Marc Dennis is a representational artist who has painted portraits, animals, birds and foodstuffs with crisp and glossy precision. However, for his exhibition at the Carl Hammer Gallery, his subject is bugs, which satisfies his part-time role as a naturalist and full-time love for “freakish beauty.”
Most compelling of his generally small pictures are those of dead wasps, greatly magnified and lying on a pristine, white surface. These pieces look to have been done with the aid of a camera, as usually one wasp will be in sharp focus and others receding will gently blur. But that, I have been told, is his own device. Dennis is not a photorealist, though he may arouse attention by sometimes borrowing from one.
His painting is highly controlled, but not cold in the photorealist manner. In fact, he is probably closer to the bejeweled manner of a medieval painter of miniatures than anyone contemporary. He makes no great show on his surfaces; his method of setting down paint is not exciting in itself. But unpredictability of composition and luxuriousness of color plus fantastic detail seduce the eye with richness.
More ordered pieces, which duplicate row upon row of bug as in a formal collection, occasionally have greater variety of form (when the bugs are different) but not as much mystery. There the letters and numerals used in coding the collection relieve strict placement, adding to the sense that we have merely glimpsed into an unknown world.
At 740 N. Wells St. 312-266-8512.
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More than six years have elapsed since I saw a show by Dusseldorf sculptor Manfred Mueller, but his new abstract paper pieces at the Roy Boyd Gallery are still very much him, some still evoking the capes, mantles and coats that go back to wall pieces from the mid 1990s. Rich color has, however, been drained, and most pieces on view have a chromatic restraint that makes some black-on-yellow collages stand out that much more boldly.
In addition to the “Oxid Yellow” pieces, two more series are represented. The first, “White Prelude,” has creased and scored papers recalling garments worn over the shoulders. They’re mounted in boxes without an interior support, so the “body” on which they’re “worn” is absent and more attention is drawn to the surface and edge relationships than to sculptural volume. The subtlety there does not disappoint.
The second cycle, appearing under the letters “UMS,” is made up of irregular geometric shapes mounted over folded (and numbered) grid papers. These are flat collages that make their impact through adjustments between the papers. But several of the taller, pronouncedly vertical ones also suggest, uncannily, garments or pieces of clothing that have been drawn up like pants over the lower part of a body. They are more interesting for the oblique reference to the body than the pieces that tend toward squares, which are in a more strict modernist vein that proves familiar.
At 739 N. Wells St., 312-642-1606.
The Worthington Gallery reopened three and one-half years ago with a show devoted to Kathe Kollwitz prints, drawings and sculptures. Given the artist’s obsession with the toll of war, the exhibition was particularly appropriate to our own time. Now the gallery has relocated, again opening with a Kollwitz show that marks the 140th anniversary of the artist’s birth, and still it’s appropriate to the world situation, as she is an artist for all time.
Emil Nolde and Oscar Bluemner also were born in 1867, and both of them are more modern to us than Kollwitz. The aesthetic vein that ran through her art certainly was as strong as theirs, but it often is overlooked in the interest of social content. Strife and loss are the abiding themes of her art. Yet when you see the 1921 sheet of studies of the head of her grandson Peter, you also see how there’s tenderness in the drawing as well as the subject, and that is no little matter.
The grandson, shown as a baby, would die in World War II, as Kollwitz’s son Peter died in World War I. The deaths deepened her art, though in truth her vision was already formed, as from the start she was a powerful witness to social struggle. Her closeness to the working classes led Kollwitz to devote herself to the making of prints, and those on view indicate how there she achieved her fullest expression. But Worthington shows small bronzes as well, and they prove equally beautiful and moving.
At 737 N. Michigan Ave. 312-266-2424.
“On Men and Women,” the show of a dozen Spanish artists at the Cervantes Institute, is not quite what you might expect. First, it fulfills a goal of the Institute, which is to make viewers in the United States more aware of the holdings of museums in Spain, this time the ARTIUM de Alava, the Basque Museum and Centre of Contemporary Art. Then it lightly touches upon some key moments in Spanish art since the 1950s. Finally, it presents a single work by each artist that reconstructs the male and female form in a variety of media.
Typically such shows are devoted to pieces by emerging artists. But this one is half devoted to past masters: Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Eduardo Chillida, Jorge Oteiza, Antonio Saura. Views of them will not be changed by the works shown, though it’s good to be reminded of how the middle-aged Dali and veteran Chillida were still near the top of their form whereas the aged giants Picasso and Miro proved more variable. (Oteiza and Saura both look strong, but few viewers in North America will have much basis for comparison.)
Apart from photographs by Juan Hildalgo that aspire to the transgression of vintage Surrealism, the more recent works are tame, coolly showing Surreal or Conceptual influence and proving once more the conservatism of our artistic moment.
At 31 W. Ohio St. 312-335-1996.
Marc Dennis at Carl Hammer Gallery through Nov. 10
Manfred Mueller at Roy Boyd Gallery through Nov. 27
Kathe Kollwitz at Worthington Gallery through Oct. 27
“On Men and Women” at Cervantes Institute through Nov. 9
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