Two Exhibitions on Mitchell Street

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Photo via Underscore - Instagram

BRUXISM by Caleb Yono

BRUXISM / Self portrait / my pleasers / stone portal, Caleb Yono, 2024, wax, wax dye, concrete, clay, fake teeth

Two exhibitions currently on view a few blocks from each other capture the range of what’s happening on both on the Commercial Corridor as well as in the mongrel world of art in c. 2024. At Mitchell Street Arts, otherwise known as MiSA, an explosion of mostly poppy and oppy street art called “One of a Kind,” organized by Adam Correa and on view through May 25, is crawling up and down the outside windows for everyone to see. Down on 10th Street, just three blocks away, the more literally underground gallery, Underscore, features “Pretty Pretty” up by appointment through June 7 with new works by Caleb Yono and Zachary Hutchinson, offering more personal viewpoints, that are equally reflective of the art area’s art community.

And what is that community? Well, it’s rocking, rolling, regaetonning, and truly diverse, in the oldest sense. Meaning, it hasn’t been mowed down and manicured by the commercial development weed wacker and turned into an “arts district” mostly filled with bruncheries. It’s young, it’s scrappy, and it makes its own kinds of fun … from drag racing dirt bikes to screening underground films. Mitchell Street Arts, founded by the ever-resourceful art apostle Rew Gordon last year, has in short time cultivated a solid core of young, diverse, and committed artists participating in everything from figure drawing classes to community listening sessions to group art exhibitions. Their current group exhibition is about as inclusive as a show can be, with over thirty artists invited to participate in various forms from painting to installation, and with a lot of spray paint. Adam Correa says of the exhibition “I want viewers to feel like scuba divers searching the coral reef and discovering a new species.” Those new species take the form of an air brushed action portrait of Giannis Antetokounmpo by Chacho Lopez, a graffitied handsaw by Joe Emery, a pastel-colored automotive based semi-abstraction Lucia Aquino, and so many more that it’s almost impossible to keep it all straight. The thread that ties it together is that the work is familiar, accessible, and enthusiastically offered in a very public space.

Down the street, under and behind Real Tinsel Gallery at 1013 Mitchell Street, Underscore delivers the subtle intangibles that would fade in the cacophony at MiSA. In the small, white, tucked away basement hideaway, the work of Yono and Hutchinson evokes something of a mysterious and private adventure. Hutchinson’s pieces combine an omnivorous openness borrowed from the world of costume and theater with a kind of Vaseline-lensed wistfulness of the world of film. With still a little of the objecthood of painting at its core. Her Untitled wall piece is a gem lying at the intersection of all of these, and with some of Felix Gonzales Torres’s hard candies included as a digestif. Yono’s piece BRUXISM wipes the lens clean and drills into a surrealist exploration of queer identity in high definition. Her self-portraits are somehow confrontational, confessional, and compassionate at once. Being with the work in the small and removed space adds a layer of psychology that will turn back onto the viewer, leaving them steeping in the gallery with their thoughts. If the show at MiSA faced outward, this one faces inward into the deeper recesses of our collective consciousnesses and thoughts about individuality.

Which is a perfect encapsulation of either of these art venues and the street they occupy. The scene on Mitchell hasn’t yet been flattened or homogenized, nor have its artists, its cultures, its communities, or its visual culture. That culture is in, out, loud, quiet, up, down, and sideways. It’s a gorgeous and teeming mess. And actual diversity of these sorts is always a prospective gateway for authentic visual encounters.

Event Listings: May 19–May 25, 2024

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Sunday, May 19, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

1. Family Sundays: Art of Our Time
2. Sunday, May 19, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Villa Terrace Decorative Art Museum

• Work from Home Wednesday: coworking session at the Villa
• Wednesday, May 22, 12–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Gallery Talk: “Idris Khan: Repeat After Me”
• Thursday, May 23, 12–1 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
• Saturday, May 25, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries
• Saturday May 25, 10:30–11 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Member Tours: Hidden Treasures
• Saturday, May 25, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.

Tooth and Nail Studio

• Make-In with Shannon Molter
• Saturday, May 25, 1–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tours: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Saturday, May 25, 2–3 p.m.

Gallery 224 (Port Washington)

• Artservancy, an evening of art and conversation
• Saturday, May 25, 6–7:30 p.m.

Union Art Gallery at UWM

• Opening Reception: “One Sky We Share”
• Saturday, April 25th, 5–8 p.m.

Saint Kate—the Arts Hotel

• AIR Time, Art & Studio Tour with AIR Anwar Floyd-Pruitt
• Saturday, May 25, 6:30 p.m.