Photo by Joel Cash
The Suburban was formed by artists Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam in Oak Park, Illinois, as an artist exhibition space. With their relocation to Milwaukee in 2015, The Suburban moved to Riverwest, and is now joined by a companion location in Walker’s Point. Both venues present contemporary art from nationally recognized makers.
Brooklyn-based artist Jack Early builds his exhibition in Riverwest on edges of memory from his 1990s band, Happy Jack. The group developed over the course three years, and as Early recounts, played a stellar first show in a St. Mark’s Place club in New York. He says, “Everybody came to the show. The crowd loved us. The next morning we broke up. All is have left is an old rehearsal tape on a cassette.”
That recording plays in the gallery as visitors wander among puffy floor sculptures of cigarette butts and squashed beer cans, a nod to audience detritus of the day. On the wall, star-spangled numbers refer to the lifespan of the band and Happy Jack is monumentally painted in looming black letters. Music was Early’s catharsis following the demise of Pruitt-Early, an artistic collaboration with his partner. They enjoyed a star-shaped place in the New York culture scene of the late 1980s and early ’90s, and after the glow vanished, Happy Jack was an outlet and solace. The exhibition is sparse, a form of elegiac pop that continues Early’s interests in glamour and desire.
Also mixing in reflections of pop culture is the exhibition at the gallery in Walker’s Point. A similarly compact show, mixed-media paintings by Tony Tasset bend influences of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting into messier arenas of consumer packaging and sometimes strangely colored foodstuffs. Things like raspberry jam and mouthwash pool like paint, and the surfaces are expanded with packages attached, scuffed and squashed like their viscous insides were forced out. Added texture comes via things like yogurt and peanut butter. Tasset’s compositional deftness, and a layer of shiny resin, build a battle between colorful enjoyment and shocking dismay at the artificiality of ordinary things.
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Jack Early is on view at The Suburban in Riverwest (2901 N. Fratney St.) and Tony Tasset is on view in Walker’s Point (723 S. Fifth St.). Both exhibitions continue through June 18.
