Artropolis was this past weekend, and a friend of ours got us complimentary tickets. So, Kate and I arranged our Saturday Schedules and headed down to the Merchandise Mart for a couple of hours.
We only had time and energy to wander around the Next Exhibition of Emerging Art. A great deal of what was there was of passing interest, which might be expected. a good bit of what we saw in various ways had a whimsical feel or playing with expectation of the viewer based on a shared understanding of art history. Also, there was the stuff that was based in the perfection or use of a particular technique, that while I find interesting always leaves me disappointed because technique itself rarely says anything.
There was one Chicago based artist who used a great deal of color and a complex technique of painting that included layers of resin and paint. the milling about of people and that this was a trade show after all, kept me from quite being able to enter into his work. I think I would have liked to spend time simply standing and sitting in front of his paintings, to be able to encounter the painting in a museum setting. His work was fairly dominated by his technique but his work was also saying something, and it was really beautiful.
There were also several artists who either are Japanese and Chinese or Japanese American and Chinese American who had some striking and beautiful work that worked in what I could recognize as traditional styles, not simply references but also had them in conversation with other traditions, techniques and styles.
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