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.

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Kippenberger, to me, epitomizes the role of the modern artist. You can quarrel with his methods, personality or persona, but its hard to say that his work didn’t speak to the time in which he lived.  He was very aware of the conversation and history of art as is evidenced in his preoccupation with inside the art world jokes and pokes at fellow artists that require a lot of contextural knowledge to fully appreciate.  He was also an artist that shed the role of ‘painter’ and was able to work across a wide spectrum of media and styles.

Here is a great review of the original show at MoCA in Los Angeles

A great Village Voice article

Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective

March 1, 2009–May 11, 2009

The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor

One of the most significant and influential artists of our time, Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997) produced a complex and richly varied body of work from the mid-1970s until his untimely death in 1997 at the age of forty-four. This ambitious, large-scale exhibition includes key selections and bodies of work from his entire career: paintings, sculpture, works on paper, installations, multiples, photographs, posters, announcement cards, books, and music. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue—published by MOCA and co-published by the MIT Press—which will constitute a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the artist’s career.

Colescott’s work employs a wonderful sense of perspective and narrative that belies its simple drawing style and overt childlike cartoonish treatment.  His paintings are snapshots of historical events, places, re-creations of famous paintings, or creations based on politics, current events and perhaps mixed with  his own fantasy.  They are incredibly facinating narritives, packed with insight, historical detail that allow you to revist these works over and over and find something new.

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Bio from Annex Galleries

Warrington Colescott was born in Oakland, California in 1921. His parents, Warrington, Sr. and Lydia Colescott moved to Oakland from Louisiana in 1920. Earning his B.A. and M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, he continued with studies at the Grande Chaumiere, Paris, and the Slade School of Art, London. He received prestigious fellowships with a Guggenheim in 1959, followed by a Fulbright in 1966, and National Endowments for the Art Artists Fellowships in 1976, 1979, and 1983.

Colescott was a Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin at Madison between 1949 and 1978 and was named Professor Emeritus in 1986. His early graphics were abstractions created in the medium of serigraphy. By the early 1960s he turned his focus on intaglio printmaking and his imagery evolved into social satire and commentary. He has produced a number of narrative satires, including one on the history of printmaking.

Perimiter Gallery
210 W. Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60654
(312)266-9473   fax: (312)266-7984
Tue-Sat    10:30am-5:30pm

All Paintings from http://www.derekerdman.com/

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His mix of subject matter, pictorial narrative, text, humor, and satire mix with a simple, if not somewhat naive style to produce truly wonderful vignettes of modern society. His work, taken as comment or a political statement,  might feel alone taken out of context.  However, his mastery of the subject is really what propels these works,  and when you look at them as a whole, you can see the madness plain as day. This man is a true artist in every sense of the word.  He lives it every day.  There’s no other way to get to where he is, except total commitment.

From Thrillist – Crazy Derek Erdman’s Art

The spectrum of Ways Artists Talk About Their Work starts with pedantic over-explaining, and ends with pedantic silence. Since both of those suck, grab work from an artist who just says all kinds of crazy crap, Chicago’s own Derek Erdman.

With childlike glee, Erdman tackles subjects from presidential mullets to Bill Cosby’s apparent marijuana habit with vibrantly painted works on wood, offering explanations that paint the artist himself as a magnificent wackjob. Chi & Midwest portraits include ex-Chicago Reader art director Sheila Sachs (“$1 from the proceeds of this painting will go directly to Sheila herself, who knew?”), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot cover stars the Marina Towers (which remind Derek of corn cobs, and thus he’ll never enter, though “Children On The Corn is a pretty good movie for 1984″, and Prince, to whom as a child Derek was exposed by a rich neighbor spinning “Erotic City” (“Looking back now, I think I could have probably pressed charges”). Oh, and there’s more: a Beavis & Butt-head-style drawing in which “Obviously dipicted [sic] is California resident Tim Cook and beleaguered Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich running QUICKLY from Canada-based doughnut chain Tim Horton’s”; “Bad Man”, an Oliver Wendell Holmes take originally commissioned by an NU law student (“also featured in…The Pelican Brief, A Few Good Men, 12 Angry Men & Anatomy Of A Murder. I’M JUST JOKING IT WAS NOT IN THOSE MOVIES”); and Charles Manson rocking a blue Cubs hat (“At the jail in which he is incarcerated his fantasy team AWESOME ATWA came in 2nd place, which is pretty good”).

