A Tour Through Expo Chicago

Now in its second year, over 120 exhibitors from around the globe showed at the Midwest’s premier art fair Expo Chicago last weekend. This four-day event featured over 120 leading international galleries, and offered a range of satellite programming including an emerging gallery section (EXPOSURE), and IN/SITU, a large-scale and site specific artwork program run by Shamim M. Momim, director, curator, and co-founder of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division).

We walked around the immense Jeanne Gang-designed space at the Navy Pier, where Expo was held, to find five of the most interesting artworks that fused technology with art.

Diana Thater, Day for Night Two, 2013, 9 monitor videowall installation.
Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

A dreamy depiction of a flower as it soft raindrops land on its petals make up Day for Night Two, which Los Angeles-based artist Diana Thater shot using a 1970s vintage Beaulieu 16mm film camera. Thater photographed the flower first in soft focus, then rewinding the film to capture the falling water with a sharper focus. The result is a large scale calming, otherworldly display of nature laid out over nine monitors.

Jacob Dahlgren, Neoconcrete Space, 2012, Single Channel Video, endless edition
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren loves horizontal striped t-shirts. So much so, that the artist has worn a different one from his collection of about 900 each day for the last 13 years. Neoconcrete Space brings these t-shirts to life through a series of colorful flickering stripes that rotate over a single monitor.

Gregory Scott, LOVE, 2013, HD video, oil painting, photograph, 28X40
Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery

At first glance, Gregory Scott’s LOVE looks like a photograph of a museum, but with closer inspection, the image contains two cut-outs of where the galleries should be, where Scott placed two monitors that play a series of activity. Shot at the Cleveland Museum of Art, LOVE shows art installers as they place a Robert Indiana-inspired sculpture in one room, and ancient Roman statues in the other. The letters of the Indiana-esque sculpture are reconfigured from LOVE to DOVE to DOPE to HATE, while the Roman statues, which are actually humans, move around, creating a playful array of movement in a space that is typically still, aside from the movement of the people observing the art.

Tony Oursler, Kin, 2005, Video projection, foam, resin, acrylic, sound,
Courtesy of GalerieForsblom

For Kin, Tony Oursler projected a number of faces on to a bulbous sculpture composed from an assemblage of random eyes and lips that Oursler filmed, making for a series of colorful Frankenstein-esque visages that tease the viewer. A cacophony of creepy voices synchronized with the facial movements yell out phrases like “Hey Fatso!” making for a comedic and bizarre work of art.

Kathy Taslitz, Scenery, 2013, Fiberglass, video projection, sound, 40"h x 69"w x 24"d
Courtesy of Kathy Taslitz

(This was displayed at International Sculpture Center’s booth)

“I was thinking of these shells becoming sentient and to take on these human characteristics,” said Kathy Taslitz when describing her Just Visiting series. For Scenery Taslitz created a smooth shell from fiberglass, inserting a video projection of changing ethereal lights into its aperture accompanied by sounds Taslitz recorded on a beach emanating from its inside, making for a contrast of fragility and strength.

Below, artist Kathy Taslitz describes the artist process that led to her nature-inspired installations.

Art Expo took place September 19–22 at the Navy Pier (600 East Grand Avenue, Chicago, Illinois).

To learn more about Expo Chicago, you can visit their website here.