Spring 2024's Art Highlights
McArthur Binion and Jules Allen: Me and You
GRAY
This two-person exhibition features 11 new paintings by McArthur Binion and a survey of gelatin silver prints by New York-based photographer Jules Allen.
McArthur Binion’s new series, Handmadeness, delves fully into the lexicon of what Binion terms the under conscious: visual markers of his identity collaged in a repeating, interwoven grid. These images in the paintings’ ground layer span a range of sources, from the deeply personal and autobiographical to the public and political. Binion obscures the under conscious with washes of ink in novel color combinations and a lattice-like layer in paint stick, the artist’s chosen materials since the 1970s.
Allen studied photography under Jack Welpott, whose formalist leanings were rooted in the tradition of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, and he received a MS in clinical psychology to better understand the human subject. In 1978, Allen moved to New York and met Binion among a rich milieu of Black avant-garde musicians and artists.
Me and You commemorates a 40-year dialogue between the two artists, whose mutual admiration originated in the Black avant-garde of 1980s New York City.
Apr 12–May 31 • Opening reception Apr 12, 5–8pm
2044 W. Carroll (60612)
Nicole Eisenman: What Happened
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (MCA)
Nicole Eisenman: What Happened is the artist’s first major comprehensive survey. Through over 100 works dating back to 1992 Eisenman explores political, economic, and social themes through her formally experimental and often-humorous portraits of daily life. The MCA is the only US venue and the last destination for the exhibition.
April 6–Sept 22
Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective
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Four Chicago Artists: Theodore Halkin, Evelyn Statsinger, Barbara Rossi, and Christina Ramberg
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
While best known for her stylized paintings of fragmented female bodies, throughout her brief yet focused career, Christina Ramberg vacillated between the depiction of various figural elements—hair, hands, torsos, and garments—while also creating equally rich, abstracted forms that emphasize structure and surface.
The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ramberg in almost 30 years presents approximately 100 works, from intimate early paintings focused on the pattern and form of women’s hairstyles and garments, to mature work featuring cropped female torsos in lingerie that contains and restrains. The exhibition presents her most iconic imagery while grappling with all phases and elements of Ramberg’s continually evolving career.
Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective • Apr 20–Aug 11
Four Chicago Artists: Theodore Halkin, Evelyn Statsinger, Barbara Rossi, and Christina Ramberg explores the art of four artists, all formally educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and informally inspired by the city’s cultural resources—from the Field Museum to Maxwell Street Market. Each artist developed highly unique practices. The works that resulted are as visionary as they are true to feeling, centering the transformation of shape, line, and color into otherwise incommunicable meaning.
Four Chicago Artists • May 11–Aug 26
Vera Klement
ZOLLA/LIEBERMAN GALLERY
In a career spanning over six decades, Klement’s work was a reflection of her many influences. From classical music to literature to modern art, these themes are filtered through her early formative experience fleeing the Nazis with her family just before World War II and a lifetime examining that loss of home and identity. Klement passed away in October 2023.
Jul 12–Aug 15 • Opening reception Jul 12, 4–7 pm 325 W. Huron (60654)
Victoria Martinez: Braiding Histories
CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER
This one-person exhibition features the art of Chicago-based creative Victoria Martinez, who works in a variety of materials and scales, drawing inspiration from the body, the urban environment, architecture, and graffiti. Victoria Martinez: Braiding Histories is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
Apr 6–Jul 28 • 78 E. Washington (60602)
* Artist tour and talk April 10 @ noon, part of EXPO ART WEEK
Grid Luck: Alberto Aguilar
CLEVE CARNEY MUSEUM OF ART
In Grid Luck, Alberto Aguilar delves into the grid’s role as a generative and expansive tool. Taking inspiration from the College of DuPage Permanent Art Collection, the exhibit reimagines the materials and spaces within the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, resulting in the creation of new site-specific works. Aguilar’s innovative use of existing objects from institutional spaces as his material provides a novel take on traditional art making while providing fresh perspective on overlooked possibilities.
Jun 29–Oct 6
College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn (60137)
CSI x ALMA
ALMA FINE ART & INTERIORS
The 2024 Chicago Sculpture International Juried Exhibition takes place at ALMA Art & Interiors in Bridgeport. Sculptors were invited to enter up to three works to exhibit in the 10,000 sf space. The curated collection, showcasing nearly three dozen artists and a wide range of artistic expressions across various media, opens during EXPO After Hours on Friday, April 12, 5–10pm. Opening weekend is April 13 and 14.
April 12–Sept 1
3636 S. Iron (60609)
Sif Itona Westerberg: Twin Flame, Double Ruin
DRIEHAUS MUSEUM
Westerberg takes inspiration from the Ancient Greek myth of soulmates—a single body that was divided into two parts, fated to forever yearn and search for its reflection. The exhibition title borrows terminology from new age concepts of interpersonal connection, a ‘twin flame’ often described in psychology as akin to soulmates, which Westerberg contrasts with ideals of creation and metamorphoses through the double entendre of ‘ruin’ in reference to either disaster or the remnants of Classical artifacts. Westerberg transforms industrial materials such as aerated concrete into delicate, sensitive surfaces engraved with the retellings of ancient lore.
Thru Apr 14 • 40 E. Erie (60611)
In Memory Of
DEPAUL ART MUSEUM
Domestic violence is an epidemic that crosses geographical, cultural, and linguistic barriers. And yet it is private, existing within someone’s home in isolation and extreme vulnerability. For her first solo museum exhibition Chicago-based artist Selva Aparicio (b. 1987) transforms each of DePaul Art Museum’s first-floor gallery spaces into a domestic setting by way of a careful excavation of the artist’s life and memories. Responding to the architecture of the museum, Aparicio creates new site-specific works as well as remakes previous ones.
Thru Aug 4 • 935 W. Fullerton (60614)
Erin Jane Nelson
DOCUMENT
Nelson’s practice is grounded in photography sourced from her archive of found and original images. Each project delves into new conceptual frameworks as far-ranging as regional histories of the Southern barrier islands, formative personal relationships, spirituality as a process of mourning and healing, and science fiction narratives. Through speculative world-building, layering and research, her work broadly explores the psychological impact of the climate crisis through a feminist lens.
Jun 7–Aug 3 • 1709 W. Chicago (60622)