Chicago Cultural Center
Michigan Avenue Galleries
Exhibition runs through July 6, 2008

By Alicia Eler

Chicago and Leipzig seem like random cities to pair together for one photography/video show, but in the instance of "Three Hours Between Planes: Contemporary Photography From Leipzig and Chicago," it makes perfect sense. The wide-ranging, beautifully curated collection of photography and video by artists from both Chicago and Leipzig brings international talent together under one roof, with work by Stefan Fischer, Jill Frank, Sveinn Fannar Johannsson, Stephanie Kiwitt, Chelsea Tonelli Knight, Dominique Koch, Lilly McElroy, Elise Rasmussen, Andreas Schulze, Jan Sledz and Scott Patrick Wiener.

Jill Frank, When Mom Killed Her Pet Bird from the series The Franks
2003, Archival Inkjet Print, 20 x 24"
Courtesy of the artist

First not-to-miss is recent SAIC MFA program graduate Elise Rasmussen, who indulges her Francophile obsession - something she's been cultivating since age 10. In her photographs and mixed-media pieces, she plays with romanticized, iconic images of French New Wave cinema and the French Revolution. In her large-scale photograph, Me on the Seine Dreaming of Kissing You (in French), Rasmussen employs a faded archival look to a photograph of herself with dyed black hair; eyes closed, she drifts off into a romantic moment. And behind her is "the Seine," a.k.a. the Chicago River. By re-contextualizing the photos - placing them in Chicago instead of in France - Rasmussen hits the idea of French romanticism on the head, demonstrating its influence on a generation of art students. Similarly, her hand-sewn guillotines (so very French Revolution) on miniature strips of cloth pepper the wall space around the aforementioned photograph and two other photos with similar themes, bringing a nice variety to the show. But most beautifully created is her French Revolution-inspired wallpaper: She portrays French families dressed in frilly garb, doing variously mundane and domestic country-type activities, but there's a twist. In each mini scene, someone carries a stick with a person's head on the end, making the wallpaper both decorative and darkly humorous.

Lilly McElroy combines the frame of a still photograph with the motion of live video in her piece The Square (After Roberto Leopardo). Here, the artist toys with the idea of street advertisers (the ones who hand out samples of crap you don't need) and canvassers (you know you've ignored more than a few Misericordia people) who are always trying to stop pedestrians and either sell them something or get them to sign-up for a mailing list. McElroy instead draws a white square and aggressively tries to keep passersby out of the space. It's an interesting social experiment: More than anything, men try to get into the space. Eventually a woman jumps in and starts mirroring McElroy's moves to keep people out of the space. Although the video goes on a little too long—about 28 minutes — it's worth watching at least half of it, if not because the artist is just so hilariously protective of this arbitrary space, but because it toys with the general idea of public space and boundaries. How are these decided and when?

Back on the photography end of things, Scott Wiener takes a closer look at easy-to-miss domestic moments in his series Dependence, shooting them with a keen eye and a shallow depth of field. Each title is a verb, and they range from Resignation to Analysis. In Stirring, a woman intently stirs something - its contents unknown - in a pot that rests on the stovetop. Wiener brings into focus her eyeglasses and her left hand, which grasps a towel wrapped around the pot's handle. A few drops of an unidentified red substance sit on the stovetop - also suspicious. All the photos in this series capture intense moments like these, except for Resting, which seems like a regular old, staged photograph of a man sitting in an orange hanging chair.

Scott Patrick Wiener, Puzzling, 2008
Archival Pigment Print, 16 x 20"
Courtesy of the artist

Sveinn Fannar Johannsson rounds out the video element in this show. Like McElroy, he takes a photographic eye to the moving image. In his piece Miss the Wood for the Trees, he positions his camera, capturing a still shot looking into a forest scene. Though they're initially reminiscent of traditional landscape paintings, the serene images soon jolt the viewer as a tree falls, randomly. Then it's onto the next scene. At once suggestive of our current environmental crisis but also smartly commenting on the banal landscape painting, Johannsson's three-minute video is both beautiful and strangely contemplative.

Sveinn Fannar Johannsson, Miss the wood for the trees 6,
Video still, 2007
Courtesy of the artist

Even though it's hard to find a huge umbrella theme for the work in this show, one thing's for sure: Artistic talent abounds in both Chicago and Leipzig, Germany.

Exhibition runs through July 6, 2008 at the Chicago Cultural Center.