art would quickly become ‘psychosexual’. Critics called it “tasteless and offensive,” and anyone who had seen what came from your collaboration with Judge Hughes (a pseudonym) at that time was deeply affected by it. I still have the book you both published in 1982, The White Papers, which begins with the assassination of John F. Kenedy and ends with John Lennon and I have to say it has not lost any of its potency. How could it? You were one artist at that time, who was willing to go as far as expressing the insanity of both of those events, and how deeply it messed you up.   DDL: Since 1990 you have taken on a more subtle approach to your narratives. However, your paintings and sculptures are no less revealing of the darker side of human nature—you’re just leaving more to the imagination. This approach, while more palatable, still resides at the edge of rationality, reason and stability. I’m thinking of the Baby Doll Clown Killer series (1995–99), work which I first saw in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and later included in an exhibition I curated with Steven Lowey titled “The Waking Dream.” Powerfully challenging and beautifully painted, that series always stops people cold. The death of innocence, the loss of pure fun, the creepiness of the kooky clown, a bad dream, what is the basis of what we are looking at here?   Mike Cockrill (MC): First of all, you suggest that the assassination of Kennedy and Lennon “messed me up.” They didn’t mess me up at all. They clarified a lot for me. These things are eye-opening. It is a window into what is real. I thought these “tragic events” were kind of life-affirming in a very counter-intuitive way, because it was Truth. What disturbed me growing up was what people in power do with all that power. Particularly those in political power. They do things that can get us all killed. DDL: Wow, I misread that whole thing completely, but I totally understand what you mean. So, let’s try to get this narrowed down a bit and expand from that. You state at the end of an interview with Ellen Lubell that your work may be about “the tension between life and Beauty and The Nightmare.” Have you thought about that, if that is an accurate synopsis of your work? MC: Beauty and The Nightmare. They share the space with us. They sit on the couch together and watch us in the room. Beauty smiles and makes you want to live. The Nightmare sits without speaking and tips his glass of wine to his lips eyeing you over the rim with heartless dissecting eyes. Are these characters in a metaphor? I do notice in my work that I have a tug between my desire to make a beautiful image formally while I am also compelled to engage with something really dark. Beauty is one thing and the unsettling and troubling is another. Can you have one without the other? Why do I feel compelled to include both in the painting? Maybe because it makes me feel more complete. More fully human. DDL: We do live in a world of extremes, despite the fear mongering that glosses over the complexities of all aspects of reality. That constant conundrum is life and has been since forever. Saint Sebastian (2007) is one of your paintings that has that complex mix, albeit relative to another day and time. We both lived through the Bay of Pigs and the ensuing Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the reality of a nuclear threat even closer to home. Then you have the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian in the young All-American Boy with the adoring onlooker punctuating the suburban sprawl of new 1960s homes. There’s a lot of 1960s references in different periods of your art—can you talk a little about the origins of that reference?   MC: I was not aware of the Bay of Pigs fiasco as a child, but the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 had an enormous effect on me. I was in the fourth grade in Catholic school in McLean, Va. The same church Bobby Kennedy attended every Sunday. People were stocking up for Nuclear Winter by filling their suburban basements with supplies. My father was a civilian working at the Pentagon. He reported directly to General William Westmoreland. We weren’t stocking our basement with anything. When I asked my father why, he said he didn’t want us to survive a first strike. If nuclear war happened, he said it would be worse to live. The nuns at school sent us into the sanctuary to pray. They wanted us to die there–not cowering in the cafeteria under tables. I had nightmares well into my early 30s.         My painting of a suburban Saint Sebastian was a reaction to George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Painted in 2007, I set the “sacrifice” of an American kid amidst completely disinterested suburbanites who party on in backyard barbecues. This was actually my metaphor about Vietnam. In the background we see a smiling, empty-handed JFK, and a laughing Bobby Kennedy with “the papers” who hands it to Robert McNamara, who hands it off the LBJ—a death warrant to 58,000 Americans and untold millions

