The narrative oil and acrylic paintings of Rosalind Al-Aswad bring to life a crowded, zanily colored and sometimes humorous slice of daily suburban life. In her first solo show at Lyons Wier Gallery, Al-Aswad depicts couples lingering over breakfast or lunch, with cereal boxes and McDonald’s hamburger wrappers prominently displayed, or friends gossiping as they casually sit and sip cold drinks after working out. A few people are painted alone, in “Aragon” and “Autumn,” but they represent the exception and even in those instances are surrounded by numerous possessions.
What is more interesting than her camera-like view of interior vistas is how the artist fashions terribly complex, almost dizzying, compositions that need to be dissected into smaller components if one is to grasp her message. Her use of mirrors — sometimes multiple mirrors that portray her characters in duplicate or triplicate — suggests that she is telling stories on several levels. Stuffed animals and recognizable dolls like the classic Madeline strewn about the floor may point to the aging process that all her characters have gone, or will go, through. The props also emphasize society’s wastefulness — of possessions and even of people.
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“I like to emphasize the small things in life that go unnoticed,” Al-Aswad explained from her home outside Chicago.
In “Metamorphoses After Ovid,” two girls chat on a bright yellow couch, relaxing after their workout. They at first seem to keep a distance as they sit at the corners of the couch, but their knees and toes touch ever so slightly. In this work, her first story is about growing up and metamorphosizing from ugly ducklings into swans, the artist explained. But she also wants to suggest an overtone of homosexuality and the choices that people make, she said. The show continues through Saturday at 300 W. Superior St.
The idea for Gwenda Jay Gallery’s current show, “Waxworks,” is based on four artists’ use of the beeswax medium, an encaustic. An old medium that predates oils, beeswax fell out of favor because it is extremely labor intensive, according to Dan Addington, director of the gallery and one of the four artists in the show. Traditionally, he said, pigment is added to molten beeswax; and resin, a hardening agent, often is applied. The combined mixture is added to a surface. Afterward, the entire surface is subjected to a “burning in,” the translation of the Greek word encaustika. The heat process causes the painting to be fused or bonded; it is then polished with a soft cloth for a sheen.
Addington blends murky, abstract backgrounds with strong central forms of crosses, chalices, fleur de lis formed from tar that lend an aura of religious iconography. Katie Dowling’s works refer to geometry and landscape but in a humanistic way. Rachel Friedburg’s smooths her encaustic surfaces and adds primitive figures in spare landscapes so the works exude a folk art quality. The show continues through Tuesday at 704 N. Wells St.
Many of Kara E. Walker’s larger prints on view at the Ann Nathan Gallery will call to mind old-fashioned silhouettes because of their stark black-on-white format. But these are not simple portraits in spite of their minimalist details, two-color palette and solid forms.
The prints, sometimes part of a series, force us to confront American history through the lens of race and sexuality. She presents racist stereotypes of mammies, pickanninies, Uncle Remuses, slave mistresses and monkeys, not to romanticize what occurred at the time of the Civil War but because they are familiar, terrible images in our historical memory bank. The show continues through Friday at 218 W. Superior St.
Carl Hammer Gallery brings back “Mr. Imagination,” a k a Gregory Warmack, in its current “The Spirit of Unity” show. Warmack delights again in recycling his environmental finds of commonplace bottle caps, buttons and fake jewels. The results range from elaborate, large kitschy sculptures like “Large Bottlecap Horse” to much smaller objects such as “Bottlecap Boot with High Heel.” Though they dazzle the eye in either case, the results are more graceful and appealing when small and subdued. The show continues through Saturday at 200 W. Superior St.