LOOP!Pork & Politics⁄23 East Madison. DDesigner and street artistRay Noland, famed for spray paintingimages of Barack Obama and RodBlagojevich on Chicago streets and under-passes, pairs with the Chicago Urban ArtSociety (CUAS) to present “Pork &Politics,” a group show in one of theChicago Loop Alliance’s pop-up galleries.Visitors to the space are engulfed in abranded, commercial environment; Nolandpainted the walls yellow, red and blue,installed a yellow- and red-striped awning,and placed a red hotdog cart with yellowlettering in the center of the room.According to color theory, red and yellowstimulate hunger, an idea often used bythe leading fast-food companies. Here, thecolors echo the political appetites of theshow’s subjects, who are leading nationaland local political figures. Grinding togeth-er varied allusions to politics and hotdogs,the exhibition peddles mixed messagesand hidden meanings encased by slick sur-faces. About a third of the works deal withnational issues. In Noland’s “Capitol Pork,”the Capitol building is divided neatly intodifferent cuts of meat—whether belly, fat,or rib—ready to be sold. Another, “RangelDog,” depicts Charlie Rangel caught takinghis piece of the cut in a New York deli. Theshow is most successful when it hits clos-est to home, telescoping on Chicago. WhileNoland’s “Chicago Dog” series is morenonpartisan, highlighting Rahm Emanuel,Mayor Daley and Carol Moseley Braun pos-ing with the iconic Chicago hotdog, otherartists are less impartial. In biting portraits,Don’t Fret lampoons political gluttony,including George Ryan’s imprisonment andTed Mazola’s “sweet deal” for supportingthe destruction of Maxwell Street, andSOLO adds fiendish horns to Pat Quinn’sforehead. Whether it’s the colors, foodimagery or staged political drama, thisshow left me hungry for more of the same.Fortunately, CUAS’s Executive Director,Lauren Pacheco, hopes to move the showto a larger vacant space on State Streetnext month, and plans on serving up moreartwork and real Chicago dogs at the re-opening. (Laura Fox) Through December 31.

UKRAINIAN VILLAGEUkrainian Institute¤of Modern Art .2320 West Chicago. !SVITLANA & VASYLYARYCH, painting, sculpture. Like many ofthe other artists from L’viv whom theUkrainian Institute of Modern Art hasbrought to Chicago, the Yarychs are moreinterested in using rather than defyingtheir cultural legacy. The quiet and myste-rious paintings of Svitlana Yarych (born1960) are closer to Byzantine icons than toromantic realism or anything else that’scome out of Western Europe in the last twocenturies. But the sweet, young, ghostlyfaces that emerge from her upbeat, color-ful patterns belong in the home rather thanthe church. With her emphasis on enjoy-

able local color, Svitlana, a professor in theDepartment of Clothing Design at the L’vivAcademy of the Arts, might even be con-sidered more of a fabric designer than apainter. Meanwhile, her husband, Vasyl(born 1951), was obviously trained by theSoviet academy to achieve didactic monu-mentality rather than naturalism or individ-ual self-expression. But he has carried thatformalist ability to make things look largeand important over into the intimate worldof domestic life, and the outstanding workin this exhibition is his series of “conversa-tions” that feature half-naked, lanky youngcouples entwined in each others’ limbsand staring into each others’ eyeless faces.These couples are sexy, but it is the sexbetween lifelong companions. There’s agentle, loving, dreamy, domesticity in alltheir work, including the traditional mythicthemes that Vasyl has approached. TheYarychs enhance the surrounding spaceinstead of assaulting or rejecting it. Theypresent a sweet, beautiful and convention-al world that humanity needs but alwaysseems to be destroying, especially in twen-tieth-century L’viv where a third of thepopulation (the Jews) were murdered bythe Nazis and then sixty percent of thoseleft (the Poles) were deported by theSoviets. With such a history, who wouldn’tbe longing for peace and harmony? (ChrisMiller) Through January 30.

!=recommended

Selected art listings and reviewsappear below. To submit listings e-mailartcal@newcity.com. We do not guar-antee that all submitted listings willappear in print. For expanded listings,visit art.newcity.com.

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY SHOWS

EYE EXAM

Be a Professional Artist Today!By Jason Foumberg

A self-identified “second-generation collector” admitted, “I have never heardof a small artist group that’s having something [an exhibition] where anybody’sreached out to me.” This was in the MCA’s auditorium at a well-attended panel dis-cussion on Chicago’s local art scene in November. The collector, who was seated inthe audience, chose to respond to the topic of how emerging artists can connectwith emerging collectors. The collector, who presumably lives in Chicago, admitted

to not shopping locally (and only at art fairs) because artists don’t invite him to their exhibitions. As a caveat, hebluntly told the audience, “What we see [in Chicago] is generally not appealing.”

