Press / Reviews : For Real
(From the magazine "Time Out" - Chicago)
"For Real"
Hyde Park Art Center, through Mar 26.
Cheerleader. Historian. Accountant. These are just a few of the hats worn by any administrator at “an alternative arts venue,” according to the literature of the show at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC). “For Real,” the HPAC’s last show before its highly anticipated relocation, turns the struggle to balance these roles into works of art.
As visitors walk through the HPAC’s Ruth Horwich Gallery, their tour is punctuated by glimpses of its staff at work in one part of the space. The Chicago artists’ collective Cream Co. has filled the remainder with pieces by its own members. Although the quality is uneven, as a whole the Cream project—presented on white walls in the orderly manner one expects from a contemporary gallery—sets up a fascinating contrast with the clutter and hum of activity just beyond it. Many of the Cream pieces critique our notions of beauty and value. Gold Soap Picasso, an enormous chromogenic print by Marie Krane Bergman and Michael Kiresuk, skewers the ever-expanding realm of luxury by depicting a Picasso alongside a meticulously arranged stack of gold-wrapped soaps. Rooms, a series of black-and-white pictures taken by John Photos at IKEA, imbues your roommate’s Poäng chair with film-noir glamour. Nearby, Kiresuk’s Viewing Point—a piece of tape—indicates the best place to observe the HPAC employees, treating their temporary office like a sweeping landscape. The show suggests that, given the proper frame, anything can be anointed “art”—and sometimes the mess and toil behind the scenes is most deserving of the name.
Lauren Weinberg