APRIL 2025. With NICK CAVE, CAROLINE KENT, TONY LEWIS, and EASY OTABOR
Major support for Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds is provided by the Zell Family Foundation, Pat and Ron Taylor, Constance and David Coolidge, The Donnelly Family Foundation, and Natasha Henner and Bala Ragothaman. Additional support is contributed by Kathy and Chuck Harper.
As we welcome 170 international exhibitors and thousands of collectors, curators, artists, and institutional leaders to Chicago for the 12th edition of EXPO CHICAGO, we continue to innovate with EXPO ART WEEK . We have always been committed to galvanizing the cultural community during this exciting week. EXPO ART WEEK ampli es this effort by showcasing the extraordinary talent that is shaping Chicago’s distinct cultural identity, while providing deeper insights into the rich diversity and vibrancy of our great city.
Tony Karman President and Director, EXPO CHICAGO
Welcome to the inaugural issue of EXPO ART WEEK . What you have in your hands is the hard work of many collaborators—and I want to thank them all. EXPO ART WEEK depicts just a sliver of the diverse, robust, and vibrant Chicago art world, the people who make it up, and the great role that EXPO CHICAGO plays. Inside, you’ll learn fashion tips and Negroni recipes, but also understand why gallerist Francine Almeda describes Chicago as being built on “mutual trust and inspiration.”
Marko Gluhaich Editor, EXPO ART WEEK
Tala gallerist takes us behind the DJ booth
Pro le: MURAT AHMED
home with the innovative patron who’s reimagining the market
A SHORT HISTORY
of Law Roach’s Deliciously Vintage: Looking back at the space now home to Hans Goodrich gallery (see page 25)
Law Roach style legend best known for his collaborations with Zendaya, Céline Dion, and Ariana Grande got his start in fashion while still living in his hometown Chicago. Already well-known for his fashion sense, Roach and his close friend Siobhan Strong opened Deliciously Vintage in 2009, which specialized in mixing designer and non-designer clothes with keen attention to the trends of the moment and sourced from auctions and estate sales. The store went viral and began attracting high-pro le customers like singer K. Michelle. Within two years, Roach was connected to a thenunknown actress, Zendaya, with whom Roach transformed the red carpet. Not long after, Roach’s work with Zendaya became too much, and he relocated to Los Angeles, closing Deliciously Vintage. In 2020, speaking to Chicago Magazine, Roach re ected on the shop: “It wasn’t for everyone. Chicago gets a bad rap because it’s the Midwest, so people think everything is utilitarian. But girls here get it.”
We profile four people shaping the arts dialogue in Chicago today
INSIDE EXPO ART WEEK: GAME-CHANGERS
CAMILLE BACON
Jupiter
magazine, Writer and Editor
Camille Bacon refers to Chicago as her “home base.” Born in the city, she spent much of her childhood abroad before returning for her senior year of high school—and again after college. As a writer, Bacon—who, in the words of Nikky Finney, is cultivating a “sweet Black writing” life—is acutely aware that art writers are an “endangered species,” given the limited resources available and the lack of time and space publications afford them to really “dig their heels” into their subjects. Bacon speaks much like she writes, weaving in literary references throughout our conversation. When explaining why she co-founded Jupiter magazine with Daria Simone Harper, she recalls Toni Morrison’s reason for writing the Bluest Eye (1970): “I wrote the book I wanted to read.” Similarly, Bacon states, “with Jupiter, I made the magazine I wanted to write for.”
Jupiter prides itself on its experimental ethos, which Bacon considers to be a very Chicago trait. She and Harper are reshaping how art criticism appears on the page, prioritizing long lead times for writers and offering competitive fees that could “pay one month’s rent.” In its first year, the magazine has published four issues, with contributors ranging from Joshua Segun-Lean to Legacy Russell, and it has expanded beyond print to host public programs in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York. As Jupiter enters its second year, and on the heels of releasing its fifth issue, Bacon and Harper plan to broaden its reach while keeping Chicago as its geographical anchor. Again citing Morrison, Bacon explains the magazine’s ethos: “I stood on the margin and claimed it as center, and I waited for the rest of the world to move over to where I was.” Jupiter, she hopes, will bring awareness to Chicago’s celebrated history and its ever-evolving creative future.
GIAMPAOLO BIANCONI
Art Institute of Chicago, Curator
When we spoke in January, Giampaolo Bianconi laid out the three facets of his role as curator at the Art Institute: maintaining and reimagining how the collection is exhibited; organizing special exhibitions; and expanding the museum’s holdings. Since joining the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art—having started in 2022—he has brought exhibitions by Iman Issa and John Knight to the museum. The latter involved Knight creating a 1.5-scale picnic table for the museum’s Bluhm Family Terrace, a public installation that the Art Institute formally acquired just last month.
For Bianconi, working with the permanent collection means finding new ways to share artists’ works with the audiences who visit the museum. “What’s great about the Art Institute,” he tells us, “is that it’s as much Chicago’s hometown museum as it is an international institution. I talk to museumgoers who visit the galleries weekly, and they will notice if we make even the most imperceptible change in our collection.” He compares these dedicated visitors to those who come specially to see masterpieces like Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86) but may unexpectedly discover contemporary art along the way. With each installation, he considers both types of audiences, as was the case with a new acquisition such as Renée Green’s Mise-enscène: Commemorative Toile (1992–93), a complex installation that he believes is only truly completed when seen by the public.
Collaboration is central to Bianconi’s curatorial work, and he is quick to credit the team. He names Nick Baron, the museum’s specialist art handler for over 40 years, as one of the people who’s taught him the most. “Nick has worked with everyone—from Ellsworth Kelly to Jasper Johns. It can be hard to grasp the whole history of the exhibition program, but it has been built by incredible people.”
GAY-YOUNG CHO Collector and Patron
When asked how she got into collecting, Gay-Young Cho insists that she “didn’t get into collecting—it just evolved.”
Raised in a creative household filled with classical Korean ink paintings, when she moved to Chicago for university she
brought her first artwork along with her—an ink painting scroll gifted by her father. Her formal involvement in the art world began in 1999 when she joined the Smart Museum’s board at the University of Chicago, coinciding with the groundbreaking exhibition “Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century.” The show resonated with her experience growing up in Korea in the 1960s and ’70s, a period of radical social change happening across the continent. Such an experience, she says, is exemplary of her collecting practice—motivated by curiosity and aided by serendipity.
Over the years, she’s built an extensive collection including works by pioneering first-generation Chinese contemporary artists like Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, Yue Minjun, and Zhang Dali. Recently, her focus has shifted to contemporary Korean artists like Do Ho Suh, Lee Ufan, and Haegue Yang. Today, in addition to serving as co-chair of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum, Cho is deeply engaged with Chicago’s art institutions, serving on the boards of the Korean Cultural Center of Chicago (KCCoC), the Art Institute’s Arts of Asia Committee, and the Field Museum’s Collections Committee, and being involved with the Smart Museum, among others. During EXPO, she will open “Earthly Eloquence: Tradition and
Innovation in Contemporary Korean Ceramics.” Through all of this, Cho nevertheless maintains the same inquisitive impulse that brought her to art in the first place: “Not only to broaden my knowledge,” she tells us, “but to be an informed advocate.”
EBONY G. PATTERSON Artist
This February, Ebony G. Patterson was in New Orleans, where she was wrapping up Prospect.6, the citywide triennial she co-curated with Miranda Lash. Patterson accepted Lash’s invitation to collaborate in 2022, expecting that the opportunity would “slow [her] down a bit,” she tells us. But this soon proved to be a happy misjudgement. She and Lash assembled a lineup of 51 artists across 20 different venues across the city, making a point to engage deeply with each participant. “As art workers,” Patterson says, “we are engaged in practice that requires meaningful consideration and research.” She and Lash visited nearly every artist in person. “I had 51 teachers to learn from. I don’t know how you don’t leave that changed.” Patterson’s commitment came out of her own practice as an artist. She has worked with Chicago’s moniquemeloche Gallery since 2011 and moved to the city in 2019. Her career has seen a string of landmark exhibitions, including “…while the dew is still on the roses…” (2018), which toured to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, and the pandemicdelayed “…when the cuts erupt…the garden rings…and the warning is a wailing…” (2020) at the Contemporary Arts Museum St. Louis. In 2023, her long-time engagement with the garden culminated in “…things come to thrive…in the shedding…in the molting…” at the New York Botanical Garden, a mixed-media exploration of race, gender, and colonialism through the lens of nature.
Her contributions to the field of art were recognized in 2024 with a MacArthur “Genius Grant.” “I could never have imagined this journey,” she tells us. “I’m still in such a cloud.” Now, after the intensity of Prospect.6, Patterson is finally looking forward to a slower pace: “I hope the next two years can be about rest and catching my breath.”
APPARITIONS
Apr 25 — Jun 27, 2025
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Huma Bhabha
McArthur Binion
Roger Brown
Jean Dubuffet
Theaster Gates
Alberto Giacometti
Ewan Gibbs
Ann Hamilton
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Rashid Johnson
Alex Katz
David Klamen
Jim Lutes
Ana Mendieta
Sandra Mujinga
Trevor Paglen
Naudline Pierre
Jaume Plensa
Susan Rothenberg
Mira Schor
Evelyn Statsinger
John Storrs
Kara Walker
Wilmer Wilson IV
Upcoming:
Photographic Echoes of FESTAC ‘77 EXPO Chicago Booth 204
Apr 24–27, 2025
Real Monsters in Bold Colors: Bob Thompson and Candida Alvarez GRAY New York
Apr 30–Jul 3, 2025
Judy Ledgerwood and Leon Polk Smith Frieze New York Booth D07
May 7–11, 2025
/DIALOGUES
April 24–27, 2025
/Dialogues brings together leading curators, artists, designers, and arts professionals for a series of panel discussions, forums, and artistic discourse on contemporary topics including curating at an international scale, the politics of labor in creative practices, contemporary image-making and dissemination, Chicago queer histories, and the state of art criticism today. /Dialogues is presented in partnership with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with additional support from THE COLLECTION: Where Art Meets Fashion.
group of emerging national, and for the rst time international, art museum leaders for a three-day program addressing the shifting dynamics of museum leadership today. The roundtables will consider the museum as a living organism that serves to heal, protect, connect, and create.
The Directors Summit is supported by Bloomberg Connects and Heritage Auctions.
3:15–4:00pm
Screening: Art21 and Artist Activists
Featuring artists Nick Cave (Stephanie and Bill Sick Professor of Fashion, Body and Garment, SAIC), Salah Elmur, Jade Guanaro KurikiOlivo aka Puppies Puppies (BA 2010, SAIC), Aliza Nisenbaum (BFA 2001, MFA 2005, SAIC), and Catherine Opie.
the panel brings together four fresh perspectives on art criticism today.
Presented in partnership with frieze magazine.
Saturday, April 26
2:00–3:00pm Korean Art Today
Panelists
Jiseon Lee Isbara (President, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Seolhui Lee (Curator, 2024 Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale), Andy St. Louis (Art Critic and Founder, Seoul Art Friend). Moderated by Pat Lee (Director, Frieze Seoul).
Thursday, April 24
2:00–3:00pm Directors Summit Part I
Panelists
Mohamed Almusibli (Director and Chief Curator, Kunsthalle Basel), Guillaume Désanges (President, Palais de Toyko), Stefanie Hessler (Director, Swiss Institute). Moderated by Jill Snyder (Principal, Snyder Consultancy).
The fourth annual Directors Summit, co-organized by EXPO CHICAGO and Jill Snyder, brings together a diverse group of emerging national, and for the rst time international, art museum leaders for a three-day program addressing the shifting dynamics of museum leadership today. The roundtables will consider the museum as a living organism that serves to heal, protect, connect, and create.
The Directors Summit is supported by Bloomberg Connects and Heritage Auctions.
