Review

A review of Artropolis: Chicago's Celebration of Art, Antiques, and Culture

A view of Chicago River and outdoor sculptures on the south side of the Merchandise Mart, where "Artropolis: Chicago's Celebration of Art, Antiques, and Culture" was hosted April 30 through May 3, 2010. Inside, three major fairs, including "NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art," drew about 50,000 visitors. All photos: Jeremy Mikolajczak

Merchandise Mart
Chicago, Illinois
April 30 — May 3, 2010

For four spring days, gallerists, artists, collectors, curators, and the curious public from around the globe converged on the Midwest metropolis of Chicago for Artropolis: Chicago’s Celebration of Art, Antiques, and Culture. An international art fair featuring antiques, modern, contemporary, and emerging art, Artropolis is an exhibition booth-style art fair. In addition to lectures and private collection tours, a bevy of special exhibitions were held around town. Housed in the massive Merchandise Mart sitting on the Chicago River, Artopolis is best known for its three main art fairs: Merchandise Mart International Antiques Fair, Art Chicago, and Next: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art. Chicago, primarily known for its cutthroat advertising world (AMC’s Mad Men is partially based on creative head Draper Daniels of the Leo Burnett advertising agency), contemporary industrial design (think furniture and lighting), and architecture (where would the modern city be without Mies Van Der Rohe?), is the setting for Artropolis’s platform to present art collecting and discourse.

Next: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art

Robert Davis and Michael Langlois, installation view of "wish you were here," including wall treatment, dimensions variable; moon painting (not yet titled), oil on canvas, 60" x 60", and text in cast concrete, 14" x 48", 2010, courtesy of Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami.

Exiting the central elevators on the seventh floor of Merchandise Mart and entering the 2010 NEXT fair, viewers are immediately engaged by the sight of a photorealistic painting of the moon in space, a centrally hung, bright blue watery painted wall, and a black tombstone-like marker sitting on the floor with the words “wish you were here” inscribed into it. A new piece by the Chicago-based artist duo of Robert Davis and Michael Langlois, represented by Miami’s Charest-Weinberg Gallery, wish you were here provided not only a striking visual example of work by the emerging collaborative duo, but of the overarching sentiment of the fair: Where were you?

Short on international gallery presence, the Next fair provided insight into emerging artists, galleries, and collectives residing stateside. Heavy on booths from greater Chicago and New York, this year’s fair included many non-profit, local, student-run, and grassroots organizations. It also introduced new galleries that shape the discourse of contemporary art and artists. Included in that group was Kansas City-based gallery Cara and Cabezas Contemporary. Curator Cara Megan Lewis — exhibiting the work of Kansas City artists Anne Austin Pearce, Barry Anderson, and Lori Bury — curated a booth that exhibited the excitement and energy of up-and-coming emerging local talent. The arrangement of work presented the visceral and ephemeral concept behind each artist’s work while emphasizing the power of craft, mark making, spacial relationships, and the artist process. In addition to Cara and Cabezas Contemporary, Andrzej Zielinski represented Kansas City with an exquisite group of paintings and drawings shown by DCKT Contemporary, a gallery from New York City.

Installation view of Andrzej Zielinski's work, as represented by DCKT Contemporary, of New York City.

Visitors in the Cara and Cabezas Contemporary booth at "2010 NEXT" fair, which featured work by Kansas City artists Anne Austin Pearce (work pictured), Barry Anderson, and Lori Bury.

Michelle Blade, various works, acrylic on DuraLar paper, 2009-2010. Blade is based in Oakland, Californina, and represented here by Base Gallery of San Francisco.

Even though 2010 recorded moderate attendance and sales numbers, dealers felt the experience and exposure at the Next fair was well worth the effort and expense. Director of San Francisco-based gallery Triple Base, Dina Pugh reported excellent attention and sales of their featured artist, Michelle Blade. Blade, an Oakland, California-based artist, is a painter interested in exploring history, philosophy, spirituality, nature, anthropology, and common culture as inspiration. Working primarily with acrylic on paper or Dura-Lar, Blade’s work pushed the common convention wall paintings and included a floor piece she refers to as “magic carpets.” Interested in the marks people would make by stepping onto one, Blade sees the wearing down as a progression in “making a new work” — art constantly in flux.

Installation view of What It Is of Oak Park, Illinois, featuring work by Sabina Ott, Troy Hagenbart, Mike Lash, Holly Holmes, Andrew Rigsby, Tom Burtonwood, and Jacob C. Hammes

Though sales were not as strong as in years past, exposure seemed to be the beneficial response from a majority of dealers, including Cara Megan Lewis and Holly Holmes, co-founder of What It Is. With its inaugural exhibition in July 2009, What It Is presents a space for viewing and considering art in a temporary domestic setting. Located in the actual living space of founders Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes in Oak Park, Illinois, What It Is proves that artists can move beyond the general “wall” and art can be largely intertwined with our daily lives.

