SPACE: we plumb the final frontier

We're really enjoying our new space with all of it's ca. 1989 vintage amenities including the cephalopod-like phone system pictured above that we have named Paul.  It's endless bundles of blue data cables strung throughout the gallery make us feel like we're in a Terry Gilliam movie.

We also have a snack room...
(There will be more to come on this in the near future).

Our new space is located at 833 W. Chicago Avenue on the second floor and is open to the public Friday and Saturday from 12 - 5pm, and other days by appointment.  Come see for yourself how people used to live back at the beginning of the 1990s.  Oh yeah, and we have art hanging too.

the best place to vote in Chicago

The huge Keith Haring mural in the hallway makes Wells Community Academy High School our favorite polling location in Chicago (see a partial view above).  We can't help but hope the 2011 Mayoral Election requires additional run-off voting.

The site-specific work was designed by Haring during the May 1989 stint in Chicago that produced two murals in Rush Memorial Hospital and a massive one in Grant Park as well.  Though planned by Haring, the piece at Wells High School was actually painted by students.  Haring did stop by upon it's completion to give his approval and pose for a pic with his student collaborators.

thug life: seventeenth century style

Attention bad boy street artist types: check out how an original art-gangster was keeping it real back at the turn of the seventeenth century:

• 4 May 1598: Arrested at 2- 3am near Piazza Navona, for carrying a sword without a permit
• 19 November 1600: Sued for beating a man with a stick and tearing his cape with a sword at 3am on Via della Scrofa
• 2 October 1601: A man accuses Caravaggio and friends of insulting him and attacking him with a sword near the Piazza Campo Marzio
• 24 April 1604: Waiter complains of assault after serving artichokes at an inn on the Via Maddalena
• 19 October 1604: Arrested for throwing stones at policemen near Via dei Greci and Via del Babuino
• 28 May 1605: Arrested for carrying a sword and dagger without a permit on Via del Corso
• 29 July 1605: Vatican notary accuses Caravaggio of striking him from behind with a weapon
• 28 May 1606: Caravaggio kills a man during a pitched battle in the Campo Marzio area

The thug in question was Caravaggio, the Italian old master responsible for some of the most beautifully  creepy religious paintings of all time.  His epic use of chiaroscuro transformed mundane moments of macabre violence into sublimely lit tableaux, plus he was a total badass and evidently a douchebag as well.

The records that document this incredible spree of mayhem are currently on display at the Archivio di Stato di Roma.  If you can't go view the documents in person, you can still read all the details about Caravaggio's life of crime as reported by the BBC.

Jeff Koons comes back to Earth

Back in December we were shocked and awed to find out that Jeff Koons had filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco gallery Park Life, over their sale of book ends that were based on the image of a balloon dog.  Koons, after all, is an artist whose work famously features appropriation (and who has been sued over this very issue himself).  The truly amazing part of all this was that Jeff Koons himself had appropriated the balloon dog in the first place.  Had Koons been the first to twist one up, the notion of protecting his balloon creation and it's use would have merit.  Unfortunately for Koons, a lawsuit like the one he filed requires more than simply having giant balls, deep pockets and a gung ho legal team.

On Koon's birthday, January 21st,  Park Life's attorney answered the suit with a witty and sarcastic counter punch in the form of a federal complaint that contained numerous tweaks including this little nugget:  "Upon information and belief, Jeff Koons LLC purports to represent the intellectual property rights of Jeff Koons, a retired stockbroker whose sculptures and other works are well-known for copying pre-existing forms and images from popular culture."  Referring to a man, who is considered by many to be among today's preeminent contemporary artists, as simply a "retired stockbroker" must have rattled Koons.  He's lucky they didn't call him a pornographer as well.

We waited to see what form of bluster would come next from the great and terrible Koons legal team, but in the end there was only silence.  And then last week they quietly they dropped their misguided intellectual property suit, once again leaving the balloon dog squarely in the public domain where Koons found it in the first place.  Somebody's getting fired over this one.

street valentine

Spotted this morning on the way to work.

the best alley in Wicker Park vol. IX: winter wonderland

We've been slacking on the flickr updates lately.  This is not to say that we haven't been shooting pics, we just haven't been posting as regularly as we should.  In an effort to catch up, we present a series of pics from the best alley in wicker park taken over the past several weeks.  There's nothing like the clean facade that snow provides to accent the ever changing work.  See what you've missed over the past couple of months in our flickr set "the best alley in Wicker Park".

Voina x eBay x Banksy's Identity

by Rachel Schwerin
The two leading members of the Russian performance art collective Voina have been imprisoned in St. Petersburg without a charges or a trial for four months now. For those who aren't familiar, Voina has been responsible for numerous confrontational and political actions including the painting of a giant penis on a drawbridge that faced the building that housed former KGB offices.  Banksy, a fan of the collective's antics, announced a while back that he was going to donate the proceeds from his latest print release to fund their bail. Voina's lawyer offered the court 2 million rubles ($66,000) bail for each, but the judge denied the request. He cited a "lack of information about the person providing the money" for the bail as his justification to keep the Voina members locked up.  No doubt Voina’s imprisoned idealogist Oleg Vorotnikov doesn't appreciate the irony that Banksy's anonymity had just been available for purchase through an auction on eBay.


The highly scrutinized auction on eBay was posted by someone who claimed to have used tax records in some capacity to secure proof of the mysterious artist's identity.  Evidently the auction seller felt that this was marketable information, and that people looking for bargain electronics and obscure collectables would be equally interested in purchasing the documentation.  The auction was pulled before it was completed, but not before bidding reached nearly a million dollars for the promised info.  Speculation was that Banksy himself may have been behind either the auction listing or it's removal.  Either way, Banky’s identity can now be valued somewhere between $1 million and freedom.


Learn more about Voina (which translates from Russian as 'war') and check out the Free Voina page for the latest developments in their case.