3:30–4:30pm In Dialogue: Amanda Williams and Jamillah James
Panelists
Jamillah James (Manilow Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago) and Amanda Williams (Artist, Rhona Hoffman Gallery).
Join Jamillah James and Amanda Williams for a compelling discussion of Williams’ conceptual artistic practice. Known for her wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach, Williams explores the intersections of color, architecture, and social space, critically examining the narratives embedded in urban landscapes.
6:30–7:30pm
Creative Voices: Fashion, Art, and Cultural Impact
Panelists
Derrick Adams (Artist, Rhona Hoffman Gallery) and Hebru Brantley (Artist). Moderated by Michael Darling (Co-Founder and Chief Growth Of cer, Museum Exchange).
Renowned artists Derrick Adams and Hebru Brantley—both of whom have site-specific works featured in THE COLLECTION at Fashion Outlets
of Chicago—come together for a conversation examining the dynamic intersections of fashion, art, and culture. This panel explores how creative practices shape public spaces and trends in the industry. Moderated by Michael Darling, the discussion highlights the ways in which art and fashion transform our understanding of community, commerce, and creative expression.
Presented in partnership with THE COLLECTION: Where Art Meets Fashion.
Friday, April 25
12:30–1:30pm Screening: Art21 Artists and the Unknown
Featuring artists Tauba Auerbach, Christine Sun Kim, Rose B. Simpson, Sarah Sze, and Anicka Yi.
Art21's second compendium of artist interviews captures engaging, inspiring and stimulating conversations exploring encounters with randomness, complexity, and the unknown, drawn from over two decades of interviews with leading artists of the 21st century. Watch Art21 lms featuring Tauba Auerbach, Rose B. Simpson, Christine Sun Kim, Sarah Sze, and Anicka Yi, who are interviewed in Art21’s new publication: Artists and the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists
Jurrell Lewis, Associate Curator at Art21, will join for a Q&A following the screening.
2:00–3:00pm D irectors Summit Part II
Panelists
Amanda de la Garza (Artistic Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), Laura-Caroline de Lara (Director, DePaul Art Museum) (Dual MA 2012, SAIC), Myles RussellCook (Artistic Director and CEO, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), and Monetta White (Executive Director and CEO, Museum of African Diaspora). Moderated by Jill Snyder (Principal, Snyder Consultancy).
The fourth annual Directors Summit, co-organized by EXPO CHICAGO and Jill Snyder, brings together a diverse
Art21 captured numerous artist activist initiatives over the last 20 years. Scaling ambitions beyond the gallery space, the artists in this screening hour use their work as a way to protest the conditions of society.
Jurrell Lewis, Associate Curator at Art21, will join for a Q&A following the screening.
4:00–5:00pm
No Fixed Address: Curating on The International Stage
Panelists
Cecilia Alemani (Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director & Chief Curator, High Line Art, and Curator, 12th SITE Santa Fe International), Myriam Ben Salah (Chief Curator and Director, The Renaissance Society), and Julieta González (Head of Exhibitions, Wexner Center for the Arts). Moderated by Renaud Proch (Executive and Artistic Director, Independent Curators International).
The conversation assembles a formidable group of curatorial visionaries whose work has shaped the global contemporary art landscape. With experience spanning major institutions and experimental spaces, each curator offers a unique perspective on presenting art across diverse cultural and geopolitical contexts. Moderated by Renaud Proch, the panel will discuss the balance between local speci city and international dialogue, as well as the evolving responsibilities of curatorship today.
5:30–6:30pm Art Critics Forum
Panelists
Maximilíano Durón (Senior Editor, ARTnews), Jennifer Krasinski (Independent Writer, Cultural Critic and 2024 MacDowell Fellow in Literature), Brandon Sheats (Executive Director, Burnaway), and Pia Singh (Independent Curator and Writer) (MA 2017, SAIC). Moderated by Marko Gluhaich (Senior Editor, frieze).
The eighth annual Art Critics Forum focuses on the support systems that bolster art writing practices. Panelists working both independently and with dedicated publications will examine the creative and intellectual exchanges that shape their writing, emphasizing the vital role of collaboration in critical production. Moderated by Marko Gluhaich,
In an era of increasing global exchange, contemporary Korean art is being shaped, interpreted, and presented across different cultural and institutional contexts. This dynamic conversation brings together three arts workers, each deeply engaged in the eld while working from distinct geographical perspectives. Moderated by Pat Lee, the panel explores curatorial approaches, transnational dialogues, and the shifting landscape of contemporary Korean art today.
Presented in collaboration with Kiaf, organized by the Galleries Association of Korea (GAoK).
4:00–5:00pm Labor Conditions
Panelists
Ben Davis (Art Critic), Rodrigo Valenzuela (Artist, Hexton Gallery), and Carmen Winant (Artist, PATRON). Moderated by Natalie Bell (Curator, MIT List Visual Art Center).
This panel considers converging conditions in the art world including the ethos of individualism, unwaged and abstract labor, and the commodication of data and creativity that propels the market. Probing these and other intersections of art and labor, Natalie Bell leads a conversation looking at how contemporary artists interrogate the structures and politics of art and work in their practices.
Presented in partnership with esse.
5:30–6:30pm Objects in Frame: Contemporary Images
Panelists
Aki Goto (Artist, EUROPA), Sara Greenberger Rafferty (Artist, DOCUMENT), and Amanda Ross-Ho (Artist, ILY2) (BFA 1998, SAIC). Moderated by Elisabeth Sherman (Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections, International Center of Photography).
Objects in Frame brings together three artists for a discussion on contemporary interdisciplinary and image-based practices. The conversation will explore how materiality, scale, and context shape visual narratives, with a particular focus on the role of symbols or “props” in their work. Moderated by Elisabeth Sherman, the panel will examine how experimental methods and conceptual frameworks re ect and challenge broader cultural and artistic shifts.
Sunday, April 27
1:00–2:00pm Im/migration and Self-Taught Art in Chicago
Panelists
Carlos Barberena (Artist), Alfonso “Piloto” Nieves Ruiz (Artist) and Pooja Pittie (Artist, McCormick Gallery). Moderated by Alison Amick (Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections, Intuit Art Museum) and Dana Boutin (Independent Curator).
The importance of immigration and migration in the genre of “self-taught art” is an underexplored topic. This discussion will explore the contributions of artists who came to and continue to enrich the culture of Chicago, a city with a signi cant and ongoing history of migration and immigration. The artists are also featured in the inaugural exhibition “Catalyst: Im/migration and
APRIL 24–27, 2025
Self-Taught Art in Chicago” at the newly renovated Intuit Art Museum, on view through January 11, 2026.
2:00–3:00pm For Those That Lived There
Panelists
Jada-Amina (Lead Curator, Black Harvest Film Festival) (BFA 2020, SAIC) and Shawn Antoine II (Filmmaker).
Join Jada-Amina and lmmaker
Shawn Antoine II in a post-screening conversation with about his short lm For Those That Lived There Filmed entirely on the Bolex 16mm camera amidst the gentri ed remnants of Chicago's Cabrini Green, For Those That Lived There captures the haunting displacement of Black legacies and the recent emergence of migrant narratives around the Green, offering an evocative exploration of a community in metamorphosis.
EXCHANGE by NORTHERN TRUST
April 25–26, 2025
Exchange by Northern Trust: An Interactive Conversation on the Art of Collecting is a series that presents panels on the contemporary art market and its current trends. For the 2025 edition of EXPO CHICAGO, the Exchange Stage will host four panels focusing on patron engagement and non-traditional educational structures, valuations of non-traditional media, artistic legacies, and collecting as a form of cultural investment.
A screening of For Those That Lived There will begin the program.
3:30–4:30pm
City in a Garden
Panelists
Edie Fake (Artist), Doug Ischar (Artist), and Patric McCoy (Artist). Moderated by Jack Schneider (Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago) (BFA 2014, SAIC).
“City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” is an upcoming intergenerational group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago highlighting the pivotal, yet often underacknowledged, role Chicago has played in the story of queer art and activism. Through their work considering historic queer sites across the city, the panelists re ect on Chicago’s unique contributions to queer activist histories.
Friday, April 25
12:00–12:30pm
Purchase Prize Announcement
Join John Fumagalli (President, Central Region, Northern Trust) and recipient institutions of the Northern Trust Purchase Prize — Dallas Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts — for the unveiling of three special acquisitions from the EXPOSURE section, curated by Rosario Güiraldes (Curator of Visual Art, Walker Art Center).
Rachel Adams (Chief Curator, Bemis Center), Sarah Arison (President, Museum of Modern Art and Chair, YoungArts), Chiwoniso Kaitano (Executive Director, MacDowell). Moderated by Nate Freeman (Vanity Fair). Introduced by Ron Mallicoat (Group Managing Director and President of Metro Chicago, Northern Trust).
Rachel Adams, Sarah Arison, and Chiwoniso Kaitano engage in an actionoriented discussion about methods of structural and material support for artists. The panel will explore multifaceted arts patronage and alternative education models, highlighting the MacDowell residency’s long-standing commitment to creative cultivation, YoungArts fellowships’ support for emerging talent, and the Bemis Center’s plans to launch a program for young artists in 2028. Moderated by Nate Freeman, the panel explores the idea of multifaceted arts patronage and alternative modes of artistic education.
3:00–4:00pm Valuations of Non-Traditional Media
Panelists
Simon Anderson (Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Hannah Higgins (Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Founding Program Director of IDEA, University of Illinois Chicago), Jennifer Levine (Collector), and Laura Mandel (Chief Fiduciary Of cer, Northern Trust). Moderated by Roberta Kramer (Senior Vice President of
Business Development, Heritage Auctions). Introduced by Hilary Wolfe (Group Managing Director, Northern Trust).
The valuation of non-traditional media, including mail art, Fluxus correspondence, and artist archives, poses distinct challenges within nancial, institutional, and legal frameworks. In partnership with Heritage Auctions, the panel brings together experts in art history and duciary services to examine how these works are assessed and preserved. Through discussions on market viability, institutional stewardship, and appraisal methodologies, the panel will explore the complexities of assigning value to ephemeral and conceptual art forms.
John Corbett (Corbett vs. Dempsey; Contributor, Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery), Robert Cozzolino (Independent Curator), Erica Meyer (Collector and Lender to “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery," Carnegie Museum of Art), and Susan Weininger (Professor Emerita, Roosevelt University). Moderated by Zack Wirsum (Senior Vice President, Head of Department, Post War and Contemporary Art, Freeman's | Hindman). Introduced by Allegra Biery (Group Managing Director and President of Illinois Suburban and Midwest States, Northern Trust).
Often referred to as the “Queen of the Bohemians,” Gertrude Abercrombie’s dreamlike, surrealist paintings captivate with their rich
symbolic language. The panel delves into Abercrombie’s artistic legacy, her in uence on contemporary collectors, and her growing market appeal. Join Zack Wirsum, John Corbett, Erica Meyer, and Robert Cozzolino to discuss the current surge in interest around Abercrombie’s work and her presence in the upcoming Freeman’s | Hindman Post War and Contemporary sale.
Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery (DelMonico Books: 2025) provided by the MCA Chicago Store.
Presented in partnership with Freeman’s | Hindman.
3:00–4:00pm Collecting Forward: Delivering Cultural Capital
Panelists
Commissioner Clinée Hedspeth (City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) and Eric McKissack (Collector). Introduced by Ayodeji Ayodele (Wealth Strategist, Northern Trust)
Join Commissioner Clinée Hedspeth and distinguished collector Eric McKissack for an inspiring dialogue on art collecting as cultural investment. McKissack, trustee of The Art Institute of Chicago and board member of the Terra Foundation, Arts Club of Chicago, and Graham Foundation, will share insights from collecting works by artists of color alongside his investment expertise. Hedspeth brings her vision for Chicago's cultural landscape through the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Together, they'll explore how meaningful collecting and support of artists creates lasting cultural capital that enriches both individual lives and communities across Chicago.