Most artists need collectors if they’re expecting to be career artists, but this collector did not toss out callingcards to the hundreds in attendance, nor identify his name. It’s likely that this collector, and many others, enjoy theprestige of collecting art, yet collectors are not public figures. (The highest echelon of philanthropy is the “anony-mous” donor). If you are an artist in Chicago you can probably name fifty fellow artists, twenty art galleries andmaybe one art collector. This collector revealed a double-edged secret: collectors don’t need artists.

“Each and every month commit to identifying a minimum of fifty potential collectors and make at least one sale,”writes Katharine T. Carter in her new book, “Accelerating on the Curves: The Artist’s Roadmap to Success.” Herother advice for an artist to maintain good collector relations is to host an annual holiday cocktail party at your stu-dio, send a glass of champagne to a collector’s table if you spot them at a restaurant, always thank them for a salewith a handwritten note, and update them with news about your current exhibitions. This last bit mirrors the com-plaint of the unidentified Chicago collector. Carter’s words of wisdom are not, in fact, unrealistic, but how does anartist who is not represented by a gallery connect with collectors in the first place? “Get creative,” she says.Collectors are not just museum aristocrats, but also your dentist, accountant, realtor, or friend who is an interiordesigner.

“The Artist’s Roadmap to Success” is the latest do-it-yourself art business manual. It joins a small but growinggenre of workbooks aimed at the type of artists begging for rules in this unregulated and conflicted art world. Assuch, Carter’s book makes use of a motor vehicle motif (taking the wheel and accelerating on this superhighwaymay lead you on detours or dead-ends, etc). The workbook is the product of a decades-long career as an art advi-sor and collaborator with arts professionals, and Carter peppers her three-step program to artistic success withnuggets of experience and real-world expectations. “There are no guarantees of any kind in the art world,” shewrites, and success can take at least fifteen years of hard work. Carter’s assumed reader is an artist who aspires toshow in art galleries, make a living from sales, and whose climax of success might include being selected for theWhitney Biennial.

Carter proceeds as if the art world were a smoothly operating machine built to reward all good artists. After youidentify your fifty collectors and make some sales, you need to befriend curators and have group and solo exhibitionsat increasingly prestigious venues. But this charm-school guide for artists needs a troubleshooting section. What ifthe curators on your list of pivotal exhibition sites simply dislike your work? How do you contact galleries that explic-itly discourage cold submissions? How do you cultivate established collectors, not just sympathetic friends?

Carter’s main premise concerns the building of a network of supporters, a truism in our day of an ever-expandingart world. Her best gems of strategy, though, are found in asides and digressions. Artists can have direct access tocurators by joining museum affiliate groups, she writes, and even get their work into collections through donations.Carter would do well to finesse these strategies for her readers, as some of her co-authors do, but artists who aretaking the self-enrichment route and reading books like this should also consider reading their antidote, the gos-sipy, behind-the-scenes tales such as “Seven Days in the Art World.”

I sometimes hear artists ask, how do I show outside of Chicago? Carter addresses the transformation of a careerfrom local to national, and is realistic about the timeline, but dare I say, she is too hopeful. In her epilogue, Carteroffers an anecdote as metaphor. She embarked on a weeks-long European pilgrimage and was yards from the pin-nacle of her hundreds of miles-long journey, a holy shrine, when the priest in-charge stopped the line. Carter admitsto sobbing at her unfair share, but then a fellow traveler “said something in Spanish” to the priest, who proceededto open the gate just for Carter. She says she gained access to her final destination because she stayed committed.But the truth is, a stranger intervened on her behalf, and someone else held the key that opened the gate to hergoal. There is no guidebook to getting lucky, but I wish there were.

“Accelerating on the Curve: The Artist’s Roadmap for Success” retails for $95 at ktcassoc.com

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5 SHOWS TO SEE NOW

1Pork & Politic s(23 East Madison Street)

Stuf f i t

2Mike Andrews

(Golden G al lery)

Yarn and steel

3Svitl ana & Va syl

Yarych(Ukra in ian Inst i tute of Modern Ar t )

A couple f rom L’v iv

4Ah Wilderness!

(Ebersmoore G al lery)

Into the wi ld

5Help Wanted

(The E xhib i t ion Agency)

Of f ice pol i t i cs