A busy summer weekend

This is a big weekend for major exhibitions, with openings at the Haggerty, works by contemporary artist Martha Wilson on view in two locations, plus the last chance to see some great gallery shows at Latino Arts, Dean Jensen Gallery, and Walker’s Point Center for the Arts.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 

Martel Schwichtenberg, Seated Woman with Flowers, ca. 1920-1921, is one of the highlights of the Fishman Collection. Image courtesy Haggerty Museum of Art.

New Objectivity in German Art: Highlights from the Marvin and Janet Fishman Collection
Aberrance and Artifice: The Norton Collection 
Jim Dow: American Studies
Haggerty Museum of Art
Marquette University
13th and Clybourn Streets
Exhibitions open June 5 through July 28.
Lecture by artist Tom Knechtel at 6 p.m., followed by a reception.

The Haggerty opens three new exhibitions on Wednesday featuring many works accumulated by important collectors, plus images amassed over twenty years by a photographer.

“New Objectivity,” or Neue Sachlichkeit, was a prominent movement during the 1920s in Germany. It is characterized by the blunt, direct way in which people and things were captured in their unattractive realities. The Fishmans were renowned collectors of German art, and the works in this exhibition are drawn from their gift of numerous works in 2000.

The Norton Collection, as an entity, focused on contemporary art, but groups from the larger collection have been given to various museums. The Haggerty is one recipient, and the twenty-eight pieces in this exhibition highlight works from the 1980s and 1990s with an emphasis on strange and unusual figurations. Some are peculiar in their beauty, others overtly grotesque, and many represent a combination of these qualities.

The photographs of Jim Dow in American Studies offer their own sense of peculiarity in the subtle consumptions of drive-ins, motels, roadhouses and attractions of Americana. There is a freshness in the light, bright, neon signs, but a heavy patina of time hangs in the air.

Raoul Deal: Ni De Aquí Ni De Allá [From Neither Here Nor There]
Latino Arts Gallery
1028 S. 9th St.
Exhibition closes today

Monumental woodcut prints by Raoul Deal represent the experiences of people who have immigrated to Milwaukee from Mexico. His portraits are stark yet supple in their detail, while proud and profound in the stories they tell of forging a new life. A mixed media installation accompanies the large-scale prints, offering audible voices which recount stories of families and their history of movement from place to place.

An major traveling retrospective of work by Martha Wilson opens on Friday. Image courtesy Inova.

Martha Wilson
Inova
2155 N. Prospect Ave.
Opening reception, 5-8 p.m.; Artist Talk at 7 p.m.
Exhibition continues through August 11

Martha Wilson is a contemporary artist, a gallery director, and in a more historical perspective, a pioneering figure in the New York art scene in the 1970s. The mercurial constructions of identity have been a touchstone throughout Wilson’s career, as twisting representations of gender, appearance, and challenging notions of beauty draw attention to the myriad ways we perceive and are perceived by others. This exhibition, a traveling retrospective covering forty years of Wilson’s work, is curated by Peter Dykhuis of Independent Curators International (ICI).

rEvolution: Molly Roberts
Greymatter Gallery
207 E. Buffalo Street, Suite 222
Artist reception 5-9 p.m.
Exhibition continues through July 13

Roberts presents works suggesting heroes and anti-heroes. The tumultuous influences of current issues mix with questions of gender politics and personal identity, explored through vibrant compositions with exuberant color with a serious nature.

SATURDAY JUNE 8 

Martha Wilson, Mona/Martha/Marge. 2012. Courtesy Portrait Society Gallery.

The Personal is Political : Martha Wilson and MKE
Portrait Society Gallery
207 E. Buffalo Street, 5th Floor
Opening reception 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition continues through July 14

As Inova shows a touring retrospective of Martha Wilson’s work, Portrait Society Gallery will host some of the artist’s more recent pieces, created since 2009. A variety of locally-based artists, including Laci Coppins, Paul Druecke, Skully Gustafson, Ashley Janke, Niki Johnson, Erik Moore, Joseph Mougel, Amy O’Neill, and Rafael Salas will show work influenced by Martha Wilson Sourcebook, a compilation of influential texts and resources that helped shape Wilson’s art practice, and in turn are shaping a new generation.

Carol Rowan: Retrospective 
Elaine Erickson Gallery
207 E. Buffalo Street, 1st floor
Opening and reception, 12 p.m.-3 p.m.
Exhibition continues through July 17

Carol Rowan is particularly recognized for her floral works, often executed in softly saturated pastels. This exhibition includes an array of drawings, including pastel and charcoal still lifes and figurative pieces.

Here and Now: New Work by David Schaefer 
Ceramics by Michael Ware 
Katie Gingrass Gallery
207 E. Buffalo Street, 1st floor
Opening reception 12 p.m.-3 p.m.
Exhibition continues through July 31

David Schaefer has been exhibiting with Katie Gingrass Gallery for about two decades and in their new location is showing works of a fairly recent vintage. He is well-represented by paintings in his signature style, which combine ultra-rich impasto layered on canvases like relief sculptures. The nuanced colors suggest the flickering images of impressionism while the fugitive contours range from expressionistic representations of landscapes to purely abstract forms derived from nature. Along with Schaefer’s paintings, multi-hued and gleaming ceramics by Michael Ware will be on view, twisting and turning in a variety of unexpected shapes.

Jon Schueler: Paintings from the Seventies
Dean Jensen Gallery
759 N. Water St.
Exhibition closes today

Saturday is the last day to see this exhibition of Jon Schueler’s ethereal seascapes and cloud compositions. A Milwaukee native, Schueler made a name in the art world through his association with the Abstract Expressionist painters in 1950s and ’60s New York, but his inclinations for nature and rugged vastness led him away from the canyons of city skyscrapers for the mysteries of the west coast of the Scottish Highlands.

SUNDAY JUNE 9 

Eternal Flesh 
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts
839 S. 5th Street
Exhibition closes today

This exhibition of work by four sculptors takes the humor, mystery, and pathos of the human body as a starting point. These artists then translate and recreate it in some surprising ways. There are plenty of mechanomorphic figures, particularly the welded and wildly gesticulating figures by Kendall Polster and the Dadaist-influences of John Balsey. Dan McGuire’s sculptures are like a steampunk’s delight, rife with broken metal objects from yesteryear, such as dusty, cobweb decorated knobs and cracked meters. Demitra Copoulos shows gripping portraits of stunning veracity. Hers are some of the most overtly naturalistic in the exhibition, but wonderfully artificial as the convincing figures are composed of digital prints layered and collaged over their supporting surface.