Presented in collaboration with Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums.
021gallery Daegu
Gallery 41
193 Gallery Paris, Venice, Saint-Tropez
313 Art Project Seoul, Paris
A Lighthouse called Kanata Tokyo
ACA Galleries New York
Addison Rowe Santa Fe
Allouche Gallery New York
Almeida & Dale São Paulo
Galería Artizar Canary Islands
Avant Gallery
Gallery Baton
Richard Beavers Gallery
BHAK Seoul
Bienvenu Steinberg & C New York
Bockley Gallery Minneapolis
Bogéna Galerie Saint-Paul de Vence
Browse & Darby London
C24 Gallery New York
Carousel Fine Art Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Saint-Tropez
Opera Gallery New York, Aspen, Beirut, Dubai, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Miami, Monaco, Paris, Seoul, Singapore
Galerie PICI Seoul, New York
Pontone Gallery London
Projects 28
PYO GALLERY Seoul
Hjellegjerde Gallery London, Berlin, West Palm Beach
Bill Hodges Gallery New York
HOFA London
Nancy Hoffman Gallery New York
Rhona Hoffman Gallery Chicago
Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery London, Miami
Edwynn Houk Gallery New York, Zurich
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery London ILY2
Portland
Jenkins Johnson Gallery New York, San Francisco
Gallery Joeun Seoul
Johnson Lowe Gallery Atlanta
Keumsan Gallery Seoul, Gyeongju
LEE & BAE Busan
Richard Levy Gallery Albuquerque
Diana Lowenstein Gallery Miami
David Lusk Gallery Memphis, Nashville
JD Malat Gallery London
Galeria MaPa São Paulo
John Martin Gallery London
McCormick Gallery Chicago
Miles McEnery Gallery New York
The Melrose Gallery Johannesburg moniquemeloche Chicago Gallery MOMO Johannesburg
Melissa Morgan Fine Art Palm Desert
David Nolan Gallery + Marc Selwyn Fine Art New York, Los Angeles
Gallery Nosco Brussels
Weinstein Hammons Gallery Minneapolis
Wellside Gallery Seoul
Yares Art New York, Beverly Hills, Santa Fe
Timothy Yarger Fine Art Timothy Los Angeles
Zemack Contemporary Art Tel Aviv
Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery Luxembourg, Dubai, Paris
Zilberman Gallery Istanbul, Berlin, Miami
EXPOSURE
56 HENRY New York
Galerie Quynh Ho Chi Minh City
Rele Lagos, London, Los Angeles
Revolver Galería Lima, Buenos Aires, New York
Galerie Richard Paris
Galerie Robertson Arès Montréal
Nara Roesler
São Paulo, New York, Rio de Janeiro
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery New York
RYAN LEE Gallery New York
Secrist | Beach Chicago
SEIZAN Gallery New York, Tokyo
SmithDavidson Gallery Amsterdam, Miami
SOUS LES ETOILES
GALLERY New York
Southern Guild Los Angeles, Cape Town
Marc Straus Gallery New York
Sun Gallery Seoul
Suppoment Gallery Seoul
Patricia Sweetow Gallery Los Angeles
Sundaram Tagore Gallery New York, London, Singapore
TAI Modern Santa Fe
Tandem Press Madison
Tang Contemporary Art Hong Kong, Bangkok, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore
Two Palms New York
Vallarino Fine Art New York
Gallery Vit Seoul
W-galería Buenos Aires, Pueblo Garzón
Tanya Weddemire Gallery Brooklyn
Weinstein Gallery San Francisco
Megan Mulrooney Los Angeles
Marisa Newman Projects
NIL Gallery
OCHI Los Angeles, Ketchum
65GRAND Chicago
Aicon Contemporary New York
Anthony Gallery Chicago
april april Pittsburgh
Bill Arning Exhibitions Kinderhook
Art Latinou Mexico City
Baert Gallery Los Angeles
Petra Bibeau New York
Bianca Boeckel São Paulo
Brandt Gallery Amsterdam
Jonathan Carver Moore San Francisco
The Contemporary Art Modern Project Miami
Contour Art Gallery Vilnius
COTT Buenos Aires
DURAN CONTEMPORAIN Montréal
Eclectica Contemporary Cape Town
Enari Gallery Amsterdam
EUROPA New York
Fragment New York
Geary Contemporary Millerton, New York
Goldfinch Chicago
GALLERY HAYASHI + ART BRIDGE Tokyo
Hesse Flatow New York, Amagansett, East Hampton
Jupiter Contemporary Miami, New York
Martin Art Projects Cape Town
THE MISSION PROJECTS Chicago
Mitre Belo Horizonte, São Paulo
Montague Contemporary New York
Patel
Montréal
Rivalry Projects Buffalo
Sarai Gallery Mahshahr,
ASHWINI BHAT: REVERBERATING SELF
John Michael Kohler Arts Center On view through January 11, 2026
PAO HOUA HER: IMAGINATIVE LANDSCAPE
John Michael Kohler Arts Center On view through August 31, 2025
San José Museum of Art July 11, 2025–February 22, 2026
Ashwini Bhat: Reverberating Self is supported by the Kohler Trust for Arts Foundation, the Frederic State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ashwini Bhat; Bhumi, Living Earth; 2022.
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape is made possible with lead support from The Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Teiger Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Pao Houa Her; untitled, Pictures of Paradise series; 2024.
Gertrude Abercrombie (American,
When I ask Caroline Kent about her latest works, her eyes widen, and she launches into a description lled with vivid detail. It’s December and I’m visiting the artist at her home studio, which was painstakingly built over the past three years with her partner in life, and occasionally in work, fellow artist Nate Young. Kent—in her white tennis shoes, brightly colored T-shirt, and perfectly knotted foulard—blends a sportswoman’s dynamism with an effortless Midwestern sangfroid. Her studio is a multicolored universe of cut-out abstract forms taking up every plane and surface. I notice a single tower of scaffolding: “I need to climb up to paint larger surfaces,” she notes, pointing out three tall canvases behind her. We sit down over tea, and Kent dives right into her hometown exhibition, “The Sentimental Hand,” which opens this month at Chicago’s PATRON Gallery. She describes its planning as an “act of
scenography,” a telling choice of words for an artist invested in the histories of lmic space, spatial time, painting, and architecture.
Born two hours outside of Chicago in Sterling, Kent pursued her MFA at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2008. She recalls adopting a practice of intuitive collage-making: “I used to keep these 2 × 3 inch notecard collages, small enough to carry between the pages of a book, in an old cardboard cigar box.” From the back of a drawer in her at les, she retrieves two graphite-and-crayon drawings on brown paper from her MFA thesis exhibition. A scribbled abstraction in pencil spews yellow, orange, and white wax gestures, a cursive “ck. ch. kc. chk.” extending from the center. On another card, Kent glued a pink unicorn horn to a brown papercut dog head, a scarlet speech bubble spilling from its snout. These early experiments with collage underscore a canny compositional
agility rooted in the artist’s deft understanding of minimal color palettes and limited materials. She casually slides a thin slice of white paper over a scissorcut round on beige linen, demonstrating an intuitive knowledge between hand and element. “My approach is different with each surface I work on,” she reveals. “An antagonism is set up through a hierarchy of placement.”
From 2000 to 2002, Kent served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania just a decade into the country’s transition out of communism. Unable to speak Romanian, the artist was led to question how a person situates themselves “outside of language” while in the context of the unfamiliar. With the street signs and billboards around her reduced to pure form, textual meaning became arbitrary. She determined to no longer treat the content of her work as enacting translation; instead, the medium itself—be it paper, painting, or print—would do
the transmitting. “If abstract painting is a kind of visual language, I want to be able to articulate in spaces previously reserved for the literary, the scriptural, and the conversational,” she stresses. “I want my work to function as a language.”
Over the past decade, Kent has been building this lexicon through more than 300 works in acrylic on black paper, each 22 × 30 inches, that index gestures, compositions, and forms. “Within each arrangement, every shape takes on a different meaning,” she explains. In one study on her mood board, an inverted light-blue triangle balances atop a bright-red trapezoid: at its right edge oats a sky-blue funnel with a long arm stretched out; on the left is an identically colored diamond; across the entire composition rain down tiny blue fragments. In the 2019 exhibition “Writing Forms” at Hawthorn Contemporary, several paintings on paper were out tted with booth-like frames, encouraging
SH SHIFAPETER
an individualized “study” of each work. Kent sets up the parameters so that viewers can make their own associations. To expand the breadth of such meaning-making, she extends her shapes off the canvases, across the floor, and onto the surrounding wall, and elsewhere, involving the space in the activation of her transmissions. In paintings, she rearranges compositions, establishing further dimensionality with translucent washes and gestures such as tapping and dotting. “When I learned about Morse code as a child, I remember thinking, ‘Wow! There’s a whole secret language of signs and signals.’ While visual, of course, the dot and the dash also make sounds.”
In preparing for her show at PATRON, Kent describes how she’s been “working from within to the outside, nding myself seeking to deepen, to sink into, painting.” She has also been busy at work on commissions for the 50th anniversary exhibition at Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, the US Embassy in Mexico City, Amtrak at Union Station in Washington D.C., and as a recent awardee of a United States Artists fellowship. I ask her about her experience moving across media and scale. “When I need a break from larger works or sculptural plans, I move over to smaller paintings on paper or linen. I cut a lot of paper to create these compositions—something I don’t necessarily do for the larger paintings. If big works pick up on shapes from smaller studies, they shift in meaning as they do in scale.” I look to a freestanding sheet
of cardboard, onto which several white papercut forms are loosely taped from their top edges in a near-perfect grid. The individuality and character of each shape can be perceived according to the angle at which it is rotated, taped, and scaled—without even taking into consideration her use of color. The way Kent uses repetition makes me think of Hungarian lm theorist Béla Balasz’ denition of the “set-up,” a method by which a lmmaker depicts a scene through the eyes of each of its characters. Kent has a propensity for stepping out of her own perspective and into the point-of-view of her forms, granting her viewers multiple entry points into her works.
Growing up watching black-and-white and international lms, Kent developed an awareness of the parameters of the frame and the performative act of narration and dialogue: speci cally, who is afforded to speak, think, and be representable in cinema. As an example, she brings out an early text piece, Typewriter Abstraction (c.2014), which pairs a typewritten quote from Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman (1966), where the French female protagonist dreams about falling in love, and another from Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (1966), where a Senegalese woman expresses her aspirations to nd love and a better life as a governess in France. Drawing attention to the arti cial textures of the two lines, the juxtaposition underscores difference found in language.
Kent tells me about the secret languages she shared with her twin sister,
Christine. She began investigating this phenomenon in her two-part exhibition “Victoria/Veronica,” named for her mother’s rst two names, which opened at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, in 2020 and toured to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago the following year. In the latter iteration, Kent submerged two adjacent galleries in verdant green from oor to ceiling, dotting the space with geometric walnut sculptures, wooden bookcases lined with painted linen-covered books, and a pristine desk made in collaboration with Young. The two spaces, she said, were in a secret dialogue in the manner of twins, enacted by a certain communicability between her sculptures and citational elements—say, recesses carved into the gallery walls.
Kent walks to the far end of her studio and asks, “Can you spot something?” hinting towards a staircase leading to her study. A white felt hieroglyphic form camouflages itself against the upper quadrant of her studio wall. “I’m thinking about how I can incorporate intertextual forms into the gallery architecture,” she gestures ahead. “For the Smart Museum commission, I’ve been working with a freestanding wall with a large, recessed alcove where I’d like to place a smaller canvas.” She brings a small, box-framed painting to the table. “The commission is for two small works, but if they want to exhibit them again, they will have to rebuild the sculpture. The works will always get to live in this … Caroline shape.” Kent, who is a
professor in Northwestern University’s Art, Theory, and Practice department, also sees her exhibitions as sites of critical thinking and making, with the hope of serving as a model for her students to nd their own voices within the contemporary. Pointing to the aforementioned alcove, she emphasizes: “This is the site of research.”
