Chicago
Artlog's Fall Art Guide: Chicago Edition
09/26
Three young, recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago open their first solo shows this fall: Timothy Bergstrom builds dense topographies in his paintings, Andrew Holmquist hovers between representation and abstraction, and Dan Gunn employs wall-based, free-standing, and hanging constructions. MCA Chicago’s The Language of Less (Then and Now) places five contemporary artists in dialogue with 1960s and ’70s work by Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, and others. For those looking for art in unexpected places, galleries and artists take over unused downtown storefronts for the monthly Chicago Loop Alliance Pop-Up Art Loop on October 6. You can also discover independent art initiatives, spaces, galleries and artist groups at the second installment of the MDW Fair at Geolofts.
Nathan Vernau: Reaching Out and Freaking Out
09/20 |
A-J Aronstein
I met with Nathan Vernau at Small Bar, an apt name for the neighborhood hangout roughly equidistant from our respective apartments on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It was a few days before the opening of his first solo show in the city, and he had just finished the exhibition’s centerpiece. Titled Everything Will Be Okay, it took thirty consecutive nights of focused labor to complete, and was the largest and most complex work he’d ever undertaken.
The Exceptional and the Ordinary
07/15 |
A-J Aronstein
Robert Bills Contemporary’s subterranean location offers much needed relief from humid July afternoons in Chicago. Located ten steps below street level in the city’s West Loop district, the gallery has had a busy spring, winning attention at NEXT 2011 and scoring hometown praise from art critic Lauren Viera at the Tribune. In her review of Exploding Faces [Confining Spaces] – an exhibition of work from Second City-based artists Nathan Vernau, Tiphanie Spencer, and Steven Frost – Viera said that RBC had “redefined” the concept of the group show. Vernau will open the fall season with a solo show in September. But as the gallery looks to build on its recent successes and put a punctuation mark on the summer, it has turned to two native Chicagoans with sharply different perspectives on what constitutes the “ordinary.”
The Original Great American Art Fair
04/29 |
Manish Vora, Morgan...
Paul Morris is a pioneer of the current art fair model, from The Gramercy, an early fair run out of hotel rooms, to New York’s Armory Show. We spoke with Morris about the history of art fairs, opening a fair in L.A., and the future of the business.
