Recently by The Shark
You laugh! But you shouldn't! or, wouldn't, if, that dorsal fin was attached to, say me for instance, and you were climbing the stairway to the business end of carcharodon carcharias (the ultimate in evolutionary epicurean elegance ) rather than this embodiment of all that is ultimately dysfunctional when it comes to the Chicago art world.
I hate to admit it, cranky as I am, as much as I did not want to like it, I have experienced a marvelous new contemporary space here in Chicago. A space that with an economy of means, employing the most modest of building materials, with a sense of purpose and an adherence to that purpose conflated in its vision, is simply dazzling. As you wander through the spacious produce section, or stop for a nosh at any one of the fabulous food islands,
The Slave Market..... Jean-Leon Gerome
What!? You think bloody body parts floating in pools of blood, bobbing about, detritus, stirred by my five foot dorsal fin is a spooky sight? .........wooooOOOooooOOOOOOO!!......... Hah!..... You ain't seen nuthin' yet...!......just wait until this weekend at The Merchandise Mart. You want a horror show! -just keep telling yourself as you stroll from one b gallery nightmare to another, to remember what your therapist told you: 'this isn't really happening to me,' 'stay calm!,'' I'm going to my happy place now...'
I hate it when I'm wrong! Barreling up from the deep, ready to chomp the head off some innocent little baby seal -only to find out I've just latched on to the leg of some mangy surfer dude (quit crying for mommy! I didn't mean to take your leg off!...oops I just chipped a tooth!) or worse yet some pelagic researcher's towed rubber seal dummy (-who wants to have tire mouth?!) and to what end? so I can end up on some low-rent, 'man is the real predator, now that we said it don't we feel good?' piece of pulp on Shark Week?......So, imagine the extent of my mortification when Tony Fitz (the whale shark) patrick proves me wrong about...anything! (an exceedingly rare occurrence) But, in this one isolated incident, he has. Three years ago, after a meeting with the Mart/Art Fair people that included Tony, Paul Klein and myself, Tony walked away saying 'I'm done'.....and he was, and he was right. 'These people weren't going to really treat or think of artists in any way other than commodities, indentured servants, serfs' - and they, haven't. Tony went on to say, this isn't about art or an art fair, this is about political ambition and low and behold......read the political pages of The Chicago Sun-Times in the last few days? Read the list of people on the host committee, or the middlemen/ panelists for ancillary events for this years fair? Lots of players, very few artists. Lots of art world bureaucracy, played out and washed up, manning a decaying, and decadent, outmoded system and a failed scene -and by this I mean the infrastructural end of the Chicago Art World.....
With all the money under one roof, whats is there to complain about you ask? Well for one thing, if we are discussing Chicago money -lets face it, its never been supportive of the Chicago art world. Institutions have been built here true, and mostly to house imported fare -whether we are discussing a French Impressionist Painting or a trendy piece of garbage 'painted' by Karen Kilimnick, the conceit persists and insists that what comes from elsewhere is by the very nature of its geographical origins, superior.
This particular drawing (Tiger Burning In The Sun) is the opening salvo so to speak -of a new series of drawings I have just put up at wesleykimlerstudio.com
(click on drawing to enlarge)
Recently, there has been much 'spin', noise and chatter, -emanating from that particular bastion of the specious and the trite (think 'Ren', think 'theory's bitch' Claudine Ise', think gatekeepers losing their grip) about abstraction, representation, the decline of abstract expressionism, the misused term 'Imagism', who is who, what is what, and who has done what in terms of Chicago painting -where these specific conceits come in to play-
My only question then, would be my favorite one: what is the nature of legitimate authority? what makes something true?
The url to my new website: wesleykimlerstudio.com
The terrific sculptor Scott Fife, creates absolutely marvelous (masterful) large scale heads in cardboard -often grayed out -but this go around with big splashes of color, with all the workings -screws, glue, staples adding both detritus and, detail -in some ways reminiscent of Conrad Marca Relli's best work- made 3d. Scott will be showing with the interesting psychedelic abstractions of Todd Chilton -a painter The Shark knows nothing of, but looks forward to seeing-
Scott will not be at the opening -BUT! will be coming to Chicago in the next month to give a gallery talk -date TBA-
So much to say, so little time, coming in the next weeks from the Supreme Dictator For Life- that would be me, The Shark himself,...several things that I will be circling around here in some brand spanking new, pools of blood!....
A dupe, a puppet, this is the real role of this earnest yet utterly insipid and awful painter. A way of having painting while denigrating it by definition- by de-skilling it, thus raising the importance of its 'conceptual' underpinings/'context'- as in text- written in reams of sameness by academics/curators in order to further their various ambitions within the climes of todays art world. All, while marginalizing the role of art, the artist in the whole rancid equation.
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