Expo Chicago 2012 Vernissage. (Image courtesy of Carol Fox and Associates Public Relations.) Art lovers, clear your schedules. This week, Expo Chicago, the International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art, is back for its second year. Art from 125 premier galleries will grace Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, transformed once again by Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects into an engaging interior... 

Vernissage. Expo Chicago 2012. (Image courtesy of Carol Fox and Associates Public Relations.) Last month, about a week before Expo Chicago: The International Exposition of Modern/Contemporary Art & Design opened, I sat down with Tony Karman, Expo’s President and Director, for a preview of the inaugural fair. It might have been easy for some to dismiss those early superlatives as simply hype,... 

Western Exhibitions opened two corresponding exhibits this month– Looker, a collection of Geoffrey Todd Smith’s intricate geometric paintings, and Fashion, a hypnotic video installation by Josh Mannis. Smith painstakingly works acrylic, gouache, and ink into colorful optical candy reminiscent of spirograph drawings and beadwork. Whimsical titles like Indecent Docent and The Flirtation Station... 

Studio Gang’s design for Expo Chicago, 2012. (Image courtesy of Studio Gang.) This week, the art world’s glitterati will descend upon Chicago for a new contemporary art fair: Expo Chicago, The International Exposition of Contemporary/Modern Art & Design. Occupying Navy Pier’s colossal Festival Hall, the fair showcases a selection of top tier galleries—capped at 100—from around the... 

Optical illusions and multisensory triggers mark the appeal of Anne Lindberg’s Sustaining Pedal show at Carrie Secrist Gallery. Lindberg aims to “create passages of tone, density, speed, path and frequency,” according to her artist statement, and the pieces do demonstrate a synesthesia of sorts. Her large 2D works from a distance resemble watercolor washes, but upon further inspection prove to... 

Grotesque animals, violent battles, and neon colors–these are the things that nightmares are made of in Caleb Weintraub’s exhibit at the Peter Miller Gallery. Weintraub’s saturated oil paintings wander through mysterious storybook dystopias with motifs that walk the line between Disney and The Lord of the Flies. “To The Death” follows two tribal-clad, ostrich-riding children at war in... 

Ride your bike down Hubbard Street in West Town and once you pass Milwaukee your peripheral vision fills with a riot of colorful images: A luchador, a howling wolf, African masks, Moammar Gadaffi, squids, butterflies, the Chicago Water Tower. Like most people, I usually zip on through, glancing briefly at the near mile of images along the railroad embankment while on my way home. Hubbard street, however,... 

Laura Mackin, Driving (Dean, 1946-2006), 2011 Digital video, 2 minutes On January 13th, Laura Mackin introduced a new exhibition entitled 120 Years at threewalls, the latest installment in the threewallsSOLO program. Upon arrival, those who traveled to the exhibition found themselves confronted with more terrain to navigate. A composite collection of disparate postcards organized according to their... 

FRIDAY || SEPTEMBER 16th, 2011 UPLIFT Believe Inn is happy to present a showing of art by artists who love to make art. Art & artists will be in attendance. Friends, associates & companions of artists will also be present, and some artist’s friends, associates & companions may also be artists. Those who are not artists will quite likely be artists too. Everyone will smile, be friendly... 

Honestly, people don’t like to read in general. Art, specifically? From Jenny Holzer’s aphorisms projected throughout New York City to Kay Rosen’s recent Go Do Good installations in Chicago’s Loop, text-based art tends to grab viewers’ attention due to its relatively brazen nature. Contemporary art that is purely image-based is often met with objections of “I don’t get it,” or “Well,...