Rodney Graham, Dance!!!!!, Two painted aluminum lightboxes with transmounted chromogenic transparencies, 107 x 138".

Rodney Graham, Possible Abstraction, Pair 2, 2007-2008, Two lacquer on wood paintings, 96-3/4 x 83-1/2 x 3-1/2".

Dan Graham, Possible Abstractions: Pairs 1-35 / "If You Ask Me His Earlier Paintings Were Much Better," 2007-2008, Two silkscreens, 43-1/2 x 48-3/4".

Dan Graham, Possible Abstractions: Pairs 1-35 / "If You Ask Me His Earlier Paintings Were Much Better," 2007-2008, Two silkscreens, 43-1/2 x 48-3/4".

Donald Young Gallery
933 West Washington Boulevard
312-455-0100
Chicago
Rodney Graham
October 10-
November 14, 2008

In his new large-scale lightbox diptych Dance!!!!! Graham continues his fascination with the myth of the American West. The image depicts a cliché from countless Hollywood Westerns: a man being forced to dance in a saloon by another man, six-gun in hand, shooting bullets at his feet. Playing the role of the "old-timer" compelled to perform the jig, Graham is suspended, clicking his heels in mid-air to avoid the shots fired by a "liquored up young hot-head."

Also in the main gallery is the kinetic sculpture entitled Rotary Psycho-Opticon, a replica of a freestanding kinetic op-art sculpture used as a backdrop for a performance by the band Black Sabbath on Belgian television in the early 1970s. By physically recreating what is essentially a readymade sculpture, the artist slyly examines fantasy as it relates to optical perception; the psychedelic patterns and movement of the sculpture itself mirroring the dreamlike haze a fan might be drawn into when imagining his favorite icons. Furthering this notion, Graham has used the sculpture as a backdrop for his own band's live performances.

Possible Abstraction Pair 2, 2007-2008, presents two almost identical lacquer abstract compositions on wood panels. The paintings are part of a larger series, which proposes different combinations of the same elements. The work was inspired by a cartoon Graham found in a 1950s men's pulp magazine, where two persons are standing in front of almost identical caricatured representation of two abstract paintings by the artist "Picado" made about 40 years apart. One man says to the other: "If You Ask Me, His Earlier Paintings Were Much Better." This sketch also inspired a silkscreen edition that accompanies the work.

Also included in the exhibition is a suite of 13 oil paintings that debuted at the 2008 Biennial of Sydney. In these modestly-sized color-filled abstractions, Graham again performs a kind of historical re-enactment in which he plays the archetypal mid-century School of Paris painter. Referencing the rich impasto of this school, the paintings are paradoxically both satirical and reverential.

Rodney Graham was born in Vancouver in 1949 and his work can be found in a number of public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Solo exhibitions include a retrospective in 2004-05 that toured North American venues as well as a European touring exhibition in 2002. He has participated in landmark exhibitions, representing Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1997, and exhibiting at documenta IX in 1992 and at Sculpture Project Muenster in 1987.

Josh Azzarella, Untitled #38 (Bryan).

Josh Azzarella, Untitled #28 (CE 133-B).

Kavi Gupta Gallery
835 West Washington
312-432-0708
Chicago
Josh Azzarella
October 17-November 29, 2008

Josh Azzarella borrows iconic historical imagery and manipulates the contents to reveal an altered view of potent events that have shaped our collective conscience. The images chosen for this exhibition range from serene landscapes wiped of their violent and defining events to scenes taken from more obvious sources, slightly edited, shed of the actions that disrupted our past and continue to influence our lives.

By reworking still images and video footage from historic prize winning journalism, security, and news footage made famous by the media, and other documentation of well-known events, a quietude is created. Events are erased as ghosts and impressions from one’s memory emerge in an eerie retelling. A black and white image of a distant shoreline is jogged by the point of view from the water leaving one to recollect the image of the storming of Omaha Beach or to read the image as a calm landscape. Another quiet landscape presents an empty grassy hill site without the falling soldier.

A similar approach is taken in several video works where this erasure is created frame by frame. A film featuring the unknown rebel during the Tiananmen Square protests presents this well-known footage, but in Azzarella’s version there are no war tanks, no opposition. This footage is especially potent given how the communist party in China so heavily censors the history of this event. Other videos are more ambiguous and seemingly commonplace in comparison such as altered footage of a shaky handheld image of the sky through the trees. One feels the camera is attempting to catch the glimpse of a fleeting object, which could be a UFO, or a bird, but is actual documentation of an airplane that lingered over Washington after the events of September 11.

Azzarella also slows and obscures video footage through a laborious layering process. The result is an estrangement from the original recognizable event becoming a beautiful, amorphic, and transitory picture that unfolds over minutes instead of seconds. The addition of real-time footage re-emphasizes the questioning of certain events that are usually interpreted through the media filter, often with distorted truth and biased commentary creating more questions and more answers for individuals to assimilate their own construction of the past.

Josh Azzarella (b. 1978, Ohio) lives and works in NY. He has recently had solo exhibitions at DCKT Contemporary, New York and Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA. Azzarella was the recipient of the 2006 Emerging Artist Award and had a solo exhibition from The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Selected group exhibitions include shows at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, Clifford Art Gallery at Colgate University, Catherine Clarke Gallery, San Francisco, Clarke Western Bridge, Seattle, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick NJ.

Josh Assarella, Untitled #23 (Lynndied).