The 35 works on view at Gallery A’s group show run a gamut of subject matter, media and technique, from Hiro Yokose’s mixed-media atmospheric landscapes to Maurizio Pellegrin’s intellectually challenging mixed-media that combine silver gelatin prints, cotton thread and tribal African slingshots to Donna Tadelman’s realistic oils with strong art history references to her similar still life compositions.
A particularly striking juxtaposition places Antonia Contro’s Polaroid collage, which incorporates drawings, next to Brian Ritchard’s oil on paper small landscape paintings that resemble Polaroid pictures.
Those who missed Stephanie Rowden’s prior exhibit at Gallery A should be certain to see her “Reference Table,” a mixed-media installation with sound that makes viewers see and even listen to books and the concept of a library in a different light. The show continues at Gallery A, 300 W. Superior St., through Saturday.
Jackie Battenfield’s acrylic on canvas paintings are an active, swirling combination that call to mind abstract landscapes and color field paintings of earlier decades yet clearly reflect many contemporary painters’ preoccupation with nature. Battenfield divides her canvases into grids that provide a nice order to her many seemingly spontaneous colors, patterns and flowing drips, dabs and squiggles.
She makes her paintings on the wall or floor, allowing very thin layers of paint, almost the consistency of watercolors, to run, dance and find their own edges and direction. But she also incorporates more solid, gessoed areas that help ground the liveliness. The paintings are on view through Tuesday at Gwenda Jay Gallery, 704 N. Wells St.
John Mason’s vertically posed ceramic sculptures are strong, simple geometrics, yet their lack of excessive color and pattern gives them a much greater subtlety and grace than some of Mason’s earlier works. Those also combined geometric forms but appeared more convoluted and incorporated more colors and patterns so that the result proved a bit distracting. The current sculptures on view, such as the small, glazed “Triangular Torque, Rust” eliminate the extraneous elements with great success. The show continues through Saturday at 210 W. Superior St.
The latest show of Audrey Niffenegger’s artworks at the Printworks Gallery are from a single book that the artist also wrote titled “The Three Incestuous Sisters.” Niffenegger printed the 80 handcolored aquatint etched prints, text and handmade papers in a limited edition of 10 with one extra copy for wall display.
The works are printed primarily in gray, blue and black hues, to which Niffenegger judiciously added sparks of color in the hair and clothing, wanting each sister to represent a different primary color, “a way of setting things in motion to get the plot going,” she explains. The show continues through July 11 at 311 W. Superior St.
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