The rest of the oeuvre is similarly perplexing, notably the Paul McCartney job “Bananas Yeah Yeah Yeah” (“Paul McCartney is wild about non-meat food items. He also divorced a one-legged woman”). While the work’s available online, “If you live in the Chicago area you are welcome to visit my studio to pick this item up after you buy it. I’ll make tea and scones, NO JOKE”. Indeed, Derek Erdman.

Needless to say, he’s an incredibly interesting character and as a bonus, he’s got some really great art too.  Surprisingly, there’s a good amount of info online about the artist.  Its hard to tell where fact and fiction overlap, diverge and even fade into fantasy.  A line the artist was very careful in blurring.

Check out the show at PS.1

A good New York Times article from 1990 at Gino

Gino De Dominicis: Invisibility and Immortality

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Bio

Gino De Dominicis was born in 1947 in Ancona, Italy and lived in Rome until his death in 1998. He had many solo exhibitions, including Galleria L’Attico, Rome, Italy (1970, 1971, 1974); Galleria Pieroni, Roma (1979); Galleria Pio Monti, Rome (1977, 1980); Galleria Toselli, Milan (1995); Galleria Mazzoli, Modena (1998);  Palazzo Taverna, Rome, Italy (1972, 1977); Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples, Italy (1988); The Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation, New York, NY (1989); Centre National d’Art Contemporaine, Grenoble, France (1990); His work has been included in group shows, including Biennale Internatzionale della Giovane Pittura, Bologna, Italy (1970); VII Biennale de Paris, Parc Floral de Paris, Bois de Vincennes, Paris (1971) ; Documenta V, Kassel, Germany (1972); 8th Biennale de Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville et Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1973); Italy two: Art around ’70, Museum of Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia (1973); Prospectretrospect Europe 1946-1976, Stadtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany (1976); 40th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1980); Identité italienne, l’art en Italie depuis 1959, Centre George Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1981);Fiera d’Arte Contemporanea Internazionale, Milan, Italy (1988); 44th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1990); 45th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1995); 47th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (1997).

This exhibition features works on paper by Barbara Kendrick, paintings Sam Ainsley and a collaborative installation by both artists. The exhibition catalogue contains essays by John Calcutt and Lisa Wainwright

Barbara Kendrick is Professor Emeritus in the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Barbara Kendrick, Nursery, watercolor, gouache, pencil, pastel, 2008

Barbara Kendrick, Whizzle, watercolor, colored pencil, 2008

I-Space

230 West Superior Street
Second Floor
Chicago, IL 60610
312.587.9976
Tu-Sa 11am-5pm

Gladstone Gallery March 2007 Exhibition

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Bio

With studios in Chelsea, New York, and Salisbury, Connecticut, Carroll Dunham creates raucous acrylic paintings with additives that he describes as a “kind of high-wire act of the id and ego”.  Many of his paintings are full of humorous figures with disconnected body parts.

He is a regular exhibitor at Whitney Biennials, and his work is in numerous prestigious museums including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was born in Old Lyme, Connecticut to parents who ran a real-estate business.  He became a studio art major at Trinity College, and his exposure to the New York art world came from regular college field trips into the city.  He interned there one summer for Dorothea Rockburn and from her learned studio skills.  He worked for seven years as a lay-out artist for Time magazine, and then by age 30 settled into doing his own art work, which at the beginning was working with floating shapes and then later added texture.  He also did figurative work.

He credits older artists Mel Bochner and Barry LeVa as helping him find his own direction.  Dunham also became a committed art teacher and works with students in the graduate program at Columbia University.

He is married to pop-photographer Laurie Simmons, and they have two daughters and spend summers at their country retreat in Salisbury, Connecticut.  He prefers the medium of acrylic paint and textural additives such as styrofoam, asphalt and crushed glass.

Source:
ARTnews, January 1999