O-1 Visas
A dandelion can be a conceptual event, a picturesque view, a healthy snack, an annoying weed. Perspective matters very much, as it does for the artworks in instructions on how to spread dandelions, a group show recently on view at Compound Yellow in Oak Park. Pegah Bahador displays the beautiful “Map of Water,” which is literally what it says it is, having been generated by screenshotting an oceanic Google Earth view and printing it out on thin sheets of paper that float and wave across the gallery floor. But water moves continuously, so what can it ever mean to map it? Hyeseul Song’s “Burn,” a photograph of an arm whose bicep has been badly seared, engenders not sorrow or queasiness but curiosity and interest, for its unknown history and strange allure. Yue Xu situates “Ventilation Study No. 5” high up on a wall, her brashly colored sculpture far more appealing—and much less effective, temperature-wise—than the very boring but very real ventilation duct it hangs across from. Xu has a thing for HVAC systems, which also feature in her floor sculpture “A Pig, a Snake, and Pigeons,” where metal ductwork frames a small watercolor of a serpent with a woman’s head who stares enigmatically at the raised tip of her tail. If she bites, she will create an endless circuit like the ductwork that encases her, and like the Buddhist concept of the “Three Poisons”: pig bites snake, snake bites pigeon, pigeon bites pig, ad infinitum. A playful viewer might wish to pick up some of the little gray balls, painted with red Chinese characters, that Xu has scattered around the gallery, and toss them into the middle of the duct hole, inventing a game to introduce a new perspective and break the cycle—but also probably the balls, made of stone clay.
—Lori Waxman 2025-07-07 6:24 PM