22 is an art and design gallery just west of downtown Chicago, located on 6910 Cermak Road in Berwyn, IL.  The multi-use space is dedicated to exploring the overlap between art and design, highlighting the work of emerging and established artists and designers. Modular22 is the gallery’s most ambitious project to date, a large-scale installation featuring work from over one hundred artists, designers, and architects.
  
The entire structure measures 8 feet tall and 25 feet long, with the artwork displayed on interlocking wooden panels. The artists included in the show are from Chicago, the U.S., as well as internationally. The color palette for the artwork, done only in black and white, is intended to keep the project visually cohesive while featuring work by such a variety of artists and styles. A participatory component of the work is evident on the chalkboard panels that ask for visitors to leave their own mark. The gallery is considered new and upcoming, and the directors believe that art and design are inseparable, as evidenced by Modular22. “The project brings the infrastructure of a gallery display system to the foreground, treating it as equal to the artwork it’s used to display,” stated Calek.
                       
The gallery owners are recent MFA graduates from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Jessica Calek, architect and director of 22, designed the Modular22 Project. Dan Streeting, graphic designer, painter, and creative director of 22 built the infrastructure with Calek, and their intern Erin McGuire, a recent graduate & painter from SAIC. The Modular22 project was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign over the past summer. The wooden panels were lasercut by Advanced Laser Cutting Technologies in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
 
MODULAR22 opened on Saturday, October 13, and the work is on display until December 22, which is also the closing reception. Make sure to check out this exciting, innovative installation! The gallery is open to the public six days a week. Check 22’s website for more details. Note: the gallery is also accessible via the CTA.

View from the entrance of the Modular22 installation , photographer: Dan Streeting

View of the Modular22 installation from the back of 22's gallery space, photographer: Dan Streeting

close-up of a lasercut panel, and some artwork in Modular22, photographer: Dan Streeting

close-up of some artwork in Modular22 installation, photographer: Dan Streeting

Fall brings about many changes: changing of the leaves, the cold weather, and as you all guessed by last week’s busy opening schedule, of course new exhibitions for galleries. One art destination not far from the city is the Elmhurst Art Museum, an architecturally significant facility that focuses on contemporary art in the suburb of Elmhurst. Starting on September 16, and currently showing until December 31^st, the museum is presenting four new exhibitions for the fall. Three artists represented by Chicago galleries, artist Matt Woodward (Linda Warren Gallery), Glenn Wexler (Zolla/Lieberman Gallery), and Firat Erdim (Roy Boyd Gallery) are exhibiting their new works, with architecture as a lose but underlying theme. The Art Center is also concurrently presenting their new collection additions in a separate exhibition.

Matt Woodward’s The Tremendous Alone is a collection of immense drawings about architecture and the way in which it becomes a powerful memory, which creates a perception of how we view a given time and place. Six vast drawings fill the gallery space in an intuitive view of the artist’s personal memory. Woodward’s intent to push past the architecture into a suggestive place of life and death creates an overall thought provoking and visually stimulating experience.

Glenn Wexler’s multi-media exhibition Stillness in Motion is based on the in-between spaces of nature and the developed world, all seen through the lens of an urban setting. The collection includes structures lit from within, wall text, and photographic images that all pertain to the close proximity of architecture and its relationship to land and cityscapes.

 The architectural and sculptural work in Firat Erdim’s The Arbor looks at the transformation of objects and places between states of nature, raw material, construction and ruin. Erdim takes standard wood planks and uses them to create structures that comment on the states of arrangement and deterioration.

Collection Highlights: New Acquisitions is made up of the new 18 works that are being added to the Museum’s collection. The generously gifted works add to the contemporary art collection and speak to the current culture. The exhibition includes works from Jerry Cargill, Helen Maurene Cooper, Mark DeBernardi, and many more. Come check out these four fabulous exhibitions and revel in their creative excellence.

When: September 16- December 31, 2011

Where: Elmhurst Art Museum

http://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/current-exhibitions.html

The Arts Club of Chicago is presenting a truly special exhibition this month - Bertrand Goldberg: Reflections is a comprehensive, yet intimate look at the works by this great artist.  The show, opening September 16, is made up of Goldberg’s personal collection of art and artifacts, alongside images of Goldberg-designed buildings, furniture, fabrications, and jewelry.  The exhibition has been designed and installed by John Vinci, along with Bertrand Goldberg’s architect son, Geoffrey, and it pays homage to the influential work that Bertrand Goldberg produced throughout his life.

Reflections takes the viewer through the sources and influences on Goldberg’s vision by looking at his own collection of art, his friendships with artists and intellectuals, his photographs, and designs for architects.  This “behind the scenes look” allows one to dive deeper into Goldberg’s life and help explicate the genius and infamous works that he created, both for those who’ve long admired his work, and for those who don’t know the architect beyond his famous ‘corn cob towers’ - Marina City.

Bertrand Goldberg was born in Chicago and he left behind a legacy of architecture that contributes to the city’s beautiful skyline.  Goldberg’s most iconic construction, Marina City, sits on the bank of the Chicago River, and marked the beginning of his work in large-scale commissions.  Goldberg’s vision for the project was revolutionary, as it was intended to be a full-service, city-living community, in response to the suburban flight that was happening in the 1950s.  Residents could live, dine and park in the residential community.  Today, condo buyers expect such amenities as standard.

Goldberg’s work is seen throughout our city, and this exhibition has a special place in our hearts, giving us greater insight into the buildings we pass by daily.  Another famous building of the architect’s, Northwestern Memorial’s Prentice Women’s Hospital (the pod-like Streeterville structure with round windows) is the current subject of a preservation society debate, so there is no doubt that the close examination of Goldberg’s work is especially timely.  

The Arts Club show is a companion exhibition to Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention being held at The Art Institute of Chicago from September 17 to January 15 and is the first comprehensive retrospective of his career.

"My message, I think, is much more important either than myself personally, or than the quick identification as the round-building architect. I am talking about the performance of people in a social system, about the performance of people in the city."

-Bertrand Goldberg