CITY ARTS GALLERY, CHICAGO
Artist Brian Getnick predicts that when New York City’s buildings collapse, and when Los Angeles melts into the sea, Chicago will still be here, like an indestructible cockroach. How fitting, then, to see “The Horror Show”—not a guts and gore show, but an eerie home-alone type of show—in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building; if buildings were people, this one might be Grandpa Munster. Getnick’s sculpture is “The Old Airport,” a model of a decrepit terminal with a portal for the viewer’s eye. Once your head is parked at the gate, your eye hastens through a passageway to settle upon the airport’s ominous interior. There’s several other small-scale works here, too. Curator Dave Tolchinsky paired with Dan Silverstein to create a haunted dollhouse-sized foyer and a pit made of bricks. These become settings for projective fantasies. Brad Todd’s “Halo” is a priest’s portable last-rites kit, a sort of all-purpose in-home toolbox for administering prayers for the dying. There’s something off-putting about these small-scale works, such that when horror is hand-held, it is something that we can control, and that’s perhaps the most frightful aspect of all.
Published in Newcity (January 17, 2008)