Art Chicago

Occupying the entire 12th floor of Merchandise Mart, Art Chicago is the premier venue to preview, deal, and inevitably purchase some of the best art on the market. A platform to exhibit and showcase “blue chip” art and artists, Art Chicago presents the top tier of the art market. For the 2010 fair, there was one overarching issue: Where were the “blue chip” galleries and market-standard works by artists such as Warhol, Picasso, and Rauschenburg? As with all financial markets, it’s easy to blame the current buying climate for the absence of Gagosian, Boone, Peter Miller, and Andrea Rosen — not to mention, it is notoriously known that collecting Chicagoans favor buying in New York over their hometown galleries. London-based galleries Haunch of Venison and White Cube, along with hometown institution Rhona Hoffman Gallery, occupied the largest booths in the fair in the central isle, providing glimpses into a past Art Chicago or fairs such as the Armory Show in New York or Art Basel Miami Beach. (Read Jeremy Mikolajczak's review of Art Basel Miami Beach 2009 here.)

Installation view of Chicago gallery Rhona Hoffman's booth at Art Chicago.

Installation view of London gallery Haunch of Venison's space at Art Chicago.

Florian Graf, installation view of "Lost Waltzing Walls," a new work made possible by the Swiss Consulate.

Though absent of the “power few,” Art Chicago did provide larger spaces for smaller known, but equally respected, galleries. It also provided space for interesting projects such as artist Florian Graf’s Lost Waltzing Walls. Consisting of three free-standing walls on wheels, the structures moved throughout the 12th floor, disrupting exhibits and the overall curation of the fair. Notes from a desperate dealer announcing his plea to reclaim his nomadic property scattered throughout the fair. A welcomed intervention to the usually “high brow” marketplace, Lost Waltzing Walls invoked play and fear as the walls followed fair patrons, cornered a few, and provided a much-needed laugh in a rather business-like environment.

Some ceramic "ghosts" by Jesse Small, represented by Nancy Hoffman Gallery of New York City. Small's work is currently on display in one of two solo exhibitions at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, through late June.

Converge & New Insight

While Artropolis is primarily an art market event, it would not be very “Chicago” if it did not include lectures and panel discussions questioning the conceptual basis of art, the market, and the institution. Converge: Chicago Contemporary Curators Forum and Next Talk Shop are two platforms that engage dialogue around current market topics and curatorial practices. Participants included artists, curators, writers, directors, and collectors from around the globe, including local curators Stacy Switzer of Grand Arts and Jan Schall of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. One notable presentation, Converge Curators Forum Student Program, featured a panel discussion on student-run art spaces in Chicago. Moderated by Allison Peters Quinn from the Hyde Park Art Center, the panel included Iain Muirhead of NFA space, Katherine Pill of the SAIC’s Student Union Galleries and co-founder of Concertina Gallery, and a few participating students. Stemming from Peters Quinn exhibition Artists Run Chicago at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2009, the conversation allowed each member to explain the curatorial and management process of each satellite space and the do-it-yourself gallery spirit. Each presenter emphasized the important role the upstart gallery plays in local art discourse and how it relies on a supportive collaborative environment, similar to how local artist-run industrial spaces of the West Bottoms in Kansas City have contributed here.

Rachel Foster, "Beethoven Love Letter July 6, 1806," screenprint with ink on paper.

In keeping with the idea of emerging artists — and in this case, students — the NEXT fair featured a special exhibition titled New Insight. Curated by Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, New Insight featured work from the top MFA programs in the country. Though the list of “top” or “influential” programs is questionable, the exhibition did present some interesting ideas and work from students ready to join the big, bad, post-grad-school art world. Some work of notable recognition includes California College of the Arts student Rachel Foster’s screenprint and ink on paper titled Beethoven Love Letter July 6 1806 (2009). Exemplifying a contemporary use of archaic forms of language (such as the keyboard) the work visually executes how trace can be both image and information. Another group of works reviving classical notions of the painting language, University of Illinois at Chicago student Raychael Stine’s paintings of canines invoke a Baroque lusciousness. Juxtaposed with an unconscious understanding of cartoonish characteristics of 1990s advertising, Stine’s work crosses between formal painting classicism and perverse conceptual relation to the human-like characteristics.

Installation view of Raychael Stine's work in "New Insight" at the Next Fair.

All’s Fair That Ends Fair

Detail of "wish you were here" collaboration by Davis and Langlois, cast concrete, 14" x 48", 2010, courtesy of Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami.

2010 Artropolis at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago was truly a “fair” event and given a “fair” report, but in a good way. While Art Chicago and NEXT will never hold the glamour, jet-setting crowds, celebrities, and art dignitaries of the larger, more flashier fairs, it did, however, raise the bar of the Midwestern profile. As shown by past-failed Artropolis events, bigger is not always better, and the 2010 fair increased support of local, regional, and stateside art institutions. Whether you consider “art” in crisis, regression, or shifting in paradigms, Art Chicago and NEXT Art Fair did prove art still impresses, teaches, questions, mystifies, and portrays a different way of looking at the world. Though the New York-centric art world sees global as the new territory, Artropolis proves that our own backyard is the new frontier. Wish you had been there, too.

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