Friday 11
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
A band of weirdly ambitious and absurdly grandiose performance artists are making their Chicago debut this week at the Beret International Gallery. Cathcart/Fantauzzi/Van Elslander specialize in elaborate, costly, and seemingly pointless projects. For instance, they recently bought a house in Detroit, spent three days dismantling it by hand, and then displayed the parts in a gallery before transporting them to a dump. In another gallery, they rigged up an electrical ceiling grid to consume vast amounts of electricity from the power-generating facility next door. For their Chicago show (which runs through May 14), they’re printing up ten-foot-by-two-foot computer-generated images of girders from the nearby Stewart-Warner factory, which is in the process of being demolished. The gallery’s at 2211 N. Elston; there’s a free reception from 6 to 11 tonight. Regular gallery hours are 1 to 7 Thursday and 1 to 5:30 Friday and Saturday. Call 489-6518 for details.
Saturday 12
The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago is marking its 75th birthday and the 20-year tenure of director Susanne Ghez with an exhibition called After and Before, which is supposed to dramatize the way different artists use the concept of time. It kicks off at 4 PM today with an abbreviated, 46-minute version of Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire, which by means of a static camera observed shifting light on the Empire State Building over an eight-hour period. (It shows again at 5:20.) From 5 to 7, at the opening proper, you can wander through works by Hanne Darboven, Jeff Koons, On Kawara, and Lawrence Weiner, among others. The whole thing’s free and runs through April 17 at the society, 5811 S. Ellis. Regular gallery hours are 10 to 4 Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 Saturday and Sunday. Call 702-8670 for details.
“The “kids’ really are playing around. And it’s us they’re playing with, they’re drawing maps, coloring with their crayons, but I think they’re crossing out human beings.” So wrote 11-year-old Sarajevo resident Zlata Filipovic, deftly limning the destruction visited upon her society. (“Kids” is her term for the politicians.) She began keeping a diary in 1992, just before the country’s civil war began: her take on events was eventually published under the title Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Yugoslavia, now out in a dozen countries. Filipovic reads from her work at 6 tonight in the auditorium of the former State of Illinois Building, 100 W. Randolph. The event, sponsored by Waterstone’s Booksellers, is free. Call 587-8080.
Thursday 17
