Not Your Grandma's Future Juice Bar

There is a package of three rectangular rooms, which are partners to a main hallway on the first floor of the Chicago Cultural Center. These rooms are known as the Michigan Avenue Galleries. As one passes through the hallway connecting each venue, it is difficult to ignore a sinew-like sculpture if it inches itself into the walkway. I watched a man step into and through a sculpture of a bent wire frame wrapped in acrylic, multi-colored string for safe passage. The man continued towards the center of the room, toward a flat-screen television monitor resting on a converted walker with attached wheels. I had come to visit an exhibition, titled Not Your Grandma’s Future Juice Bar (September 14, 2013 - January 5, 2013) to experience and observe the art of Mike Andrews. Little did I know that this smaller room of literally quiet art objects would leave me itchy, uncomfortable, nostalgic, and perplexed.

Not Your Grandma's Future Juice Bar at The Chicago Cultural Center

The exhibition consists of an installation based gathering of three dimensional fiber-based art, a central grayscale animation (the aforementioned walker is utilized as the pedestal). Andrews is known for an aesthetic that could be likened to a “controlled mess”-- though at first appearing bright, dismantled, and even thrifted, there is a calculated, formal flow. From a 2012 interview from Make-space.net (http://make-space.net/2012/02/22/other-investigations-mike-andrews), Andrews describes his interest in his working materials-- “I like acrylic yarn because it is like really clean paint. I am also attracted to the limited and generic palette. With oil paint or pixels you can mix any color you want but with acrylic yarn there s only a certain range of color that the manufacturers produce. It is an interesting problem to figure out how to mix color physically and optically with a finite set of options.” Andrews received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and is known for his color-laden tapestry weavings and inventive sculptural fiber art. The Michigan Avenue Galleries iteration of his work holds a subtle yet notable departure point as 3 of the inhabited gallery walls have a vinyl cut-out that at first glance may look like a QR code. Each wall in the space possesses the same shape in small, medium, and large and at different view points (against the ground, at eye level, above). It is not a QR code, but a collection of repeated middle gray circular patterns consolidated into a shape that might recall the human body or a piling of chicken eggs. Accompanying the wall pieces are a series of sculptures occupying the gallery floor and (just as the gallery visitor had stepped through before,) the sculptures are objects that interject themselves into a viewer’s physical space. The sensations produced are secure and intuitive, yet I could not help but try to shake a sensation likened to an itch.

Mike Andrews 

On the south wall of the gallery is a leaning sculpture that constitutes a wrapped interior frame. The exterior is of a braided cream-tan acrylic yarn. The size is about my own (a 65” tall, 120 lb woman). The inside contents are unknown but are unknown but are of a substantial material to hold the sculpture steady. The size of the hooped opening beckons the viewer’s participation, as the opening mimics the shape of the aforementioned vinyl wall pattern. Throughout the space are paths of circular pads which are zipper lined at the edges. These pillows are flattened to the width of almost 2 inches. They are much akin to the placement pieces of a party “Cake Walk” game-- colorful, circular, human-sized, and could be described as diner-stool pads made of glittered colored vinyl. The circular pads are incorporated in clusters along the north and south walls of the gallery and are reminiscent of a childhood “circle time” ritual. A viewer might immediately have the inclination to sit or step on these pads, but as an art object, one might hesitate before doing so with the presence of gallery personnel. Almost splitting the two clusters (and thus the room) in half is the cord that powers the pulsating animation. It faces north, but the cord protrudes south and then east, to a plug in the wall, a few feet of brick and scaffolding separates it from Michigan Avenue. The 6 - 7 feet of electrical cord is wrapped with a long braid of neon pink acrylic yarn. This accoutrement is as a cue toward the connection between the walker-pedestal and digital animation piece to the other works in the room. The pink cord and walker sculpture is a materialized bridge to the animation it supports that closely relates the surrounding bulbous yarn-framed sculptures and the vinyl multi-colored pads towards the center of the room. It is a static yet fluctuating art exhibition. Here is when the large, predominantly black (acrylic) yarn tapestry makes itself truly known. Although upon entering the room, the 8 x 8 foot tapestry vibrates with a woven abstracted image. It is expressive in acrylic-yarn color, with a palette that is both electric and soft. If one looks long enough, there can be a sense of loss and an ungrounded search for answers in this artwork. The work suggests storytelling tapestries within the context of a room holding related abstract sculpture. With these spatial additions, the seemingly two-dimensional picture tapestry stretches a representational line that becomes much more difficult to cross with viewer engagement.  

The work of Mike Andrews has neighbors such as the collaborative duo, Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, also known as “Luftwerk” (pronounced ‘looft-wurk’) whose follow-up to their 2012 Millenium Park specific ‘Luminous Field’ installation, contributes to the Chicago Cultural Center’s autumnal art festivities just upstairs. Stefan Sagmeister’s The Happy Show is an art 2013 celebration with its achievements toward design as art and sheer pleasure. That is literally above this fibrous playground as well. Although the exhibitions are in the larger galleries, it seems that Andrews’ advantage is that his art work negotiates limited space in a way large projections and complex design-suspensions cannot. Not Your Grandma’s Future Juice Bar is a small exhibition with a large amount of work-- work that is complex, humble, agitating, and fun.