In such gestures, Kent dismantles a one-to-one relationship between language and reality, imbuing signifiers with a sense of tactility. Her oeuvre is permeated by an endless curiosity as she wholly embraces the exhibition as a stage for social relations. Kent has often constructed her compositions against black-gessoed canvases, these surfaces becoming spaces of both concealment and in nite possibility. She tells me how “black as a color can be both and all those things.” The artist renders a set of codes that refuses to take part in any singular economy of signs, disavowing the act of belonging. I think about the proliferation of AI and the precise measurement of datasets that are shaping learning and new forms of knowledge, which make the embrace of heterogeneity in Kent’s work ever-more necessary. Tackling the veracity of language in relation to contemporary visual culture, the artist reinforces the dialectical nature of reality and ction, as text, form, and language will always depend on each other for their existence. What remains are characters, emancipated from the limitations of the binary in Kent’s phantasmic set-up, as an archive for a time to come.
“I have been working from within to the outside, nding myself seeking to deepen, to sink into, painting.”
The artist and fashion professor invites us into his wardrobe. Photography by Evan Jenkins
NICK CAVE ADDS TEXTURE
I’m more interested in style than fashion, because at the end of the day, fashion is created from style. It’s about how you put things together. I’m in the thrift stores as often as I’m in Balenciaga. I mix that shit together. I need it to appear timeless, like this could be the future, or this could be the past it just sort of sits in the middle. My wardrobe is pretty much all black, but occasionally, I make good on color. The tones here all coordinate, and it’s kind of quiet for me, browns and natural colors.
I’m wearing Rick Owens boots. They’re classic, not fussy. I can just grab them and put them on with pants, shorts, skirt. These JW Anderson shorts are full enough to read as a skirt, so I like that kind of moment too, where it could read like that. Being able to dress in that sort of space is important to me. This vintage leather pullover shirt I found maybe 20 years ago, here in Chicago at a secondhand and not thrift store. My cap is from Grüne. I just wanted to throw in a little plaid to
open it up a bit. Instead of all these solids, it just added a little texture, a little pattern.
I am completely con dent about what I wear. I think in terms of the universal in that my in uences are really through my travels and just being around fashion, and just being excited about men who bring it and look fabulous. You could be 28, you could be 80. It’s really about what supports your existence, your being, and how do you stand in that truth, and just go with that.
Tony Lewis and Easy Otabor reveal how creativity, risk, and legacy collide. Photography by Ryan Lowry
MIXING UP MAGIC
TONY LEWIS I have this problem with being good at something. It’s making other people’s lives better in this magical way. Magical Negroni is apt because this drink is good.
EASY OTABOR I like it. Do you ever think that something that seems magical is just lucky?
TL There’s a lack of control in luck. I think of how, when I was in graduate school, I went with some people who were kind to my face, then, after I graduated and started doing well, I found out those same people were saying, “Well, he only got that…”
EO Because he was lucky.
TL Or, because he was Black.
EO Someone said once that luck is just when preparation meets opportunity. But how many times can you be lucky? Maybe you’re just good at being lucky or at creating magic?
TL I also love the idea of magic because it gets into illusion, into theater. There is a lot of theater in what we do.
EO I always talk to people about just creating stages. Who else can perform on this stage or not? Are you doing the right things so that other people have opportunities? I’m always trying to create multiple stages.
TL That is a whole other level in terms of how somebody might complicate the idea of what magic is. Because then you’re using a platform, or stage in this case, to create a context. You’re talking about getting from one stage/context to the other stage/context. What’s brilliant about that is, you’re able to elude a singular category.
EO You do so many different things that people don’t know about. But with me, it can hurt me if people know that I do ve or six different things all the time. They think, “This is Easy, he does a lot of things.” When somebody is just known for one thing, it’s like, “Easy, he’s this or he does that.”
TL People’s inability to describe you in one word is so interesting. For the past decade, I’ve wanted people to think about what I do with one word: drawing. It’s an idea that people can gravitate towards, but it also doesn’t have that much meaning. I gravitated towards that because I am a bit weary of other people controlling the language around me. If somebody called me a painter, I’d be upset because I’m not a painter even if I use painterly language. How do you feel about being able to control the language around you?
EO I’ve learned to not care what people think. I had to let go because I would drive myself crazy if I was like, “Damn, someone called me a designer in this interview or a curator in that.” I’m all of those things. So, they’re not wrong in saying that, but I wish that there was a word that could sum up everything I did and there’s not. I live in different circles, sometimes they overlap, and sometimes they’re separate.
I have to give myself grace because the crux of what I do is communitybuilding and putting people together and building these bridges in any world that I’m in, no matter what circle I’m in at a given time. I’ve just got to be open to someone perceiving it another way.
TL I’m a particular type of Chicagobased artist. I do have familiarity with the larger art world and a larger world, but I understand how I’m perceived. There are some boundaries for me in certain places and certain contexts, but, at the same time, I don’t see those same boundaries for you.
I am curious how you reacted when you rst encountered those boundaries that are not self-made but are externally there, that you have to navigate around? What does that look like?
EO One thing is just being a Black man in this space. There aren’t that many Black people in the art world. But it’s
changing, slowly but surely, every year and getting better.
Sometimes you have to be the sacri cial lamb and make this easier for someone else coming up behind you, knowing that it’s going to get better. It might not even get better for me, but I’m doing it so someone else could do even better. I’ve got to be so much for so many different people. You can relate in the art world, especially being a Black, tall man. You might be asked if you do a million other things before they would think you were an artist.
Or even me being in this room or being at Art Basel Switzerland, people ask, “What are you doing here? You’re visiting here for this or that?” Questions you would never ask anyone else.
TL You confound people a little bit because people don’t see you as a thing that they can own, which seems like it causes problems.
EO Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it hurts, but that’s with everything. No one’s forcing me to be in this space.
I named the gallery Anthony after my dad. This is something that’s not for me. It’s for other people. It’s for legacy. It’s for my dad. It’s for the pain. My dad passed away when I was younger. I named it after him to walk into that pain. Do you know how hard that was at rst?
TL Absolutely.
EO Every day, to see my dad’s name, to hear his name. But it was a healing process as well. I try to tell a lot of people that. It’s something I can’t give up on. I named it after the person who brought me into this world and is no longer with me.
TL The name changes the stakes.
EO That’s what we’re talking about.
TL That’s so interesting. I’m going to have a little bit more of this Negroni.
EO Go for it. You made this, right?
TL I did. Cocktails are one of those things that I love. There’s a lot of parallels culturally between the way that I move around the art world and the international cocktail scene. Cocktails help me understand certain cities. Art gave me a worldview, a sense of history. Cocktails give me a contemporary understanding of a particular place.
EO Do you think you can read a person by their favorite cocktail?
TL Absolutely. It’s another language. It’s this idea of taste; you get a sense of who someone is and what they like.
EO Which is also perspective.
TL Totally perspective. But we forget the larger point when it comes to taste, which is that this person already believes in the situation. Even if somebody has a certain taste in art which might not be great, they’ve already committed to art. I fully respect that. If they don’t have my taste, that’s ne. They are working on behalf of art. Same goes for cocktails.
EO At least they’re in the arena.
TL It’s not the space to shut people out. The point of the drink in a conversation is to make things easier.
EO That’s one of the main reasons I opened my gallery.
“How can we put people in a room that wouldn’t normally be in a room together?”
THE RECIPE
for Tony Lewis’ Magical Negroni
Very light pinch of salt
1 oz. Peach-infused London Dry Gin (Tanqueray No. Ten)
1 oz. Strawberry-infused Bitter (Gran Classico is preferred, but Campari works perfectly)
1 oz. Sweet Vermouth (Cocchi) Barspoon (or more) of Amaro Nonino Quintessentia
1 Orange
Sprinkle in the salt.
Add gin, Campari, Cocchi, and Amaro Nonino. Swirl around and add good ice.
Take a barspoon and stir for about 45 revolutions. Fine strain into a rocks glass lled with good, fresh ice. Peel an orange skin and express oils over the top. Keep the fruit as a garnish or throw it away.
Go make a drawing and/or play some Miles Davis.
TL You have a wide-ranging taste, but you have committed fully to your belief in art.
EO I ask myself: “How can we put people in a room that wouldn’t normally be in a room together?” That’s literally all I think about whenever I’m doing a show, especially a group show. It’s like, man, I don’t care if this artist doesn’t go with that artist. I want his tribe to come to this space and come see a whole other artist that they would never have seen before.
TL You do. I feel like the show that Nate [Young] and I did at Anthony Gallery was fantastic in a lot of ways, but one of my favorite things we did was create Bottled Tiger [2024].
EO That was crazy.
TL Which was a cocktail bar that you allowed us to build in the gallery space. Nate had built the bar entirely out of walnut.
EO Which was beautiful. Shout out to Nate.
TL Which was stunning. I created the menu, and we created this space that, to me, was revolutionary for a lot of reasons because it gave me a chance to bring together two things that I love to do. It also created an art context that was a little bit more approachable than a regular art context. It was a place where people could immediately feel comfortable. They might not know how to walk through an art gallery, but they know how to walk through a bar. Being able to stop in to Bottled Tiger for a moment gave people a chance to relax. It gave them a sense of community.
EO Put their walls down, being open to talk.
TL And then you go and see the show.
EO Which is a great concept.
TL It’s hard to figure out. That’s the other thing about art. It’s hard to know when the right time is to do it and how long it can last. I remember distinct conversations with people coming in off the street to that show when we would do open hours. Torey [Gaines, Anthony Gallery director] would be there, drinking way too many Negronis.
EO I had a feeling. He was always eager to be like, “Hey, Easy, I’m going to go open up for Tony.” I’m like, “Okay, you know there’s other people that work at the gallery, Torey. You don’t have to go.” He was like, “No, I want to go.” Now I know.
TL We were there, doing free pours. We would have vibes. We’d have some jazz on in the background. It’s a tight, intimate space and you just got people not knowing what to expect, not knowing what kind of energy they’re going to feel, and realizing that, with that piece, with the space that you provided, we did exactly what you want to do.
I get chills thinking about it because it was exactly what you want. You were able to achieve exactly what you wanted to achieve in such a way that was welcoming. You’re not even supposed to know how impactful it is. You’re supposed to just keep doing it and keep your head down.
EO Just keep doing the work and showing up and being consistent. I get it at
the openings. When kids or someone stops me and says, “Thank you for bringing this to Chicago, it’s my rst time seeing this artist,” it’s the best feeling in the world.
TL As an artist, I tend to make careful decisions. I take a long time to do something because I’m insecure about the art that I’m making or worried about whatever.
EO You’re just meticulous, making sure that you would thank your future self, maybe. I always make my decisions like that.
TL You have a certain drive and a certain perspective. You see something and want to get it done. What you just alluded to was that you wanted to get it done before you knew what it was, or you wanted to start making it happen before you knew what it was.
EO With opening the gallery, I was like, I have the power to do this. I’m going to keep learning and improving, but I’m not going to allow that to stop me from acting. But I don’t fault anyone for taking their time. Virgil Abloh was just like, “It’s never going to be perfect, no matter what, so just get to it, just do it. You can always work on getting better.”
TL That’s true.
EO I would never do a show only because I want something from you. I want to know what’s going to make you happy. I want my artists to have enough freedom to do what they want to do.
TL It’s funny—I tend to understand what you’re saying through a drawing lens. When you think of drawing, you think of sketching, you think of guring things out on a piece of paper. Like, how do I solve this problem? A lot of times, you make a drawing in preparation for a painting or for a building. But you’re always working out your ideas. One of the things that I’ve done conceptually is to scratch the idea of the drawing as the preparation. For drawing, prep is the thing. One of the reasons my drawings are so dirty is because I’m not trying to make a clean, pristine thing. I’m trying to bring in that prep nature, the scratching out, the erasure, the working through.
