Line Drive
Whereas Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery used to be a muscle gym a long, long time ago, the new Line Drive Gallery still is:



If you are a batter you are forced to look at art on your way back to the cages. I can't imagine that this is going to work, especially when they build the artists studios behind the cages.

What? What am I rambling about? you are asking.

I'm trying to tell you about the new gallery in Evanston, now on its third show, but the first with walls that have been painted gallery white (used to be blue and purple, I understand). Current show is "Pandora Meets Sarajevo: Reclamations for a Wounded World," up thru 4/22. The four artists on display all met each other through projects sponsored by the TransCultural Exchange.

Samir Biscevic's work has camouflage, khaki, black and blood red drips and pours creating a dense ab-ex surface, quite violent at times, very dark, reflecting his life in Bosnia during the war.



Also layered and complex, though lighter and glazier, are Ginny Sykes's large-scale oils based on images from Spain and spiritual imagery. I didn't much like them when I first saw them, since the quality seems uneven, but the strongest have a denseness that lingers. The worst have muddy colors and scumbly, unsure marks. Maybe it's intended. The very cold lighting in the room didn't help anyone's work.



Aquatints/chine colle prints by Caroline Anderson, deeply embossed into the paper, presented with a sureness that stops short of slick graphic design-ness, were my favorites, perhaps because I'm printing again.



The final artist in the group, Duyen Nguyen, showed works that are banners on silk, huge, hung from the ceiling. They didn't look good in this room. I'm afraid I didn't get a good shot of them, either.

The Gallery doesn't have a web presence yet, though a lot is planned. A reporter from the Evanston Roundtable newspaper was interviewing everyone. Keep an eye out for a story.

In the meantime, they're at 1255 Hartrey Ave, Evanston, IL 60202, 847-570-0802. They're looking for artists and proposals for shows and installations, but are in an in-between quasi-suburban state that probably needs to go way funkier to compete with the batting cages.

Here's the artist links:

Ginny Sykes
Samir Biscevic
Caroline Anderson
Duyen Nguyen
- posted by Cynthia @ 4:42 PM | | | Link |