Regin Igloria’s first solo exhibition, at the Zg Gallery, shows how a young, representational artist can still make use of his gifts without having to indulge in abstruse conceptualism.
Igloria is an outdoorsman and avid hiker who moves freely between Chicago and its northern suburbs. That gives the framework for his art, even more than his Philippine heritage.
The subject matter for his drawings comes from the paraphernalia of hiking backpacks, patches as well as things seen while in transit (graffiti). From this, Igloria has created a highly personal art that both edges into abstraction and reaffirms representation to comment on the commercialization of “the great outdoors,” the setting that embodies the last vestiges of pioneer spirit.
The satisfaction of Igloria’s pieces is not, however, in its criticism. Rather, it comes from watching him exercise his technique on smooth, shiny backpack surfaces, fool-the-eye “cloth” patches, and abstractions that have as much to do with Asian calligraphy as urban graffiti.
In his early 30s, Igloria already has produced a body of work that looks wholly his own and shows no debt to contemporary fashion. Young writers always are told to write about what they know, and Igloria shows how the advice works equally well for a visual artist.
His area may be narrow, but it has given enough intensity to representational work to make him an artist to watch.
At 300 W. Superior St., 312-654-9900.
Norbert Freese’s ink drawings at Printworks are visions of painstaking clarity that the artist either has added to prints by forebears or has completely created as homages to contemporaries. In either case, they are not at all what you might expect.
The range of reference is wide, from a painting by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, to the experimental films of Jonas Mekas and the entertainments of John Wayne. But then there are the master prints that Freese often builds upon, and they range from Jacques Callot to Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn.
Sometimes an object of veneration, such as Antonin Artaud or Marcel Duchamp, will be treated in an imaginative portrait. But more frequently, Freese enters into the stylistic world of other artists, collaborating across centuries.
Freese’s contributions are always representational, with birds and trees as recurring subjects. These he inserts into the language of others, by using damaged and discarded prints or establishing a new framework based on what he has learned about the other artists.
The effect is gently surreal and achieved with the precision of a miniaturist. Craft, one senses, is here as important as the artist’s fantasy. So the works have great crispness and polish. As artists have done for centuries, Freese measures himself against masters of the past, and the way he makes that process visible will be old-fashioned to some and thrilling to others.
At 311 W. Superior St., 312-664-9407.
Michelle Keim’s photographs at the Catherine Edelman Gallery extend the American optimism regarding industry–that was characteristic of certain painters in the 1930s–into the new millennium and imbue the theme with idealizing romance.
Keim has been photographing industries in her native Ohio since 1992. She moved to Chicago three years later, for one of the most unusual reasons ever: to be closer to the steel industry in Gary, Ind. A book of her photographs has just been published, and it gives the title to her exhibition, “Iron Beauties.”
All of the photographs are in color and were taken at night. A frequent vantage point is from behind piles of metal or coal and toward machines or buildings set against the dark sky, belching smoke. Far from being threatening, however, these scenes still convey something of industrial promise, in part because of romantic lighting and long exposures that transform pollution into colored wisps.
Keim departs from this view mainly to shoot massive ships. They are the carriers of industry, and the photographs give them a hulking presence that conveys great force and even drama while at rest.
It all suggests a kind of magical, transformative power.
The suggestion wears a little thin in the large-scale prints, but is renewed in 11 small film stills that isolate details and impart a painterly aura.
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At 300 W. Superior St., 312-266-2350.
James Smith’s new pieces at Perimeter Gallery grow out of the discussions of the 1970s that sought to take painting, if not off the wall, more into the viewer’s space by approaching the three-dimensionality of sculpture.
Smith’s method is to work additively, building mural-size pieces from smaller, irregular bits of canvas that he has stitched and pinned together. The freehanging results bear marks of every kind, from stains and drips to gestural painting and scratches made in pigment with a brush handle.
A number of the pieces also have overlays of one or more large cloths, again mounted to be freehanging, though this time creating deep folds. And to the whole has often been added several small stretched-canvas rectangles supported by wires from single nails to create yet another layer projecting out toward the viewer, of secondary and tertiary surfaces that contribute to the primary one.
Some of the works — those in which marks of pigment are sparing — effectively blur the line between painting and fiber sculpture. Chromatic sensation comes here through the cloths themselves, and the effect is somber.
However, the works that hug the wall most tightly, plus a lone piece framed and set behind glass, make their case as much through color as contour and texture, leading the eye along a shaggy course that extends even to the loose ends of individual threads.
At 210 W. Superior St., 312-266-9473.
Regin Igloria at the Zg Gallery through July 8
Norbert Freese at Printworks through July 8
Michelle Keim at the Catherine Edelman Gallery through July 8 James Smith at Perimeter Gallery through July 8
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