EO Do you look at that as pertaining to life?
TL I look at that as pertaining to the way you approach life. You said you want to create the thing while you’re working on it. But most people do that: they go backpacking in Europe or open an apartment gallery. Especially in Chicago, you do that. You take risks and you test things out in a context that’s relatively safe. There are not too many risks. If it fails, it fails. But what I’m hearing you say is that you basically have that mentality, that way of testing, that way of moving, that way of connecting with people and trying to see how it works—but on the big stage. You’re essentially drawing in real time as the nal thing, which is what I’m trying to do.
EO Tony, thank you, man. This has been great. Thank you for the conversation and great talk.
TL This has been fun.
EO But we always have great talks. This is just one that got recorded.
FROM DUSK TO DISCO
5PM: The sun is setting at Tala. It is deep winter in Chicago but, during the late afternoon, light pours through our south-facing storefront windows. I enjoy watching dusk settle on Chicago Avenue while the traf c slows from its consistent daytime stream. The gallery’s namesake, Tala, is synonymous with “bright star” in Tagalog, and its architecture emulates a star’s path from morning to night across three rooms: rst a sunny entry atrium, then a bright gallery, and nally a deep purple library. Today, I oated between each space attending to people and tasks. take advantage of dusk’s stillness and return to my sky-blue of ce nish up some administrative work. Afterwards, I switch gears to nalize my selections for my DJ set tonight at Cara Cara Club, an airy discotheque cocktail bar in Logan Square. I play one of my favorite songs, Conga Radio’s “Right Beside You” (2016), over the library’s hi- speakers. A warm, bright beat reverberates through all rooms while the sun nally disappears.
I to plate
is synony
I pick
6PM: The gallery’s brass doorbell chimes and a few nal visitors enter— close friends of mine, making their rounds through the many neighboring galleries in West Town. Already in high spirits, we embrace, and I give them a quick tour of the show before heading to the library, where I fetch a bottle of wine and set the kettle to boil. Over drinks, linger a moment before closing the gallery together. 7PM: I lock the door and start my two-block walk home, east down Chicago Avenue. Once there, I slip into kitten heels and an evening out t, already accustomed to transitioning quickly from day to night with only a few moments to spare. I pack my record bag and am soon out the door again, nishing my makeup in the Uber across town with a swipe of maroon lipstick. 8PM: Arriving at Cara Cara, I’m by my partner Antonio, who is the bar’s music director. Collaborations between us, like tonight’s, become special moments in which to combine our worlds. I wave hello to the bar staff and settle in while Antonio brings over a glass of my favorite clari ed Thai coconut milk cocktail and a plate of salmon spread and crackers. We unpack records together and begin to pick my rst song of the evening. 9PM: The needle nds its groove—Precious Bloom’s Lunar Fantasies (2023), my favorite Indonesian Balearic beat record. My approaches to curating art and sound are not too different, using each as an exercise to remember my agency to subvert, connect, and move. Not long after my set has started, I spot a group of friends walking in—a mix curators, arts administrators, and artists. We embrace hands over the turntables and revel in this moment to see each other among our busy schedules. Here, we live together for a moment in sonic illegibility—unafraid to fully express ourselves in the sway of one song to the next. Chicago has shaped my sense of community as being of mutual trust and inspiration: I am no longer afraid of the gap between where I am and what I believe to be possible. With the next song queued up, I leave the DJ booth for a moment to join my friends, noticing how the lights mirror our movements as we come together to dance euphorically in-between.
has of revel this other Here,
Four galleries changing the
THE NEXT WAVE
HANS GOODRICH is for the “erudite and glamorous” —how the Pilsen gallery produces some of Chicago’s silliest and brainiest exhibitions
Peter Anastos inherited the name Hans Goodrich from his grandfather, who invented the pseudonym in the 1950s for his now-defunct Logan Square restaurant. When Anastos and gallery co-founder Daisy Sanchez met, Anastos had opened HG, a precursor to the current space, while Sanchez was between New York and London, working both independently and at spaces like Theta and Soft Opening. In 2022, the two oated the idea of opening a space together—preferably in Chicago, where low rents could support a more experimental program. By early last year, Hans Goodrich had been resurrected as a gallery.
They opened with the smash-hit group show “Does Anyone Still Wear a Hat?”, which included works by Débora Delmar, Jasmine Gregory, and Bruno Zhu, among other artists exhibiting simultaneously in major
institutions. They’re committed, they tell me this January, to making Chicago part of an international conversation, in terms of bringing in out-of-town curators and exposing overlooked Chicagoan artists like the late Edward Owens. I ask them about their ideal audience, to which Sanchez enthusiastically replies: “Erudite and glamorous nerds and weirdos!” Chicago is a supportive environment for projects like theirs, they tell me. It’s given them a platform for more playful exhibitions, like the one they opened in March on ctional personas and constructed identities, with participants including Genesis P-Orridge and Colin de Land and Richard Prince’s invention, John Dogg. Go to see their current Joanne Greenbaum exhibition, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, they’ll invite you to stay a while over a cold martini.
Words by Marko Gluhaich. Photography by Evan Jenkins
Recenter yourself at OLD FRIENDS —the Roscoe Village gallery where everybody knows your name
When Delia Pelli-Walbert and Fawn Penn decided to co-found a gallery, the name came quite naturally—as a re ection of not only their own relationship, but also their community-minded approach to working in the arts. Old Friends is Penn’s second business aligned with their mission of supporting Chicago artists. Their rst, the non-pro t The Digs, is a studio for ceramics artists that provides materials and educational programs to support their practices. When Pelli-Walbert and Penn discussed starting Old Friends, the two built on Penn’s experience with The Digs and PelliWalbert’s working for commercial galleries. The latter relocated from Los Angeles to Chicago in December 2023 and, by March, the gallery had opened. Their rst exhibition, a group show titled “Centering,” almost served as a mission statement for the gallery.
Inspired by a 1964 text by Black Mountain College “poet potter” M.C. Richards, Pelli-Walbert and Penn selected works by artists that converse with her ethos of self-re ection and self-protection. What’s clearest about their aims, though, is the emphasis on collaboration—not only between PelliWalbert and Penn, but also between gallerists and artists. When we speak in January, they highlight the intentionality behind each show, each decision, making sure that everything is conceptually sound and tight, and that’s re ected in the works they exhibit and the commitment to their artists. They also tell me that they chose Old Friends because it sounds like that local bar where everyone knows your name: an apt description for the legacy they’re already establishing.
POVOS is in the business of bringing people together—how the West Town and South Loop gallery brings a social practice ethos to its two spaces
Povos began life in 2020 as “not a terribly good website,” its founder, the artist Lucca Colombelli, tells me. After a series of pop-ups in bars, hotels and restaurants, in late 2021, Colombelli found a home for the gallery—which, incidentally, was also his studio at the time—before moving it to a larger space in the West Town gallery district a year later. Across town, in South Loop, Winston Guo was running W. Gallery, a space that the art-history student founded to showcase both peers and more established artists. In December 2023, Guo, uncertain of W.’s future, opened a show of Colombelli’s work. The two hit it off and decided to join forces, leading to W.’s rebrand as Povos Downtown. Its ascent in the art world has been speedy, with ten exhibitions last year across both spaces as well as their rst fair participation at EXPO CHICAGO, to
which they will be returning this year, and stands at both Material, Mexico City, and Felix, Los Angeles. Colombelli describes the growth as community-driven and organic, happening naturally over time, while referring to Povos as more of a “social practice” than a business—a sentiment that attests to his role as artist liaison, while Guo takes care of the backend alongside business manager Dmitry Raykhman. “We just had a space, and we were throwing parties and putting art on the walls,” he tells me. “Although now it's taken a turn to being much more serious.” The name Povos is Portuguese for “folks,” encapsulating Colombelli and Guo’s mission to “have everybody in the same space, speaking different languages, with different cultures and backgrounds, agreeing on something so friendly and timeless as the art on display.”
At WEATHERPROOF, tear down the wall—the Albany Park gallery reimagines what it means to be a Chicagoan artist-run space
Weatherproof is in a lineage of Chicago galleries founded in people’s apartments—in this case, a “hole” in artist Milo Christie’s Logan Square home. Christie began curating small exhibitions at this rst iteration of Weatherproof, named for the plexiglass shield protecting the shows, before opening a larger space in Albany Park in 2022 and partnering with Sam Dybeck in late 2023. The two met while working at LVL3 in Wicker Park and came together after realizing their “Venn diagrams of interest” had signi cant overlap, evinced by their consistent and well-curated program of installation, sculpture, and new media presentations.
When we speak in January, Christie and Dybeck highlight the importance of maintaining a non-hierarchical approach to planning shows, focusing rst on their relationship with the exhibiting artist, considering how
the private space of the studio relates to the public space of the gallery, and understanding how they could best utilize the gallery space—an ethos derived from their own experiences as artists. It’s all done in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, which can be felt in both their self-description to me as “Cointelpro” (the name of a series of illegal FBI operations) and their insistence on extravagant take-home ephemera for each show, such as the scratch-off lotto tickets made for “Auto Dealer Dream” (2024), with Andrew Harding and Yan Wen Chang. To some, they might seem overly trusting of their artists; for the 2023 exhibition, “documentum,” Craig Jun Li tore up part of the gallery’s carpets. But they don’t seem to mind: Christie and Dybeck were planning to remove them anyway, they tell me with cheeky grins.
Partner Content: Kiaf Organized by Galleries Association of Korea (GAoK)
Founded in 2002 as South Korea’s rst international art fair, Kiaf, organized by GAoK, has become a premiere showcase for contemporary Asian and global art. Following its recent collaboration with Frieze Seoul in 2022, Kiaf marks its debut participation with EXPO CHICAGO in another dynamic partnership. Featuring over 20 galleries from Seoul and other vibrant centers of Korean art, this international presentation of artists includes contemporary and historical figures, both emerging and established.
From solo exhibitions to curated selections spanning all forms of media, Kiaf brings to EXPO a vision of modern Korean art that is as innovative as it is rooted in tradition. Visitors will nd material innovations with ink and mother-of-pearl, conceptual experiments with light, new forms of digital abstraction, thematic explorations of nature and pop culture, and works that re ect the legacy of Korean art-historical movements such as Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome art) and the Korean Avant-Garde Association (AG Group).
021GALLERY 021gallery.com
021gallery (est. 2017) spotlights the work of artists Jaeha Lyu, Casper Kang, and Seon Ghi Bhak, who merge experimental sculpture and new media strategies with traditional charcoal on hanji (Korean paper).
Jaeha Lyu, Mind others , 2023
BHAK galeriebhak.com
BHAK (est. 1993) features mid-career artists Young Wook Han and Sou-Yeol Won, alongside emerging artist Min Kim. Each painstakingly renders gurative and abstract imagery into meticulous studies of human nature.
Young Wook Han, Face , 2024
GALLERY 41 gallery41.co.kr
Gallery 41 (est. 1993) curates a selection of young Korean contemporary artists who are reinterpreting the landscape genre. Artist INAE and her labor-intensive pointillist paintings exploring nature are highlighted.
INAE, Memory-Oasis , 2024
313 ART PROJECT 313artproject.com
313 Art Project (est. 2010) exhibits a mix of established Korean and international artists including Kukwon Woo, Xavier Veilhan, and Daniel Buren together with emerging artists Kiwon Park and Yeoran Je.
Kukwon Woo, Village , 2024
THE COLUMNS GALLERY columnsgallery.com
The Columns Gallery (est. 2005) showcases paintings by Kanyong Kim, Hyun Joung Lee, and Jong Mee Jung, artists who challenge traditional artistic boundaries and the viewer’s perception of reality through innovative, compelling techniques.
