Parties, hopping

Thursday 10
6–7pm Start your lost weekend with a sex doll at “RE:figure” (Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, 5–8pm). We can’t look away from “To Have, To Hold and To Violate,” Amber Hawk Swanson’s infamous photographs of her RealDoll doppelgänger disrupting weddings and tailgating parties. Swanson’s project is one of several exploring figuration in the age of Mad Men avatars.

Friday 11
5pm If you like your feminism unambiguous, honor the fight for health-care justice at “Every Body!: Visual Resistance in Feminist Health Movements, 1969–2009” (I Space, 5–7pm). We’d love to see U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk flee in terror from rabble-rousers such as the Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective.
5:45pm In the same River North building, find “Liu Bolin: Hiding in the City”—if you can (Schneider Gallery, 5–7:30pm). The Chinese artist paints his own body to blend into urban graffiti and earthquake rubble, becoming an unsettling, almost invisible presence in his photographic self-portraits.
6:10pm Make sure you’re sober before strolling down Superior Street to “Jae Ko: Rolling” (Andrew Bae Gallery, 5–8pm). Otherwise, you might start groping Ko’s sensuous abstract sculptures. The Korean-born artist creates these swirling forms by soaking rolls of adding-machine paper in calligraphy ink.
6:35pm Cab it to the West Loop.
6:45pm Crowd-surf over the hipsters swarming “Melanie Schiff: The Mirror” (Kavi Gupta Gallery, 5–8pm). Schiff moved to Los Angeles last year, but Chicago still loves its hometown girl, whose work has appeared in several Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) exhibitions and the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
7:05pm Follow the trail of PBR to “Robyn O’Neil: On sinking” (Tony Wight Gallery, 5–8pm). In May, O’Neil won the $50,000 Hunting Art Prize for one of her signature richly detailed apocalyptic drawings. Depending on how tipsy you are, discuss how Henry Darger influences her work or gaze in awe upon her large-scale graphite works while saying, “Dude.”
7:35pm Celebrate a gallery reopening at “Thomas Schmidt: Skin” (Dubhe Carreño Gallery, 5–8pm). We’re thrilled to see Dubhe Carreño in the West Loop more than a year after she left the Chicago Arts District. The new space’s inaugural show highlights Schmidt’s smart porcelain sculptures and printed acetate pieces.
8pm Dip into your dinner budget for a cab to Wicker Park. You’re full of cheese and crackers, anyway.
8:15pm Find out what Joseph Cornell’s vitrines would have looked like if he had been a Chicago Imagist at “Ed Flood: Constructions” (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 5–9pm). Nab the 148-page exhibition catalog, which includes an essay by mega-curator Robert Storr.

Saturday 12
5:30pm You’ve recovered enough to remember that Monique Meloche moved her eight-year-old gallery from the West Loop to Wicker Park over the summer. Ogle the amazing graphite drawings in “Robert Davis and Michael Langlois: In Our Likeness—Portraits of Illumination” (moniquemeloche, 4–7pm), which coincides with the duo’s UBS 12 x 12 show at the MCA.
7pm Be the first to check out Logan Square’s newest apartment gallery. Directors Corinna Kirsch and Katherine Pill’s first show, “No More Worlds” (Concertina Gallery, 7–10pm), brings together up-and-coming American and Canadian artists such as Alex McLeod, whose digital environments (pictured) earned a shout-out on Kanye West’s blog.

Tuesday 15
Start revisiting these galleries so you can actually look at the art.

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