I went to some of the River North gallery openings. At the time, I thought my notes on the shows were awesome, but now I see that I should have fully written down my thoughts as soon as I got home. However, a few artists' works stuck with me. I liked the work of Andy Paczos. He painted desolate scenes from around, what I assume is, Chicago. His combination of figure-less compositions and dull color-palette made me feel, as a viewer, a certain loneliness and isolation. Thus, they reminded me a little of Edward Hopper's subject matter.
I also liked the work of Shayna Leib. She made these colorful blown glass sculptures, but presented them as if they were paintings. The blown glass came alive out of the squares and rectangles that contained them. It almost looked like the blown glass was moving coral captured mid-wave.
My last observation comes from the Zygman Voss Gallery. This gallery had drawings by Picasso, if I read correctly, and provided prices underneath the name of each piece. This was the only gallery that displayed prices outright. I wonder why they chose to present the art in this manner. Is it more acceptable to display the prices for art from past centuries, and not for contemporary art? Or is this a personal decision made by each gallery?
(Sorry, I do not mean to have my post here, however, the blog does not allow me to create a new post. The only thing it seems to allow me to do is to create a new blog. So before I find the way to do it, I am going to put my post here. Hope you don't mind Sara! I hope you can see it Carrie!)
ReplyDeleteEven though I wanted to go visit the galleries Friday evening, it did not work out for me until Saturday. With the company of my husbnd, I first arrived at the Addington Gallery in River North. Dispite of not being able to attend the openning on Friday, I think the benefit of going to the galleries Satuday is that it was not as many people around. In the Addington Gallery, I was fortunate to meet one of the artists whose show was going on there. Joseph Haske, a middle age gentlemen, was willing to talk to the his visitors. The Asian printing influence and his advanture of going to Japan about a decade ago were very interesting to me. My husband and I were very suprised to get into the conversation with him and his wife. I value the communication opportunities between different people. I think I will certainly remember Mr. Haske more than the other ones that I saw because of the conversation. At the same time, I undrstand it was fortunate to talk to an artist in those gallery shows because I know a lot of them are probably usually pretty busy people.
Some other works that impressed me are the "Close and Beyond" group sculpture by Jose Cobo in Maya Polsky Gallery and the work of Sheila Finnigan in Josef Glimer Gallery. The former presented sculptures of little children playing, but in a way that they were almost too pure to be of the real world. I love when art took the focus out of what people usually tend to have in everyday life and helped them to revalue it. The later was a group of drawings that were able to help the viewers to relate very emotionally. I love the art that speaks to the audiences in its own direct and visual way that it is hard to think that other lanuages can have the exact same effect.
--Snow