Kangyong Kim, Reality+Image , 2020
EVERYDAY MOOONDAY everydaymooonday.com
Everyday Mooonday (EM, est. 2014) presents a solo exhibition by Moonassi featuring the artist’s signature blackand-white graphic works. Made with traditional Korean ink meok (Korean inkstick) and acrylic on hanji, these gurative paintings are deeply meditative.
Moonassi, Shining Mind , 2024
GALLERY BATON gallerybaton.com
Gallery Baton (est. 2011) showcases artists from Korea (Suzanne Song, Jaeseok Lee, Doki Kim), Japan (Yuichi Hirako), and Belgium (Koen van den Broek), with a special focus on the abstract paintings of Jimok Choi.
Jimok Choi, Holes of Light , 2024
GALERIE GAIA galerie-gaia.net
Galerie GAIA (est. 2002) presents “The Power and Identity of Korean Art,” featuring artists Seungyong Kwak, Suntai Yoo, and Sunggun Kim. MyungJin Kim’s pop surrealist works are also on debut.
MyungJin Kim, Edgewater-A Space Odyssey, 2024
GANA ART ganaart.com
Gana Art (est. 1983) presents a series of vivid landscape paintings by Geun-young Yoo. Active since the 1990s, Yoo is well known for his metaphoric and otherworldly representations of nature.
Geun-young Yoo, The Odd Nature , 1998
LEE & BAE leeandbae.com
LEE & BAE (est. 2010) presents “From Blindness to Awareness,” a group exhibition exploring emotional evolution in the work of atelierJAK, Hyojin Park, Sangmin Lee, Jinwook Yeom, and Janghee Jang.
Jinwook Yeom, Memory of Mountain, 2024
SUN GALLERY sungallery.co.kr
Sun Gallery (est. 1977) presents two leading Korean abstract painters of historical signi cance: Hoon Kwak and Chungji Lee. Highlights include works Kwak debuted in the Venice Biennale from his 1990s “Kalpa” series.
Hoon Kwak, Kalpa , 1993
GALLERY GRIMSON grimson.co.kr
Gallery Grimson (est. 2008) brings together abstract and gurative painters under the expansive theme, “Inside Out.” These include Sung-Pil Chae, Byung-Wang Cho, Byungkwan Kim, Jin Jung, and Leon Keer.
Sung-Pil Chae, Portrait d’eau 240907, 2024
ONE AND J. GALLERY oneandj.com
ONE AND J. Gallery (est. 2005) features select narrative works by artist Hyangro Yoon, whose digitally derived “pseudo paintings” abstract and manipulate found imagery from manga, animation, and DC comics. Their presentation also highlights many artists represented by the gallery.
Hyangro Yoon, <13>, 2018
SUPPOMENT GALLERY gallerysuppoment.com
Suppoment Gallery (est. 2012) debuts a three-person exhibition by In-Seob Lee, Mi seon Yoo, and Soo Hong Lee organized around the theme “Time and Thought,” incorporating a diverse range of media.
In-Seob Lee, Untamed , 2025
GALLERY JOEUN galleryjoeun.com
Gallery Joeun (est. 2016) exhibits seven gallery artists including Yong Rae Kwon, Ung-Pil Byen, Yeon Hwa Sung, Kwang Young Chun, Maiko Kobayashi, and Tatsuhito Horikoshi. Jaehyun Lee’s latest impasto series is highlighted.
Jaehyun Lee, Life in the can, 2025
GALERIE PICI galeriepici.com
Galerie PICI (est. 2003) presents “Earthen Echoes: Threads of Memory” exploring materiality, memory, and cultural identity. Artists featured include Hajin Kang, Sunsoo Kim, SangHo Byun, DukHee Kim, and Seo-Bo Park.
Hajin Kang, Natural Rhythm, 2017
GALLERY VIT galleryvit.com
Gallery Vit (est. 2003) showcases the work of Ki-woong Park, Ho-Yeol Ryu, and Moon-Seok Kim, artists engaging a variety of techniques including sculpture, media art, moving image, and light.
Ki-woong Park, Athena and Arachne 25 A-1, 2025
KEUMSAN GALLERY keumsangallery.com
Keumsan Gallery (est. 1992) hosts a mixed-media group of Korean artists that features Eunjin Kim’s intricate paintings inlaid with mother-of-pearl and YongRae Kwon’s stainless steel relief works.
Eunjin Kim, Location of God–Hordes of People 9, 2025
PYO GALLERY pyogallery.com
PYO GALLERY (est. 1981) presents a solo booth featuring the work of the late Tschang-yeul Kim. This showcase will highlight the renowned artist’s “Waterdrop” paintings in a rare chronological display.
Tschang-yeul Kim, SA98042(SH97026), 1998
WELLSIDE GALLERY wellsidegallery.com
Wellside Gallery (est. 1978) highlights work by six Korean masters associated with the Dansaekhwa and Origin movements, including rare examples by Seo-bo Park, Ufan Lee, and Hyong-keun Yun.
Hyong-keun Yun, Umber-Blue , 1991
Three of the exhibiting galleries in their own words. Interviews by Jane Harris
Sun Gallery
JH What opportunities does participating in the Kiaf–EXPO collaboration offer you as a gallery that other fair experiences do not?
SG Participating in Kiaf–EXPO provides our long-established gallery with a valuable opportunity. Having represented Korean contemporary art for 48 years, we now have an important chance to introduce the works of veteran artists we’ve long supported to the international stage, particularly the American market. This participation allows us to present the depth and beauty of Korean art to new audiences and gain international recognition for the artistic value of artists with whom we’ve built relationships based on trust and respect over many years. Furthermore, as the newly elected chairman of the Galleries Association of Korea, our CEO Sung Hoon Lee is particularly proud that this EXPO CHICAGO collaboration includes 20 leading Korean galleries, marking his rst international initiative to strengthen the global recognition of Korean contemporary art.
JH How does the work you are exhibiting re ect the goals of your gallery’s program?
SG Our gallery’s core mission is to facilitate dialogue around Korean artistic identity and international context. Hoon Kwak, Chungji Lee, and Jung Soo Kim each demonstrate a remarkable ability
to translate Korean sensibilities and philosophies into a universal visual language through their unique artistic approaches. Kwak’s time concepts, Lee’s abstract reinterpretations, and Kim’s symbolic azalea motifs perfectly embody our gallery’s vision of showcasing the depth and diversity of Korean art on the global stage.
JH As a gallery platforming two abstract artists, what aspects of their practice reveal histories and identities that are distinctly Asian?
SG Chungji Lee, a pioneer of Korean monochrome art, reveals a distinctive Asian identity through her innovative “scraping” technique which embodies Eastern meditation and self-puri cation processes. The Chinese characters (清, 正) and pictograph-like symbols in her works create layers of spiritual and philosophical meaning beyond surface messages. Meanwhile, Hoon Kwak, who relocated to the United States in the 1970s, has forged a unique synthesis of Eastern philosophical traditions and Western aesthetics throughout his ve-decade career. Selected for Korea’s inaugural pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale and recognized with the 2021 Lee Jung-seop Art Award, his “Kalpa” and “Chi” series visualize Buddhist time concepts and chi energy, presenting a cyclical Asian cosmology that contrasts with Western linear perspectives. Both artists express a transcultural vision through abstraction that maintains deep roots in Korean cultural identity while resonating with international audiences.
Chungji Lee, 「○」 - Untitled , 2016. Courtesy: Sun Gallery
Gallery Baton
JH What opportunities does participating in the Kiaf– EXPO collaboration offer you as a gallery that other fair experiences do not?
GB We are excited to participate in EXPO CHICAGO for the first time, thanks to the support of the Galleries Association of Korea. Since its establishment, Gallery Baton has aimed to promote Korean artists to expand their reach around the world. Through our booth presentation, we will showcase a diverse array of talented artists, highlighting our unique perspectives on contemporary art. We look forward to engaging with the audience in Chicago. Our booth is designed to tell the story of Baton, helping us build relationships with local communities, art enthusiasts in the American Midwest, and people from the art industry. We hope to foster an environment where art can continue to be created and enjoyed in the future.
JH How does the work you are exhibiting re ect the goals of your gallery’s program?
GB Founded in 2011, Gallery Baton has gained international recognition for its strong art programs, and it strives for an in-depth understanding of the current paradigms within the ever-changing landscape of contemporary art. This exhibition presents a unique opportunity to explore a range of themes. These include the visualization of personal
and historical experiences (featured by Jimok Choi, Jaeseok Lee, and Yuichi Hirako), the exploration of geometric precision and spatial dynamics (by Suzanne Song and Koen van den Broek), and inquiries into phenomena and essence through non-artistic materials (by Doki Kim).
JH You are highlighting a series of paintings by Jimok Choi that explore the optical phenomena of the afterimage. What makes this work signi cant?
GB Jimok Choi explores the de nition and form of traditional painting, offering new interpretations and alternative perspectives. In particular, the painting series, which he has been focused on for the past few years, is an abstraction that records the form and cognitive sensation of the afterimage of light that he has personally experienced. This series evokes the dichotomy of creation and destruction. The various records generated by the body’s sensory organs in response to constant stimuli prompt us to consider the potential of painting as a medium for the arbitrary relationship between experience and expression.
JH What opportunities does participating in the Kiaf–EXPO collaboration offer you as a gallery that other fair experiences do not?
LB We are thrilled to be featured among Korean galleries at EXPO CHICAGO 2025, which marks a pivotal moment for the international recognition of Korean art and an opportunity to introduce it to a broader Midwest audience. This largescale representation of Korean galleries allows for a more cohesive and impactful narrative, demonstrating the diversity of Korean art and its growing in uence in the global market.
EXPO CHICAGO plays a crucial role in fostering dialogue and will provide, we hope, a deeper understanding of Korean contemporary art, especially as there are many exceptional artists who’ve yet to gain signi cant international exposure. Through the context of such a concentrated presence of Korean galleries, the fair highlights the breadth and innovation of our own artists, helping to solidify LEE & BAE’s place in the global art scene.
JH How does the work you are exhibiting re ect the goals of your gallery’s program?
LB We’re presenting “From Blindness to Awareness” at EXPO CHICAGO 2025, a curated exhibition that explores the shifting boundaries between material presence and lived experience.
Through a diverse selection of works, the exhibition considers how form, texture, and light in uence perception, inviting a deeper engagement with the intangible aspects of seeing and knowing. Featuring works by atelierJAK, Hyojin Park, Sangmin Lee, Jinwook Yeom, and Inhee Jang, the exhibition brings together works that range from intricate, process-driven techniques to meditative studies of space and movement. Each artist engages with the tension between the physical and the ephemeral, challenging conventional ways of encountering contemporary Korean art.
JH Can you explain more about why LEE & BAE has chosen to present a curated offering under the title, “From Blindness to Awareness,” and what that means?
LB “From Blindness to Awareness” explores the dissonance between surfacelevel perception and deeper, subjective truths. In an era of overwhelming visual stimuli, our ability to see beyond appearances is often clouded by super ciality. Through this exhibition, LEE & BAE aims to provoke re ection on the nature of perception and reality.
Hyojin Park, ower sketch 010, 2024. Courtesy: LEE & BAE
was a real homefamous, very fast, and made an impact on the whole world. Michael Darling at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, put on a retrospective of him very early in his career; these were takeaways from the party that the MCA held, where you could choose if you were a “Purist” or a “Tourist.” My partner Dirk chose “Purist” because he believes in expertise, being con dent in your knowledge, and knowing what you’re talking about.
2 These are self-explanatory.
3 This is a pin designed by Jason Pickleman, who had the graphic design rm JNL with his wife Leslie Bodenstein. They did logos for all the great restaurants and creative businesses here in Chicago. Jason did so many books, bene ts —whatever people needed. He was also the in-house designer for EXPO from the beginning. He would often present the world with ephemera and gifts and left little traces of himself throughout the city.
