Lumpen magazine: Issue 114

Lumpen magazine: Issue 114, themed Crisis: Looking for Answers will be released this Friday, February 5, during the Save the Whale fundraiser at the Co-Prosperity Sphere (3219 S. Morgan). The magazine features swankster graphics, a globe-trotting staff, and Plural Design’s amazing creative direction. It is free upon entry so be sure to pick up a copy and check out the review of my solo exhibition Means Without End.

Masterpieces of the Czech New Wave

The Czech New Wave is considered one of the richest eras of cinematic history. Made between 1964 and 1968, during a brief period of artistic freedom, these films are marked by a use of humor, tragedy, humanity, and surrealism often mixed with political commentary.

The Fireman’s Ball (1967, 73 minutes)
dir. Miloš Forman
Thursday, February 11 at 6pm
Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

The Fireman’s Ball chronicles a real party thrown by a small-town fire department where nothing goes right. Considered a political allegory, the film was banned by the Czech government in 1969.

Animation shorts by Jirí Trnka
including The Hand, 1965
Thursday, February 18 at 6pm
Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

Master puppeteer Jirí Trnka’s stop action animation short The Hand examines freedom of expression and oppression and was banned under communist rule.

Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out

Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out
February 6 – May 30, 2010
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

This winter, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, premieres Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out, an exhibition that uniquely examines the artist’s studio as subject. The exhibition offers an illuminating look at how some of the most compelling artists of today have demystified, re-mystified, and reconsidered art production spaces. Large installations, films, multi-channel video projections, photographic light boxes and life-size fabrications of artists’ studios that explore the creative process are on view February 6 through May 30, 2010.

Exhibition organizer and MCA Curator Dominic Molon says Production Site “brings a tradition of representing the artist’s studio since the Renaissance into the present day. It provides a rare opportunity to see the studio–a space typically kept private by the artist for contemplation, conceptualization, and production–through the eyes of the artists themselves.”

“Presenting work that documents, depicts, reconstructs, or otherwise invokes that space, Production Site reveals how the studio provides for the intersection of research, experimentation, production, and social activity, and how our romantic notions of the artist’s studio both celebrate and constrict its role in contemporary art-making,” adds MCA Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn.

Production Site is presented as part of Studio Chicago, a yearlong collaborative project that focuses on the artist’s studio through October 2010.

RELATED PUBLIC PROGRAMS

The Artist’s Studio as Subject
This series of talks and discussions explores the artist’s studio, its history and relevance today, and the creative process.

At the MCA
220 E. Chicago Avenue
For tickets or more information, visit www.mcachicago.org or call 312.397.4010.

Artist Panel: Nikhil Chopra, John Neff, and Amanda Ross-Ho: Studio Myths
Saturday, February 6, 3 pm

Caroline Jones: Trajectories of the Studio after the Factory
Tuesday, February 16, 6 pm

Andrea Zittel: Studio as Testing Ground
Monday, April 5, 6 pm
Copresented with Gallery 400, the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, as part of the Voices Lecture Series.

Kerry James Marshall: The Artist in the Studio
Saturday, May 22, 3 pm

At Gallery 400
University of Illinois at Chicago
400 S. Peoria Street
Free
For more information, contact 312.996.6114.

John Miller
Tuesday, March 2, 5 pm

Renee Green
Tuesday, April 20, 5 pm

Workshop: Coffee & Art
Evidence of studio process in artworks, led by threewalls cofounder and director Shannon Stratton
Saturday, March 6, 10 am–noon

Curator Tours,
Tuesdays, February 16 and March 16, noon
Free

Family Day
Saturday, March 13, 11 am-3 pm
Free

Support for Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out is generously provided by Nancy and Sanfred Koltun, Mary Ittelson and Rick Tuttle, Jack and Sandra Guthman, Anne and William J. Hokin, and the Joseph G. Nicholas Foundation. Generous support for interpretive resources and programs is provided by Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel, with additional support from Lynn and Allen Turner. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines, the Official Airline of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Season support for the MCA lecture and conversation series is generously provided by The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund.

For tickets or more information, visit www.mcachicago.org or call 312.397.4010.

Greg Stimac

Greg Stimac
February 6 – March 13, 2010
Opening Reception: February 6, 4–7pm
Andrew Rafacz

In the summer of 2009, while driving around the country, Greg Stimac attached a sheet of Plexiglas to the front of his car every time he set out for a new city. At the end of the road, whether in Baltimore, Cheyenne, or Reno, he would stop along the highway and use a flatbed scanner powered by the cigarette lighter to create a photograph of the insects and grit that built up on the surface. These images, set against total blackness, are tangible records of the artist’s journeys— each one registers time and distance through an endless stream of minute collisions and the traces they left behind.

