Doug Ischar

Doug (Douglas) Ischar (born 1948, Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American artist known for his work in documentary photography, installation art, sound art and video art. Trained as a classical cellist, Ischar began studying art in his thirties, eventually earning a MFA degree from CalArts in 1987. He currently lives and works in Chicago, where he teaches art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ischar also serves on the curatorial board of Chicago's Iceberg Projects, a not-for-profit experimental exhibition space.

Works

Ischar's early work (the documentary photographs collected in the series Marginal Waters and Honor Among) participated in then-contemporary debates around gender and representation, with a particular emphasis on problems of masculinity in American gay male culture. The artist's single-channel video works of the past ten years are more allusive and poetic, addressing political and theoretical concerns obliquely via densely constructed image-sound montages whose explicit subjects range from the relationship between Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini (Come Lontano, 2010) to the life of Charlotte Brontë (CB, 2011). Many of Ischar's recent videos draw heavily on his early training in, and love of, classical music.

Exhibition History

Ischar is currently represented by Golden Gallery (Chicago / New York). His video works are distributed by Chicago's Video Data Bank. The artist has been exhibited at, among other locations: the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Museo de Arte Moderna (São Paulo, Brazil), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Göteborgs Konstmuseum (Gothenburg, Sweden), the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York) and the Institute of the Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee).

External References

Exhibition Catalogues:

2009 Marginal Waters, Golden Gallery, Chicago (solo)
2002 Out of Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
2001 Doug Ischar: User, Institute for the Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (solo)
1998 InSite '97 Public Art Work by Artists of the Americas
1996 Conceal/Reveal, Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
1995 Pervert, University of California at Irvine
1994 Dark O’Clock, Plug In Editions, Winnipeg and Museo de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo
1993 Orderly List Visual Arts Center, MIT, and Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago
1991 Reframing the Family, Artists Space, New York
1990 How Can They Be So Sure, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

Scholarly Books:

The Logic of the Lure, John Paul Ricco, University of Chicago Press, 2003
Disrupted Borders (12-artist anthology with essay by Sunil Gupta), Rivers Oram Press, London, UK, 1993

Articles and Reviews:

2009
Grabner, Michelle. “Doug Ischar at Golden,” Art Forum.
Elms, Anthony. “Doug Ischar: Marginal Waters,” Art Papers.
2002
Estep, Jan. “Doug Ischar at the Hyde Park Art Center,” New Art Examiner.
1999
Daniel, Jeff. “Without a Heavy Hand,” St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Grahn-Hinnfors, Gunilla. “Doug Ischar på Göteborgs Konstmuseum,” Paletten.
1998
Tuer, Dot. “Transnational Terrains,” Canadian Art.
1997
Martin, Victoria. “InSite in San Diego and Tijuana,” Artweek.
Knight, Christopher. “InSite, Outta Sight,” Los Angeles Times.
Lord, Catherine. “Smoking Guns,” Art & Text.
1996
Campeau, Sylvain. “Doug Ischar, Oboro,” Parachute.
1995
Porges, Tim. “Doug Ischar at TBA,” New Art Examiner.
Connor, Thomas. “Doug Ischar at TBA Exhibitions,” C.
1995
Kandel, Susan. “Cool Ambiguity,’ Doug Ischar at Jan Kesner Gallery,” Los Angeles Times.
Curtis, Cathy. “Exposing Pervert,” Los Angeles Times.
Taylor, Kate. “A Telling Critique of Mass Media,” Toronto Globe and Mail.
1994
Bonetti, David. “Three Installations Put a Face on Cultural Identity,” San Francisco Examiner.
Wilson Loyd, Ann. “Doug Ischar,” Art in America.
Gillmor, Alison. “Artist Takes a Dark, Edgy Look at Gays,” Winnipeg Free Press.
1993
Meyer, Richard. “Doug Ischar,” Art and Text.
Freeland, Cynthia. “Public Privates,” Afterimage.
Troy, Maria. “Doug Ischar,” P-Form.
Taylor, Robert. “Balka, Ischar and Goldsmith at MIT,” Boston Globe.
Otto, Susan. “Doug Ischar,” New Art Examiner.
1992
Bright, Deborah. “Family Practices,” Views.
1991
Bonetti, David. “No More Heros,” San Francisco Examiner.
1990
Gipe, Lawrence. “The Photograph as Verisimilitude: Millie Wilson and Doug Ischar,” Visions.
Yingling, Thomas. “How the Eye is Caste: Robert Mapplethorpe and the Limits of Controversy,” Discourse.
Kotz, Liz. “Guilty Objects, Unattainable Desires,” Afterimage.

External links

• http://goldengallery.co/doug-ischar/
• http://goldengallery.co/doug-ischar-honor-among/
• http://www.vdb.org/artists/doug-ischar
• http://icebergchicago.com/home.html