The Fearful Follies of Human Nature in the art of Tom Torluemke “Tom Torluemke: Sorted Sheets” Bert Green Fine Art, Chicago, November 8, 2025 –January 17, 2026 by Diane Thodos [My past] affects every creation I made –it’s all there in my art. It helped my art. I always want just as much good in the paintings as the bad so that there’s always hope. I try to make them have universal meaning –struggle, happiness, sadness, hope. –Tom Torluemke1 Art can permeate the very deepest part of us where no words exist. –Eileen Miller 2   In the summer of 2024, Tom Torluemke had a major exhibition of works on paper at the Chicago Cultural Center. Many of the works were noteworthy for their bright and elaborate layering, of color, particularly in the medium of watercolor. They depict everything from nearly psychedelic abstraction to shimmering hallucinatory landscapes, from amorphic bodies interacting and meeting in complex spaces to the interiors and exteriors of suburban homes. At a casual glance, the intricate luminosity of the color and the soft outlines of the shapes present a decorative, eye-pleasing aesthetic, scenarios of harmless whimsy, caricature and fantasy. On deeper inspection, details suggest darker realities. Symbols of fatherly attire, such as a necktie or a leather belt, seem tainted with menace. Occasionally, male figures have skulls for heads. In the doorway of a bright tree-lined suburban home, there appears to be a figure hanging from a noose. In one sunny-colored watercolor, a menacing male figure is charging up a staircase seemingly ready to beat children for smoking, while another shows a shattered glass bowl containing cookies spilled all over the floor. Naked women and men are woven into the abstract patterns of his compositions while sexual trysts seem to be happening in the backyards of suburban homes. In one work, a woman in a pointed cap appears to be disintegrating under the pressure of deep sadness. In the corner of another composition, a bare-bottomed boy sits on the knee of a menacing man. Throughout all of this work, people seem to be trying to connect with each other emotionally and trying to cope with potentially dangerous situations. Yet the soft edges, bright colors, and abstract nature of these works seem to bathe their subjects in a protective fog, making them dreamlike and equivocal. It seemed as though stories embedded in these images were both suggested and obscured at the same time, presenting a mystery that piqued my curiosity.         Torluemke’s recent exhibition of pencil and ink drawings at Bert Green Fine Art offered clues about these enigmatic scenes, replacing their introspective fluidity with a sharp focus on the outrageousness and cruelty of human nature. His Everyday Monsters drawing series acts like a magnifying glass focusing a spotlight on “all our worst traits and behaviors.”3 The acerbic use of caricature to portray this grotesque side of human nature reminds me of similar themes in the work of the nineteenth-century artist James Ensor which expressed no end to what can be sardonically derided about human nature. Dehydrator depicts a creature with a sponge for a body and straws in its feet and mouth sucking up the last drops of water in a deserted landscape. I see it as a cutting commentary on the corporate privatization of all freshwater sources to the point of turning the planet into a lifeless desert. Looking for a Slice of Life scornfully mocks its own title. The Zen-like “charm of everyday experience” has been replaced by a multi-eyed alien wielding blades on its tentacles. Littered around it are the decapitated human heads, torsos, and disembodied limbs of its victims—the life got literally “sliced” out of them.” Self-Satisfied ups the ante on symbolic contempt, this time showing a giant erect phallus with a rubbery trunk masturbating its stalk as its blinkered eyes look heavenward. Its scrotum, or perhaps buttocks, sit upon a fiercely taloned body stump. As a final twist, the whole monstrosity sits in a landscape of coins stretching to infinity. It brings to mind the narcissism, sexual addiction, and compulsive greed that perfectly aligns the child sex-abusing wealthy class found in the Epstein files.           Tastemaker takes derision to equally intense heights—a freakish creature made of four round orbs with human eyes balancing on legs made of soft mushy matter. But the orbs are actually buttocks topped with pubic hair and the legs are composed of feces that spout from the monster’s four anus “mouths,” leaving a trail of wet turds behind it. Tastemaker feels like a ferociously scatological way of symbolizing the excrement that passes for aesthetic value in our late capitalist times. One need only witness the bilious kitsch that populates the art market, not to mention the ridiculous cycles of feckless art speculation driven by a tiny clique of pathologically rich investors, or “tastemakers.” It brings to mind James Ensor’s most radically subversive print, Doctrinal Nourishment, depicting the Belgian king with members of his clergy and military sitting on a wall while defecating on the populace below. Several of the Everyday Monsters have details that might hint at the innocence of childhood toys—striped straws, bug-like antenna, or the head of a doll—making them all the more perverse as attributes of such pathologically dangerous creatures.           Several large works embody stark social themes, such as Shame—an impressive drawing used for the creation of one of Torluemke’s large oil paintings. The image is carefully rendered using graphite, charcoal, and acrylic on blue tinted paper, inspired by classical techniques with a nod to the drawings of the twentieth century artist, Paul Cadmus. A naked man standing on a stump covers his groin as he is viciously pelted with fruits and vegetables by a crowd of onlookers. He seems to be a modern Saint Sebastian attacked for the transgression of his nakedness and, by association, his sexuality. Several faces of men in the crowd are contorted into violent screams of