4
These are notes from the artist Judy Ledgerwood, a wonderful
presence whose work is intuitive, profound, and beautiful. She sent us the notes to say thank you for hosting dinners, but they’re also works of art and nice, feel-good objects.
5 Rhona Hoffman is our mother here in Chicago, the grande dame gallerist. She is 90 and is closing her space this year, but she’s not done. A beautiful image of someone we all respect here.
6 Ann Goldstein is the curator at the Art Institute. She and her husband, the conceptual artist Christopher Williams, moved here around eight years ago—we feel lucky to have them in Chicago. Occasionally Christopher will leave little offerings on our door, ephemera related to his teaching and art practice. I don’t know what these things mean or what they are, but I’m okay with that.
7 Forrest Nash is someone who’s been very important in my world in Chicago. In 2008 he founded the nonpro t Contemporary Art Daily, which changed the way people looked at contemporary art, and introduced me—and thousands of others—to new artists. The toothbrushes are an artwork by Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo), Forrest’s
ex-spouse. This is from a series that looks at the world in yellow and blue—and the green that they make together. One toothbrush was Forrest’s, and one was Jade’s.
8 This is o ne of the best hostess gifts we’ve ever received. Gary Metzner and Scott Johnson have their hands in so many arts organizations, nonpro ts and other charitable and philanthropic organizations around town. They know how to bring visibility to these groups, and we admire how incredibly active they are in the community. They brought us a stack of napkins with our names on them.
9 Pope.L was another giant in the arts community. His death was really hard. He lived here, and taught at the University of Chicago, but his practice went far beyond the city. These images come from a brilliant collaborative artwork series put on by one of my favorite galleries, What Pipeline in Detroit. The general conceptual framework was that Pope.L bottled water from the public waterworks in Flint, Michigan, and sold it to rich people to raise money for people affected by the water crisis there.
town hero who became very
How Murat Ahmed challenges traditional notions of patronage. Words by Gareth Kaye. Photography by Evan Jenkins
A NEW ART ECONOMY
FAVORITE
CHICAGO HAUNTS with Murat Ahmed
I love driving my car at night, so I can do things in the creative world I can’t do during the day (read: my job). It is a great place to listen to music, sightsee, and daydream. Following are some routes I have taken multiple times and have enjoyed: 1. Start at Kinzie (Lower Wacker in Streeterville), right on Racine, left on Hubbard, right on Western, left on Grand, right on California, left on Armitage, right on Central Park, and right on Diversey. 2. Take Belmont, Fullerton, or North, starting in the city and ending as far west as you can go in the suburbs. 3. Start at Elston close to downtown, and going northwest, turn right on Milwaukee, ending in Niles at H Mart. 4. When using Google Maps (use the “Avoid highways” setting) to go from ORD to downtown, take Lawrence, turn right on North River Road passing Hala Kahiki Lounge, and go east down your favorite route. (I like either going through Augusta passing through the homes of Oak Park, then western Chicago.) 5. Go south on Western, starting at 15th Street and ending around 110th in Beverly.
On the sofa, Tali Halpern, afraid?, 2024
Among Ahmed’s favorite books is Tim Carpenter’s To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die (2022). Above his mantelpiece is Fin Simonetti, Chapel 7, 2022
On wall, Hai-Wen Lin, 万柿 Wanshi, 2023; the objects Ahmed is holding—not art, just cool candles
While Chicago might boast some of the nation’s nest philanthropic organizations and private collections of modern and contemporary art, it has never been a market boomtown, which perhaps makes it the ideal ground zero for the emergence of a novel kind of patron.
Despite the general hubbub about the ongoing “greatest wealth transfer in history”—with baby boomers and the silent generation in America set to bequeath an estimated US$72.6 trillion to heirs by 2025—art institutions and galleries nationwide are starting to sound the alarm that the largesse they had taken for granted with prior generations is not necessarily “trickling down” to their heirs. Think piece after think piece is published borrowing the parlance of the tech and nancial workers they pine after, asking how institutions, galleries, and artists can “disrupt” themselves to engage a generation more aware of Beeple than Bontecou. I find myself wondering if the distinction between patronage and collecting is as much a difference of disposition than it is an historical phenomenon; whereas collecting ful lls an internal appetite, patronage ful lls an external need. As far as money is concerned: yes, something must change. As far as art is concerned: no, it’s the habit of collecting that should change. Enter Murat Ahmed. Born in America’s other industrial metropolis, Detroit, Ahmed completed his BS in math, economics, and political science at the University of Michigan in
2006. Shortly after, he pursued a PhD in statistics at Stanford University, and, in 2010, successfully defended his dissertation, titled: “Topics in unsupervised learning: feature selection and multi-modality.” If all of this sounds far from the arcane and improbable world of contemporary art, that’s because it is. However, it would be by similarly motivating kernels of interests that his aesthetic proclivities later came about.
Despite living in New York for some years after graduation, it wasn’t until 2019—four years after he had relocated to Chicago for a career in high-frequency trading—that Ahmed fully threw himself into art. With the encouragement of his friend and former co-worker, curator Kristin Korolowicz, Ahmed purchased his rst artwork, not in a white cube along Chicago Avenue, but off a hotel-room pillow during NADA’s 2019 Chicago Invitational. Overcoming an initial, self-admitted “fear of getting it wrong” that had prevented him from buying until then, he tells me, his acquisition of Brook Hsu’s ear stick (2014–19) marks the entry point to a robust holding of artworks meticulously selected less for prestige than for the persistence of a sincere intellectual relationship.
Since then, much has changed. Ahmed is now well respected for his dedicated support of local galleries— such as Good Weather, PATRON , and Prairie—as well as his time serving as part of institutional groups, like the Emerge group at MCA Chicago or the
board of directors at The Renaissance Society, where he was recently a sponsor for Isabelle Frances McGuire’s exhibition, “Year Zero” (2024–25). But neither credit nor the social muscle it confers is something Ahmed craves; in fact, they tend to be things he actively de ects. Tellingly, when B. Ingrid Olson—an artist friend whose work is well represented in Ahmed’s collection—described him to me as “magnanimous,” the word rolled right off her tongue.
And, barring the proud exception of “father” (he and his wife, Katie, welcomed a son in 2023), Ahmed seems to possess a constitutional discomfort with the predictive telos that labels entail. So, if he chafes a bit at being identied as a “collector,” it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. An impulse to avoid determination also suffuses his collecting habits, which he relates to his job working with the art world’s favorite new bugbear: AI.
As Ahmed tells me when we spoke in January, AI is just a tool, but “with each iteration of their capabilities it becomes easier and easier to make something in less intentional ways” and, as such, warrants caution. A self-professed luddite, Ahmed generously explains AI as being the product of predictive projections, where a matrix (a multi-dimensional set of information) is passed through a vector (a single dimension of information) to spit out a new vector, or a single determinate object. The artworks to which Ahmed is drawn tend to do just
the opposite: they convolute the process of frictionless consumption and easy determinations. Ahmed likes finding art that doesn’t necessarily de ne or epitomize a practice, but rather “shows the work,” as he phrases it, through how it is imbued with play, experimentation, and an uncertain but eager desire to make decisions. It’s unsurprising that he feels so at home in Chicago.
Walking with Ahmed through his collection, I notice how his conversation extends beyond the discrete works he’s carefully installed throughout the house, and into the broader practices that have produced them with a clear-eyed alacrity that is conspicuously absent from many a gallery or museum tour: speaking with Ahmed means being spoken with and never spoken to. His posture is always shifted forward when he’s in conversation, almost as if his entire body is listening. “I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of limerence in my life,” he says at one point, betraying perhaps the true subconscious motive for his collecting habit—a desire to have an experience with another facilitated by an artwork’s mediation.
Following the purchase of ear stick, Hsu has become the artist most represented in Ahmed’s collection but, unlike collectors eager to have face time with an artist for whatever perceived auratic value they might possess, Ahmed admits plainly, “I never need to meet Brook Hsu.” It’s not that he’s opposed to such a possibility, rather that whatever would
Ahmed’s new home was designed by Chicago and Los Angeles-based architecture rm dSPACE Studio. Madam X, Fabric of the Cosmos , 2010
Clockwise from bottom left: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Radio City Music Hall, NYC. 1978 , 2017; Tim Mann, F(N)(CY)(BY)(C)(SR)(SB), 2023; Brooke Hsu, tree in a landscape , 2021; Max Guy, Oz, l’Homme Vert , 2022; Hunter Foster, Controlled Bur, 2021
likely resonate in any such interaction is already apparent to him in the work. The same goes for any artist whose work is featured in Ahmed’s collection, though he has developed rewarding friendships with several of these artists— Selva Aparicio, Max Guy, Tim Mann, and Hope Wang.
Ahmed’s relationship with Wang, a ber artist based in Chicago, has been perhaps the most foundational in his journey to becoming the kind of person described by some as a “unicorn”—a singularly well-informed and uncompromisingly intentional supporter of artists. Despite his academic background bringing him nowhere near art-historical or studio-based curricula, Ahmed nurtured a passion for analog photography during his time at Stanford, and his interest in photographic processes is clearly represented in his collection of works by
Ahmed brackets his interests between the “analytical” and the “empathic.”
artists such as Olson, Barbara Kasten, and Brittany Nelson. Among his favorite books is Tim Carpenter’s To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die (2022), whose central thesis, Ahmed explains, is that “of all the mediums, photography is in the perfect position to help us understand art,” due to its unique ability to remove us from ourselves. In Carpenter’s own words: “It authorizes ultimately the afrmation of life, and the nal yes.”
After moving to Chicago, Ahmed began visiting the DIY photography non-pro t Latitude to make use of their drum scanner for his negatives, and it was through a Latitude screen-printing workshop that he met Wang. Not long after their initial meeting, Wang—who had already started the open-access weaving space LMRM (loom room)—asked him to come on board, not as a benefactor, but as an equal creative voice.
Despite Ahmed’s lack of experience, the jump to weaving was surprisingly shorter than the one he made into collecting—after all, the Jacquard loom is the predecessor for most modern computational technology. Within a short while, Ahmed was completely enamored of the process: “With predictive technologies, you’re taking things from a higher dimensional space and putting them into a lower one but, with weaving, you’re taking two factors of a lower dimensional space and making a higher one, that’s why it’s called a ‘convolution.’” Since Ahmed joined, LMRM has become an integral resource for artists looking to engage with bers outside the graces of a university program. They have hosted numerous residencies and workshops, announced a move to a larger studio space in Chicago’s Kinzie Industrial Corridor near Latitude, and
were recently recipients of an Artists Run Chicago grant from the Hyde Park Art Center.
“If I can do something that helps an artist continue to make when they might otherwise give up, I enjoy that the most,” he tells me. Buying work from emerging artists and exhibition spaces with smaller margins is one thing, but Ahmed’s interest is less in the short-term and extends towards sustaining practices he values. Understanding that the economic conditions underwriting most contemporary life are less than amenable to serious and intentional aesthetic pursuits, Ahmed has recently begun asking himself, “Is art an excuse for a kind of economy?” This question has led to him working with a lawyer to produce a series of contracts for “alternative economies” to create situations that turn the typically unilateral transaction between
Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Screen (0X5A4359), 2019
In the left alcove: Jacob Goudreault, Eating a banana , 2015; in the right alcove: Hyun Jung Jun, Braided Bow, 2023
Clockwise from bottom left: Emma cc Cook, Mercury, NV 89060 , 2023; (obscured) Brook Hsu, Chungking Express by Wong Kar-wai, 1994, 2019; (obscured) Robert Barry, Loved, Study for Wall Piece , 1984; Emma cc Cook, Button Bean III, 2023
“If I help an artist continue to make when they might otherwise give up, I enjoy that the most.”
artist and buyer into a reciprocal relationship that bene ts the artist beyond mere remuneration. In their explicit concern for protecting the autonomy of artists within a market, the contracts are reminiscent of curator and publisher Seth Siegelaub’s 1971 manifesto, The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement. Ahmed plans to share these contracts with other artists and collectors in the hope that a newer and foundationally fairer art economy might begin to take shape.
