Visual Arts Preview: Sept. 13-19, 2018

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From Fred Stonehouse's "Night Vision" exhibition at the Tory Folliard Gallery

Several new exhibitions open this week, including ones at Tory Folliard Gallery, Gallery 224 and Hawthorn Contemporary.

“Night Vision”
Sept. 14-Oct. 13
Tory Folliard Gallery
233 N. Milwaukee St.

Memories, dreams and anecdotal narratives from everyday life are the ingredients in developing Fred Stonehouse’s witty and surreal paintings. Like moments from a larger epic, his paintings hint at mythic complexity, describing an alternate world of miraculous and even disturbing images that, somehow, seems familiar. An artist reception takes place on Friday, Sept. 21, and an artist talk will be held on Saturday, Oct. 6. For more information, call 414-273-7311 or visit toryfolliard.com.

“The Art of Papercutting”
Sept. 14-Nov. 3
Gallery 224
224 E. Main St., Port Washington

The art of papercutting has its origins in the invention of paper itself in the fourth century CE in China. By the Middle Ages, it was a popular art form among Jewish communities in the Middle East. It later spread into Europe, and, in Central America, it seems to have its own origin story. The ancient techniques of papercutting through scissors and knives are alive and at work today around the world. Co-curated by Jose Chavez and Hal Rammel, this exhibition surveys the work of eight artists in this media from southeastern Wisconsin. For more information, visit gallery224.com.

“Black Eyed Peas and Coal Black Blues”
Sept. 14-Nov. 16
Portrait Society Gallery
207 E. Buffalo St. Suite 526

“Black Eyed Peas and Coal Black Blues: Textiles and Works on Paper by Sharon Kerry-Harlan and Alison Saar,” opens at the Portrait Society Gallery with a 6-8 p.m. reception on Friday, Sept. 14, which is free and open to the public. The exhibit will mark the first time PSG has shown works of Kerry-Harlan, who was born in Miami but currently resides in Wauwatosa. She works in textiles, mixed media and photography and also taught textile courses at UW-Milwaukee. For more information, call 414-870-9930 or visit portraitsocietygallery.com.

“Family Pictures”
Sept. 14-Jan. 20
Milwaukee Art Museum
700 N. Art Museum Drive

“Family Pictures” explores the ways in which African American photographers and artists have portrayed a range of familial relationships—from blood relatives to close-knit neighborhoods to queer communities. Beginning with Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes’ groundbreaking 1955 book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life, this exhibition gathers photographic series, installations and videos by an intergenerational group of artists. Their portraits of family life maneuver between intimate, everyday stories and broader political realities and between the universal human condition and the particular histories of race in the U.S. For more information, call 414-224-3200 or visit mam.org.

“Bodies: A Non-Figurative Exhibition”
Sept. 15-Oct. 14
Var Gallery
643 S. Second St.

For this exhibit, each artist had a simple prompt: to create work that exemplifies what it is like being you, in your own body that is both shaping and being shaped by the world. Naturally, there are countless ways to bring that prompt into the realm of visual art, and the dozen exhibiting artists’ works will be on display at the Var Gallery through Oct. 14. The artists were deliberately chosen by curators Nykoli Koslow and Jerrod Johnson for the ability to express their own identities and to speak for themselves in their own visual language. For more information, visit vargallery.com.

“The Mess You Made”
Sept. 15-Nov. 18
Hawthorn Contemporary
706 S. Fifth St.

“All of the materials I use have a history to them,” says San Diego-based interdisciplinary artist Andrea Chung, who likes to examine the complex intersections between material, process, history and place. “I think we take [things] for granted now, and we don’t really think about how many people’s lives have been affected by the most mundane things like sugar, salt and dyes.” Her works often utilize a single process or material to expose the multifaceted aspects of history, migration and labor to unmask the repercussions of colonization. For more information, call 414-305-2444 or visit hawthorncontemporary.com.