Artist and Chicago art critic Mark Brandl ‘s opening reception for “Out of Sequence,” an exhibition that focuses on consumerism, was apparently so well received, the visitors to that opening couldn’t help but take a piece of the exhibition home with them.

Brandl was at his home in Switzerland when he was notified of the thefts earlier this month in Denver.  Patrons walked out with 26 of the 31 paintings on display.

The missing paintings were part of a display that included three large panel installations and a magazine rack of small paintings made to resemble comic book covers.

“We recognize that this was really inadvertent,” said the museum’s executive director, Adam Lerner. “Some of the most prominent and respected people in Denver inadvertently took them.”

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Hector Duarte has been painting murals in Chicago for the past 24 years.  In that time he has completed some 50 murals through out the Chicago area and is currently working on a mural for the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen.

Hector Duarte was born in 1952 in Caurio, Michoacan, Mexico. He studied mural painting at the workshop of David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1977 and has carried his tradition to Chicago and adapted it for brick and mortar buildings.  (more…)

Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective recently opened at MoMA New York and is the first large scale retrospective of Kippenberger’s work in the US since his death in 1997.   The exhibit was originally organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The exhibition is curated by Ann Goldstein, MOCA Senior Curator, and organized at MoMA by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture.

Kippenberger is most renowned for his seminal role in contemporary “Bad Painting,” as well as for his sprawling sculptural installations, but this exhibit also places due emphasis on Kippenberger’s most mundane area of production — his poster, invitation and book designs. (more…)

Currently on view at the Tate, Defining Constructivism explores work by two of Russia’s most influential avant-garde artists, Alexander Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova. Charting their evolution from abstract painting to graphic designs, the show includes cinema and theatre poster designs, books and costumes as well as paintings and sculpture.

This couldn’t be a more timely review of heavy weight constructivists at a time when the term, and meaning of the movement are constantly being thrown around (See Shepard Fairey/ObamArt).  The ideas of constructivism are often not sited directly as the movement itself and ideas behind it are often lost in the coopting of the term for the needed purpose.  That’s precisely what makes the Tate show so special.  You can see first hand, what the movement was about, how it was embodied in these two leading figures and how its spirit was defined by the philosophy that drove this work. (more…)

California based artist, Warrington Colescott, opens tomorrow (03/13/09) at Perimeter Gallery.  Colescott, while not a household name, is by no means a stranger to the art world as you can see from his partial bio below.  Colescott may very well be a name you’ll be more familiar with in time as people begin to reflect upon an amazing body of work.  As an example of this, the Milwaukee Art Museum has the largest collection of work by Warrington Colescott, and they are preparing a major book and exhibition for November 2009. (more…)

Chicago Public Library has an open invitation to area artists, designers and any one else for that matter who thinks they have a great poster idea. The competition has already officially began and entries must be received no later than 11:59 PM CST on Thursday April 09, 2009. So, get to work! (more…)

From Hitsville

Jim DeRogatis has a post about Chicago rocker and Visa spokesperson Billy Corgan speaking before Congress about the so-called Performance Rights Act, with which the music industry hopes to extract money from radio stations for playing their music.

Radio pays songwriters a “publishing” fee, but there’s no “performance” equivalent. That is, Pepsi spokesperson Bob Dylan gets a few pennies each time Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” is played on a terrestrial radio station, but the Hendrix estate gets nothing. (more…)

I love coming across artists like Derek Erdman.  It makes me feel good, makes me still think there are people out there that make art because its a disease they are afflicted with and they can’t stop or they will die.  Derek Erdman has a brand of crazy that is hard to stop looking at.  His work is honest, to the point and defined by a unique point of view.  A point of view that keeps you coming back to look again and again. (more…)