What’s old is new again

This week’s Art Date highlights exhibitions opening and closing with contemporary takes on traditional subjects such as portraits, landscapes, and beer.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22

The work of Maja Ruznic is featured in the new exhibition opening at Portrait Society Gallery.

Or so it would seem: Contingency and the Contemporary Portrait

Portrait Society Gallery

207 E. Buffalo Street, Fifth Floor

Opening reception 6 to 9 p.m.

Exhibition continues through January 11, 2014

Gallery director Debra Brehmer prefaces this exhibition with a famous quote from 19th-century French author Charles Baudelaire’s essay “The Painter of Modern Life”: “By ‘modernity’, I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent…”.

This exhibition includes work by five artists who explore the relevance and resonance of portraiture in the 21st century: Makeal Flammini, Ney Tait Fraser, Maja Ruznic, Andy Lane and Carri Skoczek. Their work delves into representations of the modern face with abandon and expressive daring, manipulating form and color in pursuit of complex psychologies – conventional beauty be damned. Baudelaire wrote of the duality of beauty, of finding the essence of a time, place, and manner while mirroring something unique of a specific day and experience. Though Baudelaire speaks from a time a century and a half earlier, these artists follow his sagacious advice.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23 

The Modern Landscape 

Tory Folliard Gallery

233 N. Milwaukee Street

11-4 p.m.

This is the last day to catch “The Modern Landscape,” an exhibition presenting the work of eight artists working in varied manners through their presentations of physical topography and space. As an interpretation of current styles, it is a sampling that spans exceptionally traditional renderings of the pastoral Midwest, as seen in the bovine compositions of Kathy Hofman, to the candy-colored aerial vistas of Harold Gregor, and the multimedia day-glo of Michael Velliquette’s creations of paper and paint. The natural world is but a starting point for artistic experimentation and poetic license.

Green Gallery closes their current exhibition “Beer” on Sunday.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 

Beer 

Green Gallery

1500 N. Farwell Avenue

Sunday 2-6pm

The current group show at Green Gallery closes this weekend. Simply titled Beer, it is a nod to the connections made over frothy malted beverages. Curated by Drew Heitzler, the exhibition’s motivations are set out as such: “Drinking beer is good but it isn’t business. It may be the exact opposite of business. Beer is conversation. Business is negotiation. Beer is use value. Business is profit margin. Beer is generous. Business is not. There is a lot of talk these days about art business. This is a show about beer.”