In the Vernacular

In the Vernacular
February 6–May 31, 2010
Galleries 1–2
The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue

Vernacular photographs—those countless ordinary and utilitarian pictures made for souvenir postcards, government archives, police case files, pin-up posters, networking Web sites, and the pages of magazines, newspapers, or family albums—have been both the inspiration for and the antithesis of fine-art photography for over a century. In their struggle to gain legitimacy in the art world, fine-art photographers at the turn of the 20th century endeavored to distance their work from the amateur, commonplace, and practical photographs that had become so familiar in everyday experience.

Creatives at Work Forum: Taxes and Recordkeeping with Julie Herwitt

Creatives at Work Forum: Taxes and Recordkeeping with Julie Herwitt
Co-presented with the Chicago Artists Coalition
February 2, 2010, 6:00 – 7:30pm
Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater
78 E. Washington, Chicago
312-262-9866

Tax time is approaching, and if you work in a creative industry—dance, theater, music, visual art, or writing—you may find this process especially “taxing”! Does the IRS consider your art practice a business or a hobby? Can you file as an independent contractor or might you be considered an employee? Perhaps you have asked yourself such questions. To further complicate matters, according to CPA Julie Herwitt, the IRS has announced that starting in November 2009, it will begin a special initiative to audit individual income tax returns with Schedule C’s that show a loss. (The Schedule C is the tax form most artists use to report their business income and related expenses). The IRS has stated it plans to focus on certain industries in these audits, including craft sales, photography, art, and writing. Therefore, artists, performers, and writers need to be extra diligent in their record keeping.

If you’re not quite sure how to keep such records, or are feeling otherwise overwhelmed in regard to tax prep, you can find answers at this informational Creatives at Work Forum, led by Julie Herwitt. She will demystify the process of tracking art-related expenses and filing a Schedule C (+ much more). The forum takes place on February 2, 2010, from 6 pm – 7:30 pm, at the Claudia Cassidy Theater. The theater is located in the Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington St. This event is free and open to the public. Don’t miss it!

7th Annual Oxford Film Festival

7th Annual Oxford Film Festival
February 4 – 7, 2010
Malco Oxford Studio Cinema
Oxford, Mississippi

Join me for the screening of my video, Westhope: Above and Below during the Experimental Block of the festival on Saturday, February 6 at 1 pm.

Read my Take 5 with “Westhope: Above and Below” interview for the Oxford Film Festival. And remember to rate my video after the screening!

Founded in 2003 as a project of the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, the Oxford Film Festival is an independent non-profit organization committed to celebrating the art of independent cinema. This is accomplished in its annual four-day event (currently in February), which brings films and filmmakers from as far away as Los Angeles and New York to North Mississippi to screen alongside the work of local filmmakers. The festival screens between 75 and 100 films of varying lengths and categories (animation, documentary feature and short, experimental, narrative feature and short), hosts panel discussions on issues in contemporary filmmaking, and invites the filmmakers to interact with the audience at a number of social events. The Oxford Film Festival entertains and educates its participants, providing residents and visitors with the opportunity to watch independent films, as well as to meet the filmmakers and learn from industry professionals. The variety of films, in addition to the panels, attracts filmgoers of all ages and backgrounds.

Lo-Fi, Hi-Fi: Contemporary Video Art

I have photography and video work in the current group show at Gallery 130 curated by Brooke White along with Dwayne Butcher, April Grayson, Matt Moore, and Anne Massoni.

Lo-Fi, Hi-Fi: Contemporary Video Art
January 30 – February 5, 2010
Reception: February 4, 4 – 6 pm
Gallery 130
University of Mississippi
Oxford, Mississippi

Rodney Carswell: hither and yon (little prisons)

Rodney Carswell is a great artist and an amazing professor.  I am excited to see his latest work at Devening Projects + Editions this weekend.

Rodney Carswell: hither and yon (little prisons)
January 31 – March 1, 2010
Saturdays 12 – 6 pm and by appointment
Opening reception: Sunday, January 31, 4 – 7 pm
Devening Projects + Editions
3039 West Carroll, Chicago

Rodney Carswell continues a rigorous and newly energized pursuit of formalist poetics with a series of paintings and works on paper for this second exhibition with the gallery. Rodney Carswell is Professor Emeritus at the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Chicago; he lives in Chicago and Munster, Indiana.

Adam Ekberg

Adam Ekberg: In the between
December 11, 2009 – February 6, 2010
Thomas Robertello Gallery
939 W Randolph St

Chicago-based photographer Adam Ekberg will present an artist talk about his exhibition In the between at Thomas Robertello Gallery on Saturday January 30, 3:00 pm.