Goldin+Senneby: Flare-Up MIT List Visual Arts Center October 24, 2025–March 15, 2026 by Emelia Lehmann What would it look like for a painting to have a fungal infection? For a pine tree to become trapped in its own resin? Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, MIT’s List Visual Arts Center has put together an exciting line-up of exhibitions and events for 2026. One such show is Flare-Up, a compilation of recent works by the Stockholm-based artist duo Goldin+Senneby exploring themes of illness and ecology—the artists’ first solo museum exhibition in the United States.         Flare-Up takes its name from the medical term, a “period of increased inflammation in which symptoms worsen or reappear,” and the title also plays on the idea that to “put up a flare” signifies danger and distress. Jakob Senneby, one half of the duo, lives with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease where the body’s own immune system overacts and attacks the protective covering around the nerves. His flare-ups and the language used to describe them have inspired many of the themes of this show: health vs. disease, protection vs. harm, the idea of a body at war with itself. In keeping with MIT’s reputation for innovative science and technology research, Goldin+Senneby make full use of novel materials and methodologies to investigate and interrogate these topics. Resin Pond (2025) and Crying Pine (2025)         The show’s first and largest work is also its most photographable: Resin Pond. One ton of pine resin was poured on the gallery’s concrete floor in batches, producing a beautiful amber pool that expands from the center of the room in small waves. Now hardened over and with a glass-like surface, the pool reflects light from the windows and overhead fixtures and is a mesmerizing centerpiece to the exhibition space. Visitors must keep to the edges of the room to avoid stepping on and cracking the fragile surface. Upon close inspection, I was amused by the sight of power outlets on the floor (fortunately, protected by plastic caps) that had been embalmed in the pool and rendered useless.           While beautiful, Resin Pond contains historical and ecological references too. Long used in medicine and manufacturing, resin (a beneficial toxin) plays an important role in the health of pine trees by healing wounds and protecting the tree from pests. However, resin is also highly flammable and, when produced in large quantities, dangerous to the very beings that depend on it. In Resin Pond, the artists show resin in excess, “a flood of healing that becomes harmful,” a system producing too much of a good thing.         Crying Pine (2025), is another stunning resin work that further explores the consequences of unrestrained protection. Under strict containment instructions, Goldin+Senneby received two loblolly pine samplings that had been genetically modified to overproduce resin as a form of renewable biofuel. However, the unintended consequence of this engineering meant that the trees could drown themselves in their resin and, in large numbers in the wild, would pose a significant fire risk. In Crying Pine, the sapling is mummified in a block of resin to represent a “specimen captured in its own defenses, a materialization of its own overactive immune system.” Swallowimage Series (2025)         As a lover of obscure historical references, I find the series Swallowimage (2025) to be one of the most compelling concepts in the show. The work takes its name from Schluckbildchen (which literally translates to “swallow picture”), an eighteenth-century German folk medicine practice of ingesting small slips of paper featuring sacred images that was thought to provide cures and prevent disease. Goldin+Senneby transmute this custom by positioning the artwork itself as the diseased body to be cured.         Using three oil paintings dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries that depict scenes of death and disease, the artists have carefully deconstructed and reversed the canvases so that the unpainted backs become the surface of the works. Swallowimage (verso man in cave with skull) shows this process most clearly, with the original painting still visible behind the stretcher bars. The parasitic fungus Isaria sinclairii is then introduced to the canvas surface. Isaria sinclairii has long been used in medicine, including for MS, as it suppresses the immune system to provide relief (a trait both beneficial and adverse, as this can allow the parasite to kill its host). As the parasite grows organically on the canvas, it visually contrasts with the meticulous, man-made image on the verso of the canvas. (It also offers a challenge to traditional art maintenance: fungus on a painting’s surface would be disastrous in most contexts, but here it is the main object of the work.) Conceptually, it raises many questions about the complex relationship between healing and harm and how this has been represented artistically over the centuries.           To achieve the full view of these elements, the Swallowimage works are creatively installed on the walls along the profile of the canvas, protruding into the gallery like growths to allow both front and back to be seen. The original oil paintings are visible on the verso, with details like labels and inventory numbers preserved on the frame—a nod to their provenance even as the works are completely reimagined.     After Landscape (2024-ongoing)         Another series presents a slightly different theme of work, dealing with the aftermath of high-profile attacks to artwork. Most have probably seen viral videos of climate activists smearing paint, soup, cake, or other substances across famous works of art, including a Van Gogh painting in 2022 and the Mona Lisa in 2024. These works are typically guarded by protective frames, preventing harm to the works themselves and damaging only these disposable outer shells. In After Landscapes, Goldin+Senneby worked with conservator Fernando Caceres to recreate these impacts to the frames, removed from the museum context and divorced from the works of art that were