There’s always something worth seeing in the Chicago gallery scene, but “I Dream I Cross The River In One Stride,” the new group show at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in West Town, is a particularly compelling exhibition that audiences should absolutely check out before it closes on March 28.
According to a press release, the exhibition was inspired by Lorraine O’Grady’s essay “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity.” “If, as O’Grady argues, the Black female body has long functioned as the unseen reverse side of Western femininity — present as stereotype, absent as subject — then these artists reclaim the right to produce images that are self-authored, multiple, and unafraid of excess,” the release says. The themes from O’Grady’s essay are present in the works in the exhibition, and there is a cohesion between the works with respect to what they explore.
“I Dream I Cross The River In One Stride” is also the title of one of three paintings in the show by Clemence Gbonon. I was enthralled by Gbonon’s paintings. As you examine them longer, they reveal themselves to you. The simple yet bold colors, compositions, and mix of figurative and non-figurative subjects made the works very busy and interesting to look at.
Autumn Wallace’s sculpture, “Fruit Loop” (2023) was the centerpiece of the exhibition. It sits on a pedestal in the center of the gallery, surrounded by two walls in the shape of brackets, creating a sort of closed-off area around the sculpture that separates the sculpture from the rest of the exhibition, but in a cohesive manner with the other works in the show. The press release explains that the light blue field, which is known as “haint blue” in Black folklore, and is used to ward off spirits, is important. It is “an atmospheric extension of the work itself. The color frames the sculpture as a charged, protective zone.” The way the figures on the sculpture interact with each other is somewhat sensual, yet also alludes to a theme of youthful play as well as ancient rituals.
Brittney Leeane Williams had two paintings featured in the show as well. Her painting “Interruption 10: Transition,” was the one used to advertise the show, and what sparked my interest in the exhibition. She works with white, black, and red in this exhibition, with minute amounts of blue in her painting “Interruption 7.” In her other works, she uses red very consistently, in almost all of her paintings. I found the smoothness of her canvases in this exhibition to be incredibly satisfying. The mark-making itself iin her paintings was so fluid yet structured, and the level of realism was surreal in and of itself. They were so clean, and the figures morphing into each other in “Interruption 10: Transition” were captivating, due to the smooth, cloth-like structures that fade into shapes resembling the human body, and the contrast between those smooth forms and the rough rocks that they sit on. Her other painting, “Interruption 7,” displayed layers of fabric floating in space, obscuring parts of a figure, leaving only two arms and a leg visible.
In all of the works in this exhibition, there was a subtle theme of an obstructed sensuality, likely stemming from how the Black female body has existed in Western society, and from themes in O’Grady’s essay. It was a visually and conceptually interesting exhibition.
