Monthly Archives: June, 2007

I think the art scene in Chicago suffers from a Second City mentality. Having grown up as a New Yorker and having become a Chicagoan, I have always been amazed at how weirdly Chicagoans relate to New York.

The months between spring and fall semesters are a great time to spend a few hours visiting one of Chicago's many renowned cultural institutions.

Mark Booth, MFA 1995, and Shin Yu (Doris) Pai, MFA in writing 1999, have new works.

The Discontented Pendulum, a group show currently on view at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Gallery 2, aims to investigate the disjuncture between adolescence and adulthood and the way in which perception may be affected by such an experience of growth. Although the artists involved--who include Isak Applin, Carl Baratta, Leelee Chan, Adam Ekberg and Sarah Nesbit--use a variety of media, all are united in their particular interest in capturing landscape.

On Monday, June 4, the Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal completed his month-long stay at Flatfile Galleries. During the month of May, Bilal lived, ate, slept and worked at the gallery, all the while under the threat of a paintball gun firing yellow pellets which deployable by the public via his website. Through daily video blogs, online chats, and the constant image of the paint-splattered room that he lived in, Bilal’s goal with his live-in art piece, Domestic Tension, was to draw attention to the false sense of distance between those who enact violence in war and those who are the victims of such violence.