91: Chum Bucket

This weekend my husband and I went to the closing party for an art show here in Chicago. We didn't linger; we dropped in, got a good long look at the artwork, bought a few prints, met one of the artists, and went home.

The show was called Chum Bucket, by Stephanie Brown and Christopher Michael Hefner. They're partners, and although their respective practices look very different from each other, the two share a common sensibility, a kind of irreverent stately playfulness toward the concept of mortality. Brown's paintings and calligraphy have a hard clarity, an edge that surfaces under layers of small, precise brush strokes, while Hefner's work has a looseness to the painting that still permits a kind of moral clarity. Most of his paintings at the show were small boxes, only a few inches in width and height, with scenes from The Twilight Zone across their faces that glowed in grayscale with ominous red edges. His other paintings present moral quandaries about the safeguards humans use in dangerous situations, turned around and made more ominous: a chair propped under a door handle to block its opening, a man hiding under the door of an old car. Brown's paintings were mostly a little larger, dominated by a big round vanitas of gutted fish against a black background, wreathed around a turquoise pitcher.

Both artists are matter-of-fact about flesh breaking down. Brown paints sardines and dead birds with the same delicate strokes, occasionally with flaming neon pinks and yellows poking through the edges, hinting at something unworldly. Hefner's paintings maintain a menacing air of mystery, with the faces of his subjects obscured, or sometimes distorted. The body breaks down; it can't be trusted, but it must be dealt with. The attitude feels especially appropriate coming from a pair of artists who are also tattooists, the kind of art discipline that literally gets up and walks away from the artist when the work is done. It's out of your hands, it can never be perfectly replicated, it's vulnerable to the whims of the person on whose skin the work has been marked. Most art's vulnerable, though we don't think of it that way. Some of Brown's calligraphy had been damaged during the show. It looked as though water had been flung across the work, smearing red and black inks until they'd dripped off the paper and onto the wall below. The closing party was a funeral for the lost work.

What I watched:

I revisited Strange Days for a podcast I'm recording soon. It's a movie I have a fraught relationship with; the first time I watched it, I placed it on my one-and-done list. My feelings have clarified and deepened over time. It isn't a fun movie, nor a movie I'd recommend to just anyone, but I'm troubled by it in a way that makes me grateful for critical practice and discipline. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

What I'm reading:

I've recently picked up a copy of Joan Didion's The White Album. I've read "The White Album" before, but it's been at least a few years since I've last sat down with her work. She's incredible! What more can I say!