New Exhibitions Start June 11

MARINA BLACK: UNSEEN

Opening: Friday, June 11, 5 – 7:30 pm

Catherine Edelman Gallery

There are many photographers whose work reveals its intent upon first viewing. Then there are photographers like Marina Black, whose images reveal themselves slowly, allowing the viewer multiple interpretations. Black cites Goya’s The Disasters of War as one of her main influences, which many have interpreted as a protest against violence and the public who remain complicit. Her series Hasard Anticipé (anticipated chance) casts children as the subjects through which fear, joy, trauma and innocence is addressed. In Blacks world, the sanitized assumptions of childhood are replaced by the reality that innocence can be lost when children are not protected. In Hasard Anticipé, Marina Black presents photographs of daily activities – dancing, a soccer game, children swimming – that seem ordinary until wires, ropes and other objects obscure reality and the identity of those pictured. Black invites the viewer to construct their own narratives, while suggesting that innocence is something to attain, and should not be taken for granted.

Technicolor Constellations: Tales from the Permanent Collection

Begins June 11

Rockford Art Museum

Featuring nearly fifty pieces from Rockford Art Museum’s Modern and Contemporary Collection. Artist’s include: Herman Aguirre, Alice Aycock, Jeff Koons, Kerry James Marshall, Tony Oursler, Diane Simpson and Ken Warneke.

Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw

Begins June 12

Art Institute of Chicago

Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus. He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States as well as abroad and becoming intimately familiar with the world’s various landscapes. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fueled his deeply spiritual vision decades later.

This exhibition follows a shifting progression of Yoakum’s mountainous terrain, arid deserts, and majestic waterways, as well as a selection of his portraits of African American icons, testifying to the rich imagination of an exceptional American artist as well as to the remarkable circumstances that led to his lasting legacy.

Blow Up II: Inflatable Contemporary Art

Begins June 12

Krasl Art Center

BLOW UP II: Inflatable Contemporary Art explores the imaginative ways that air is used as a tool to create large-scale sculptures. Inflatable works are often initially regarded as whimsical or humorous, yet they can contain serious critiques of pop-culture, social norms and the politics of space. BLOW UP II explores the complex relationship between the familiarity of the material combined with serious commentary, creating a dialogue around reinterpretation.

Matthew Metzger: Heirloom

Begins June 13

The Renaissance Society

Matthew Metzger’s paintings often closely replicate not-quite-familiar images, cultural artifacts, or common objects that signify nauseating conditions of power—conditions that for him leave self-expression feeling inadequate or corrupted, requiring a different way forward. While rendering each painting with an obsessive focus, Metzger relies on abstraction to more than formal ends, using it as an active means of distortion that mirrors the effects of our information ecologies and other aspects of culture today.

In Heirloom, Metzger presents a new ensemble of works, conceived as an installation for the Renaissance Society and its space.

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