CHICAGO — Edra Soto’s sculptures are beautiful places indoors: dappled light shines through walls made of ornate blocks or windows covered with decorative screens, casting shapely shadows that mingle with the flowing breeze. There could be a bench to sit on, a table to play dominoes on, or an architectural essay to read. If you’re really lucky, you’ll be offered a slice of pineapple upside-down cake or spam-velveeta-pimiento sandwiches.
The mid-century Puerto Rican vibe of all this food and space is no accident. Soto, who has lived in Chicago since the late 90s, was born in 1971 in San Juan and has been creating installations and events for two decades that draw on the culture of where she grew up and where her family lives. always. . She’s done it in increasingly sleek and streamlined style, whether it’s Iris Chacon, a legendary flamboyant ’80s TV variety host who inspired Soto’s 2009 set of minimalist benches shaped like tropical fruits; the American flag, which she remade into “Tropicalamerican” as a green and black amalgamation of tropical foliage and quilted patterns; or the domestic architecture of Puerto Rico, including rest (decorative wrought iron gates) and quiebrasoles (decorative concrete block fences) Grafta series of free-standing reliefs, sculptures and structures, ongoing since 2013.
Destination/El Destino: a decade of transplant, currently on view at the Hyde Park Art Center, offers a glimpse of the seemingly limitless iterations the project has taken since its inception. These include the rust-colored twin-wall wrap that opened the Whitney Museum no exists a mundo poshuracan; kaleidoscopic wooden screens for a porch at Project Row Houses; pink, mint and white freestanding dividers with shelves, used to display liquor bottles salvaged from Albright-Knox Northland; and graphic window and door grilles for a dozen art venues across the country, including El Museo del Barrio and Rice University’s School of Architecture. “Casa-Isla”, a house-shaped pavilion in shades of blue, floated like a mirage in the lagoon of the Chicago Botanic Gardens last summer. “Screenhouse,” a surprisingly airy gazebo of black concrete blocks, currently provides much-needed shade and privacy in tourist-heavy Millennium Park.
At HPAC, the latest version of Graft takes the form of a sprawling ranch-style house, with a metal tube frame from which hangs a shimmering facade of more than 500 hand-machined aluminum stars in bronze, silver and gold. In one of the most ingenious solutions to the problem of exhibiting site-specific ephemera that I have ever come across, fragments of 15 Graft sculptures stand inside this newer one, each embedded with a peephole whose viewfinder shows an image of the original installation. A wall of blueprints fills in much of the rest.
Mini picture viewers are a device Soto has been using since 2018. Typically, they show images of his family and homeland, small glimpses of people and places that are hard to remember when living far away, especially when these people become ill or the place is affected by an environmental disaster. It’s a mess mostly kept at bay by Graftwhose clean lines adhere with startling sharpness to whatever surface or space they migrate, bringing with them the fabulous look and feel of tropical architectural solutions, but not always the pain and difficulty of diasporic living.
Another panacea is to build a new community where you live. To do this, Soto and his partner, Dan Sullivan, founder of his longtime manufacturer Navillus Woodworks, built a wooden gazebo in their backyard in 2012, complete with diagonal slatted walls and a sturdy display schedule. The Franklin, named after the boulevard on which their modest home in the Garfield Park neighborhood sits, has featured hundreds of artists over the years. A sampling of choices is on view in Amulet, a group show co-curated with Mayfield, a new gallery run by father-daughter duo Alberto and Madeleine Aguilar from their family home and garage in Forest Park. Performing simultaneously at HPAC, The Franklin and Mayfield, it features talismanic objects contributed by 50 local artists. The convenience of consolidating programs from two outlying spaces with very limited hours into an accessible institution open seven days a week cannot be overstated.
Weird and magical art in manageable sizes abounds in Amulet. There are those who harness raw power: Dianna Frid’s yellow rain hood, lined with silver foil, promises cosmically enhanced sentience; Whitney Bradshaw’s photograph of herself as Sheela-na-Gig, her crotch a blinding flash of light, guards against patriarchal control of women’s bodies; Jonas Mikosch Mueller-Ahlheim’s block sculpture plugs directly into an electrical outlet. Others manipulate charged materials to beneficial ends: John Preus sprays moss together a funky arrangement of mirror, rope and a zebra skin shot by his father, there are all sorts of heirlooms; kg’s tiny red and white weave incorporates gold charms and remnants, presumably for good luck; Cydney Lewis fashions a high headrest from hair curlers and faux dreads for better dreams (and hair). Some results are inscrutable but magnetizing, like Juan Chavez’ giant handmade orange paper pendant in a shape that seems vaguely Mesoamerican, Jim Duignan’s five cast bronze whistles and Maria Burundarena’s illuminated emergency wall blanket disco lights. Many encourage meditation: Michelle Chun’s beaded necklaces, drawn in colorful pastels, endlessly curl and tangle, while the vertical arrangement of stones, feathers, miniature enamel eyes, tree bark fruits and dead leaves of Kushala Vora offers a narrative, spiritual and aesthetic abundance far beyond its means. .
Edra Soto: Destination/El Destino: A Decade of GRAFT continues at the Hyde Park Art Center (5020 South Cornell Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) through August 6; the exhibition was curated by Allison Peters Quinn. Amulet continues until August 13 at the HPAC, The Franklin (3522 West Franklin Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois) and Mayfield (505 Marengo Avenue, Forest Park, Illinois); the exhibition was curated by Alberto Aguilar, Madeleine Aguilar, Allison Peters Quinn and Edra Soto.
