One of the most satisfying things for anyone to see is an artist’s leap forward, and that is visible now in the collaborative photographs by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, at the Catherine Edelman Gallery.
Not only has color most persuasively entered the couple’s imagery, but also the quaint surrealism of their earlier work has mostly disappeared from the nine large chromogenic prints on view, leaving spare, more-or-less naturalistic scenes of existential power.
The ParkeHarrisons for some time have been interested in contemporary man’s relation to the land. Here, they finally have expressed such concern in bleak, muted images as still as their previous ones were busy. The figures’ interior states in a sense mirror the stunned silence of blasted landscapes in a way that is not just overcooked theater.
The color in these pictures is appropriately pale, as if drained by the dehumanized environments. And, for once, the large size of the pictures looks appropriate, too, as the best pieces deal with the spiritual silence of vast, numbed interior as well as exterior spaces.
The hyperactive male that once bustled through the ParkeHarrison’s images is here caught in moments of bloodied reflection, dazed contemplation and inexplicable mourning. Activity is confined to a new figure, a woman who nourishes the earth while the males around her watch but are, apparently, oblivious.
At 300 W. Superior St., 312-266-2350.
And now for something completely different, an exhibition of vintage “conceptual photographs” at the Carl Hammer Gallery that is not at all forbidding and relates more to the warmth of folk art than modernist strategies common in the first half of the 20th Century.
The show is called “People Pictures,” and this is literally true, as each image of American symbols such as the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam was made by assembling thousands of figures — generally soldiers — in the proper shape and shooting it from above. Variations in the colors of their uniform give the light-and-dark details of the image, such as the hair of Lady Liberty, individual fingers and folds in her gown. Buildings of military bases appear at the top of each picture from a separate negative.
Most of these pictures were made during wartime, beginning with World War I. Ones by the Chicago partnership of Arthur Mole and John Thomas are the most stirring. But the show includes pieces by several others, before and after Mole and Thomas, recapturing the spirit of ages not so long ago but, nonetheless, long gone.
The ambition of some works really is outsized, as when 22,500 men assembled in 1918 to form the image of a machine gun insignia. However, such grandeur was matched by largeness of purpose, as proceeds from the images were donated in full to families of returning soldiers to help, touchingly, rebuild their lives.
At 740 N. Wells St., 312-266-8512.
Pancho Quilici is a creator of alternative worlds. His paintings and prints at the Maya Polsky Gallery bring together mathematics and geometry to form a cosmic architecture of tremendous complexity and detail. The amount of sheer work in his art often is astounding.
The Venezuelan artist, who lives and works in Paris, is in the line of a visionary French architect such as Etienne-Louis Boullee and the contemporary French artists Anne and Patrick Poirier. Which is to say, Quilici’s art looks into the future but sees it in terms of the classical past. So this is work “about” history as much as projections of far-reaching states.
The two-dimensional works Quilici long has shown in Chicago have depended for their effect on a layering of images. The pieces he exhibits now have achieved a new delicacy and complexity thanks to transparent printing on polyester tulle (in the paintings) and the assembling of several sheets of printed acetate (in small boxes) that suggest limitless depth.
Now and again, the artist adds words to his pieces, and we cull them in search of meaning, which probably is a mistake. Some of the words are like interjections overheard when Quilici talks to himself. Others are akin to imperial inscriptions, evoking the might of great empires, but clarifying nothing about the present or future. They do not, in any case, add up to serve as a “key” to these fantastic, poetic panoramas.
At 215 W. Superior St., 312-440-0055.
Jane Rosen’s paintings, sculptures and reliefs at the Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery are mostly of animals she sees daily around her home in Northern California. She does not think of them, however, as being representational, though they are portraits of being, that is, of a fuller state of existence than the one lived by humankind.
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about this. Animals are not self-conscious. Hence, little intervenes between them and the world. When they watch a thing, they are fully present in the watching. We, on the other hand, are distracted by our own hyperconsciousness. The goal of a number of spiritual disciplines is, in a sense, to get back to the animals’ “purer” state.
Rosen often will pour ink or coffee onto a sheet of paper, then put it outside, where raccoons or other small animals may leave tracks on it. Then she will use the sheet to record images. But they apparently are not premeditated or edited. The artist’s first impression, which more often may begin from a sound than a mental picture, is the one she seeks to stay truest to.
But art intervenes. So when she hits on, say, the image of a bird, it may arise in conjunction with bird forms by Constantin Brancusi. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, Rosen’s personal response to heightened being is enriched rather than distracted or diminished.
At 704 N. Wells St., 312-664-3406.
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The ParkeHarrisons through June 2 at the Catherine Edelman Gallery
‘People Pictures’ through May 26 at the Carl Hammer Gallery
Pancho Quilici through June 30 at the Maya Polsky Gallery
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Jane Rosen through June 23 at the Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery