by Alan G. Artner
Chicago Tribune
September 2002

Chicago Imagism is alive and well in the work of Gregory Jacobsen at Zg Gallery.

More than 30 years after the cross-breedding of Surrealism and Pop Art produced a regional style that became the dominant one for painting in Chicago, it's back in the paintings and drawings of a 25-year-old.

Given that the young artist is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which once turned out Imagists by the handful, the resurgence should not be suprising. But- wonder of wonders- Jacobsen is said to have had a difficult time there, which once was the case with anyone who wasn't in lockstep with Imagism.

There is some feeling that Imagism is a style of the past and everyone in the city has gotten beyond it. So Jacobsen's work, which draws upon Otto Dix and George Grosz as well as Jim Nutt and Jim Lutes, can be seen by a new generation as something rebellious.

Certainly there is a kind of ferocity to Jacobsen's tableaux of cartoonlike mutants engaged in physical and psychological mayhem. And this strikes a different note from the dandyism and false naivety that marked the first wave of Imagism.

However, at base, the violence and rauchiness of Jacobsen's work is just the old sensibility turned up louder, and it represents an infantile response to the world as a place unremitingly raw and full of confusion.

As Lutes once did, Jacobsen carries this over to a vision of the self, in a portrait that carries a certain amoount of pathos. The artist's performances are said to represent him more fully, suggesting equal parts Petrushka, Punch and Pierrot with gender issues.

According to Jacobsen, the exhibition contains "funny pictures" and some younger viewers were heard laughing and commenting positively on that aspect.

Happy are those with little sense of local art history.

(what an odd review)