Blog Posts - Mapanare.us Constantly.Consuming.Culture.

Stene Projects Gallery (Stockholm) Showed Work By Cecilia Edefalk At Expo Chicago 2018

10/5/2018

Owl

Stene Projects Gallery (Stockholm) showed work by Cecilia Edefalk at Expo Chicago 2018.

Edefalk is one of Sweden's best known artists. She currently lives in Stockholm. Her pieces can be haunting, surreal and/or stark. They are sometimes all these things at once.

There may even be whimsy here? But it is hard to tell because they are Swedish.

Cow

Long Sharp Gallery (Indianapolis / New York) Showed Work By Ann Hamilton at Expo Chicago 2018

10/5/2018

Long Sharp Gallery (Indianapolis / New York) showed work by Ann Hamilton at Expo Chicago 2018. Hamilton is best known for her large-scale multi-media installations. And these are truly large scale; four story building size large-scale.

These pieces are, obviously, not that. They are small, almost delicate, works you need to get close to in order to examine them. It is interesting that an artist known for such massive work can also excel at small, intimate pices.

Hamilton is from Ohio and attended the University of Kansas (BFA) and Yale (MFA). She is a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship and many more.

Gallery Hyundai (Seoul) Showed Work By Minjung Kim At Expo Chicago 2018

10/5/2018

Gallery Hyundai (Seoul) showed work by Minjung Kim at Expo Chicago 2018.

Kim is a contemporary Korean artist whose work is often on layered paper. This pieces is ink and watercolor on mulberry Hanji paper.

She is an artist whose work is formal in composition but it is also a reinterpretation of Korean aesthetics. The artist's experience goes well beyond Korean art.

Anglim Gilbert Gallery (San Francisco) Showed Work By Jess At Expo Chicago 2018

10/5/2018

A Duino Icarus

Anglim Gilbert Gallery (San Francisco) showed work by Jess At Expo Chicago 2018.

This small piece is one of the most compelling pieces at Expo Chicago 2018. It might be the almost monochromatic aspect of the painting and how it still convenes an iconic story. Then there are the meticulous brush strokes. It is a painting that draws you in in a way that a 14 x 18 inch painting rarely can.

But then this is what Jess does. Collage and painting are used to recreate, to breathe life into ancient stories.

David Klein Gallery (Birmingham / Detroit) Showed Work By Kelly Reemsten At Expo Chicago 2018

10/5/2018

David Klein Gallery (Birmingham/Detroit) showed work by Kelly Reemsten at Expo Chicago 2018.

Reemsten's work (paintings or prints) show women, dressed to the nines, wielding various construction implements. There is never a head in the painting.
She is also the author of "I'm Falling," a book that won a number of awards but seems a bit hard to find these days.

This work sold at Expo Chicago and I certainly hope it is part of a series. We did an interview with her a number of years back.

Find out more about Reemsten at www.kellyreemtsen.com.

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Chicago) Showed Work By Elijah Burgher, Steve Reinke and Jonathan Herrera At Expo Chicago 2018

10/4/2018

Spudnik Press Cooperative (Chicago) showed work by Elijah Burgher, Steve Reinke and Jonathan Herrera at Expo Chicago 2018.

Spudnik Press Cooperative provides education for printmakers and an exhibition space. The organization believes that art should be "a democratic and empowering medium."

The aim is to work with established artists, emerging artists and youth, all the while engaging with the community (ideals may art organizations aim for). They have been around for around a decade.

You can find out more at the link above.

De Buck Gallery (New York) Showed Work By Devan Shimoyama At Expo Chicago 2018

10/4/2018

Sensitive

De Buck Gallery (New York) showed work by Devan Shimoyama at Expo Chicago 2018.

These portraits (sometimes self-portraits) mine our mythological history and leap out at you from across a room. There is maybe a whiff of Andy Warhol here but it is only a whiff. This isn't all magic and sparkles. There is an exploration of politics in queer culture as much as a celebration of that culture.

These pieces are mixed media--colored pencil, oil, jewelry, flashe (vinyl-based paint), collage, glitter, ceramic knobs (see eyes below).

The artist has a BFA from Penn State University and an MFA from Yale. You can see, and find out, more at www.devanshimoyama.com.

Keep It Going

Eric Firestone Gallery (East Hampton, NY) Showed Work By Joe Overstreet At Expo Chicago 2018

10/4/2018

Dancers II

Eric Firestone Gallery (East Hampton, NY) showed work by Joe Overstreet at Expo Chicago 2018.

This piece is oil on stainless steel wire cloth. It looks, more or less, like a screen except it is steel rather than aluminum. The surface provides a depth different from what a normal canvas surface could. There is something industrial about these pieces.

Overstreet was born in Mississippi in 1933. He moved to San Francisco and then to New York. In the 1950s he and his partner, Corrine Jennings, started Kenkeleba House, a gallery focused on African-American culture. The gallery showed work by women and black artists in a time when that was not common.

Overstreet still lives and works in New York City.

Expo Chicago's "In Situ" Program Features Large Installation Pieces Including Postcommodity's "Repellent Fence" And Oscar Murillo's "Collective Conscience"

10/3/2018

Expo Chicago's In Situ program features large installation pieces throughout the fair.

The two pieces here are Postcommodity's Repellent Fence and Oscar Murillo's collective conscience.

The Repellent Fence is more than this one balloon. It was a two mile long land-art installation of 26 tethered balloons that are ten feet in diameter and floated 100 feet above the ground. The balloons floated above Douglas, Arizona and Aqua Prieta, Sonora. The balloons, themselves, are based on an ineffective bird repellent. The project was a collaborative project among a variety of individuals and organizations and was a symbolic attempt to suture together the people of this continent.

Collective conscience continues Morillo's exploration of labor in our capitalist world. He uses Mateos, effigies used in New Year's celebrations in Columbia. He has employed these effigies as symbols of the proletariat. These workers, when you look close, are partly dismembered and indeed, digested, by the system that both consumes them and in which they are consumers.

Nino Mier Gallery (Los Angeles / Cologne) Showed Work By Jansson Stegner At Expo Chicago 2018

10/3/2018

Nino Mier Gallery (Los Angeles / Cologne) showed work by Jansson Stegner at Expo Chicago 2018.

Stegner's sort of realistic, but exaggerated, forms remind a bit of El Greco--but entirely modern. I recall thinking that these paintings were whate El Greco would be painting if he'd managed to live over 500 years. His exaggeration of the human form waxes and wanes from portrait to portrait. Sometimes there is a whiff of Pop Art? Maybe?

The artist is from Denver but now lives in New York City. You can find out more at www.janssonstegner.com.