Sitting by his replace, I notice a small work hanging just to my left: Howardena Pindell’s Untitled (1976). Seemingly counter to his belief that “the art world picks too much,” Ahmed sheepishly confesses that it is the jewel of his collection. So much for his disinterest in collecting works distinctly representative of an artist’s oeuvre; this Pindell has it all:
collaged hole punches and a maelstrom of arrows indicating some unknown motion. But seeing them uni ed here, rather than in separate works, is something of a rarity. Most distinct though—and this is what makes the work for Ahmed—is the hurried diagram of a prism, rendered in black ink towards the bottom left corner, which seems to possess mass but no weight, almost oating through the space of the picture plane. “Her father was a mathematician,” he relays, “and I guess I was drawn to the mathematical elements of the diagram in the drawing.” Ahmed’s collection, currently split between his former downtown condo and the idyllic worker’s cottage that he and his family recently moved into, contains multitudes. While still in the process of settling his collection into its new environs, Ahmed likens the process to another passion of his: mixing
electronic music, where finite inputs, when put in proximity, create an in nite set of experiential possibilities. Similarly to how the dials on a mixer operate within the gradation of two extremes, Ahmed brackets his interests between the “analytical” and the “empathic,” looking to nd artists plumbing a paradox within the work that might reconcile the two.
An array of mathematically precise but linguistically wily maquettes by Deb Sokolow skewer historical gures and New Age-y cure-alls. Iris Touliatou’s Frame Fetish (2022) is but an empty frame, whose emptiness reveals the sticker denoting the work it once housed—Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants) Moustache (1997). There is also an intuitive bent towards an appropriative mode of production that seems to prioritize the affective in league with the critical. Take, for instance, a selection of Brittany
Nelson’s Halochrome-toned silver gelatin prints, Sol 4,999 (2018), excerpted from the 5,000th sunrise as seen by the Opportunity Mars Rover, or Max Guy’s Peter (2024), a series of deftly altered photocopies from Osamu Tezuka’s manga Buddha (1972–83). At the more seemingly esoteric end are artists like Tania Pérez Córdova, whose A man forcing his biceps to show off his strength (2017) depicts something like anthropomorphized earth, or duo ASMA’s Twin Stars (2021) whose large glowing latex eyes leer behind the couch in Ahmed’s basement listening room. Any collection is, in some small way—whether through taste, identity, morality, etc.—a monument to whom the collector thinks they are. Ahmed’s collection does this too, but in the negative. It’s the uncertainties and convolutions in the daily fabric of life that keep him looking.
Left to right: Hai-Wen Lin, Back Divination-unchanging 45, 2023; Howardena Pindell, Untitled , 1976
Ahmed’s interest in photographic processes is clearly represented in his collection.
Barbara Kasten, Crown Hall 4 , 2018–19
HUGUETTE CALAND: BRIBES DE CORPS
The Arts Club of Chicago
“Bribes de corps,” which translates to “body parts,” features the series of abstract paintings Caland began in the 1970s, after the Lebanese artist moved to Paris from Beirut, where she was born and raised. This migration was Caland’s de ant step away from the world in which she grew up, leaving behind her family— and three young children—to pursue her artistic practice. The resulting works feel celebratory: rich, jewellike orbs bounce through Bustelo-yellow skies, their canvases striated with the sinewy lines that would later become the hallmark of her painting. These poetic forms and bright abstractions are redolent of Hilma af Klint’s mystical abstractions or Etel Adnan’s symbolic landscapes—but with a comedic, sensual edge. In “Bribes de corps”, Caland challenges the maledominated world of abstract expressionism with sparse gestures and bulbous shapes that cheekily evoke the bodies of herself and her lovers. Relationships may have limited Caland’s opportunities to express herself as an artist in Beirut, but these entanglements also prove to be the animating force of her painting, which revels in the delicious, erotic, and complex interactions between people— and her paintbrush.
WAFAA BILAL: INDULGE ME
MCA Chicago
Following the death of his brother Haji, who was killed by the American military in a drone strike in 2004, IraqiAmerican artist Wafaa Bilal created the piece Domestic Tension (2007), which prompted online viewers to shoot Bilal with a remote-controlled paintball gun. For a month, as Bilal ate, worked and slept in a room at the FlatFile Gallery in Chicago, he could be shot at any time: 65,000 times, as it transpired. At MCA Chicago, the piece is restaged without Bilal’s physical presence: what remains is a sparse bedroom splattered in yellow paint, an installation that feels like a nightmarish, incisive portrait of the Iraq War’s aftereffects. “Indulge Me,” Bilal’s rst major survey exhibition, is lled with similar conceptual interventions, which
Here’s
A QUICK WORD withDebra Kerr
combine artistic objects and gestures with technology, in order to meditate on the fraught relationships between the US and the Middle East. New sculptural commissions for the MCA anchor the exhibition: in ominous, monumental black stone, Bilal recreates an ancient Assyrian sculpture of a winged bull destroyed by ISIS in Nineveh, Iraq—and he implants the same gure within the DNA of wheat grain native to the region, ensuring its long-lasting survival (In a Grain of Wheat , 2024–25). If this artwork gets too heady, viewers can take a breather in Pipilotti Rist’s nearby “Supersubjectiv,” an immersive video installation of the artist’s 2001 multimedia work, which includes special artistmade pillows and sheepskin seating for extra viewing comfort.
CATALYST: IM/MIGRATION AND SELF-TAUGHT ART IN CHICAGO
Intuit Art Museum
Self-taught artist Albina Felski performed machine and assembly work for 27 years at a now-defunct electronics factory in Chicago. Her intricate, bright canvases—which are held in the Smithsonian’s collection and at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art—use precise line work to render busy quotidian scenes within compressed, attened picture planes, redolent of the circuit boards with which she spent much of her days. Felski is one of 22 artists featured in this reopening exhibition at Chicago’s Intuit Museum, one of the nation’s only art centers devoted to self-taught, folk, and “intuitive” art. In Chicago, where schools like SAIC feature prominently in the local art community— and in an art world that disproportionately favors those with MFAs—the museum offers a welcome counterpoint, focusing exclusively on artists without academic arts backgrounds. The exhibition speci cally highlights self-taught artists in Chicago’s migrant community (Felski was born in Canada), many of whom did not always have access to traditional education in their mediums. The wideranging exhibition promises to announce Intuit as a major player in the city’s art scene, one focused on highlighting local populations often overlooked.
SEEING THE WORLD
The Peninsula Chicago
Contemporary art has gone international—a fact that should come as no surprise to most attendees of EXPO Chicago. But collectors Bill and Christy Gautreaux, whose collection forms
the exhibition “Seeing the World” at Peninsula Hotel Chicago, are also a Midwestern story: based in Kansas City, Missouri, the Gautreauxs work closely with major museums of the region, including the Kemper Museum of Art and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, both in Kansas City. Their collection, though, offers a global perspective by focusing on a diverse range of artists and uncovering overlooked histories and communities, often non-white or non-Western. Forty-six of these works will be featured in “Seeing the World,” including Japanese painter Tomokazu Matsuyama, Indigenous Crow installation artist Wendy Red Star, and lauded weaver Diedrick Brackens, who will display a new wall-based tapestry in the lobby of the hotel. Curated by Erin Dziedzic, Director of Curatorial Affairs at Kemper Museum of Art, the exhibition’s scope allows viewers to literally “see the world” from one destination—an apt encapsulation of the hyperlocal Chicago art community and its broad reach.
VIDEO DATA BANK PRESENTS: ROUNDABOUT WITH VIDEOBRASIL
Gene Siskel Film Center
An upside-down horizon line, the gentle lap of water against a dinghy’s side. Into this scene, a man appears, his feet sinking into a muddy expanse in the upper half of the frame. This is Ana Vaz’s Amérika: Bahía de Las Flechas (2016), a “film-poem” set in Lago Enriquillo, Dominican Republic, the site of Spanish colonizers’ rst encounter with Taíno natives. Vaz’ deft technique suggests that historic meeting as one that destabilized filmmaking—and reality —itself. Similar meditations on land use, ecology, and colonization are laced through this ongoing lm series, part of a partnership between Video Data Bank and Videobrasil at SAIC’s Gene Siskel Film Center, which, on April 24, will show the works of six prominent filmmakers and artists from around the world. New Red Order, whose 2023 video work Give It Back: Crimes Against Realty was named an ARTnews’ 100 best artworks of the 21st century, will show their 2016 video, The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets. This experimental documentary tells the story of the “Kennewick Man,” a Paleo-American man whose remains were discovered on—and removed from—Indigenous land in Washington state. Together, these six rarely seen video works probe the links between lmmaking, nature, and cross-cultural conversation.
EXPO ART WEEK chats with the president and CEO of the newly reopened Intuit Art Museum.
EAW .............................. What is Intuit?
DK
EAW
Intuit is one of a small group of museums around the world that exclusively focuses on art by untrained creators, people typically working outside the mainstream art world, a genre variously called self-taught, outsider, visionary, intuitive, or art brut. The artists often have faced social, economic, or geographic barriers to attending art school and nding a typical path to art-making.
How do you foster community in Chicago?
DK ................ Our team works with schools, teachers, and partners in community spaces across the city. At the museum, we have a new, welcoming, and safe engagement space, which o ers artmaking supplies, beverages, and comfortable seating for watching videos about the art and artists, as well as books and iPads to learn more. We encourage our guests to hang out in this space, learn and engage, and begin dialogue with our sta and each other.
12 th SITE SANTA FE International 06.27.25 – 01.12.26 Curated by Cecilia Alemani
Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home
A window into the subculture of Mexican American women's precision horse riding presented through poetry and photography.
April 17, 2025-August 23, 2025
FREE admission
poetryfoundation .org/exhibitions
ii·i'Ul·P.iil·iti
Rubio Butterfield Foundation
SECRIST | BEACH
Master Class:
Inside the Last AmericanMuseum School with SAIC Painting Alumni
April 19 - June 21, 2025
Featured works at EXPO Chicago
Booth 104 | April 24 - 27, 2025
SECRIST | BEACH
1801 West Hubbard Street
Jeffly Gabriela Molina, Feelings, 2023
January 25 - July 13, 2025 Evanston, Illinois
Josef Albers • Rick Bartow • Frank Big Bear • Roy Boney • Andrea Carlson • Avis Charley • Kelly Church • Woodrow Wilson Crumbo • Nancy Fisher Cyrette • Jim Denomie • Jeffrey Gibson • Teri Greeves • Denis Lajimodiere • Mark LaRoque • Courtney M. Leonard • Nora Moore Lloyd • Agnes Martin • Wanesia Misquadace • George Morrison • Barnett Newman • Daphne Odjig • Virgil Ortiz • Chris Pappan • Cherish Parrish • John Pigeon • Jason Quigno • Monica Rickert-Bolter • Sharon Skolnick • Skye Tafoya • Lisa Telford • Jason Wesaw • Joe Yazzie • Debra Yepa-Pappan
The collector takes EXPO ART WEEK on a tour of his concept-forward collection
What got you into collecting?
EF ................................. I began collecting in my late 20s after a pivotal meeting with a client who is a board member of a local Chicago art institution When I entered their home, I was struck by their museum-worthy collection, expertly hung salon-style. Our conversation about their collecting journey sparked something within me, and they encouraged me to start my own collection That moment ignited a passion that has only grown over time
EAW .............................. What would a tour of the Eugene Fu collection look like?
EF ................................. The tour begins with the rst artwork I purchased—a lithograph by Robert Motherwell —and then moves through rooms curated around key themes, from the ephemerality of life, to the fragility of the body, to the enduring relevance of the grid . My hope is that all who visit the collection leave with a deeper understanding of themselves and a renewed openness to the world around them .
