Solo expectations

Cayetano Ferrer, Untitled, 2007.

Shannon Stratton has a succinct explanation for why ThreeWalls started its new SOLO program: “There just aren’t enough spaces in Chicago that are noncommercial, and there are a lot, a lot, a lot of artists here.” Housed in the gallery’s compact former digs at 119 North Peoria Street, SOLO will be exclusively devoted to one-person shows and only Chicago-area artists need apply. “The suburbs count,” adds Stratton, ThreeWalls’ director and chief curator of programs. “Maybe even Gary, Indiana.” 

ThreeWalls was founded as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2003, at a time when several Chicago nonprofit galleries had just closed. In 2004, it began a residency program that has attracted participants from as far away as Australia and as close as the producers of Chicago-based art podcast Bad at Sports.  (Current resident artist Chris Millar is a painter from Calgary.) According to Stratton, the residency program was designed to strengthen the city’s connections to the rest of the art world and “repair Chicago’s reputation as a global art center.”

When it isn’t presenting work by the four resident artists it hosts each year, ThreeWalls curates group shows. But all this time, Stratton admits, “We knew we hadn’t been providing a lot of exhibition opportunities for local artists.” At the end of 2006, when ThreeWalls expanded into the former Wendy Cooper Gallery’s larger space down the hall, it decided to turn its original site over to SOLO.

Although Stratton curates the residency program herself, this year’s 96 applicants to SOLO had their work reviewed by a committee of 16 local artists, critics, art historians and curators. “Both spaces are totally democratic,” she emphasizes, “but if you’re going to work with local artists, it’s difficult to be the only person making those decisions. It can become nepotistic, or one person’s vision of Chicago, which is problematic.” The members of the SOLO jury range from twentysomething professionals to seasoned pros in their fifties, but all of them have worked with small, independent institutions before, “so they have a sense of our mission,” Stratton says.

The inaugural SOLO program, which began in September with Cayetano Ferrer’s “Eight Corners,” will continue with shows by Anne Toebbe, Heather Mekkelson and Laurie Palmer through March 2008. “They’re at different stages in their careers, so there’s a sense of balance, but the quality is [all] extremely good,” Stratton says. “Cayetano is the most truly emerging artist [on the] roster. He hadn’t had an exhibition in Chicago outside of apartment galleries or student galleries at the SAIC, so this was a pivotal opportunity for him.”

“Eight Corners” is a fascinating meditation on what is hidden or destroyed as our environment changes. Ferrer’s inkjet prints Western Imports I-III subvert our expectations of urban space: the artist took photographs of empty sites along Western Avenue, attached those images to cartons placed in precisely the same locations and photographed them again. His “litter” appears ghostly and  beautiful, the gritty sidewalk and weeds showing through the bizarrely transparent cartons. The artist also used this process to make great site-specific sculptures that blend into the gallery’s wooden floor and brick wall.   

Ferrer’s work happens to be accessible and appealing, but SOLO’s goal is to free artists from the pressure of presenting art that will sell or navigating the bureaucracy of a large museum. For that reason, Stratton says, a nonprofit gallery “is a pretty important kind of institution to have.”

“Cayetano Ferrer: Eight Corners” and “Chris Millar: Boiyd Howses and Other Hatstands” are at ThreeWalls through October 13.