art chicago & next 2010

Taken by Saul Aguirre 2010.

A few weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Art Chicago and Next. It’s a show I’ve attended off and on since 2002 or so. Art Chicago is the big fair, attracting blue chip galleries. Next focuses on smaller emerging galleries and artists. There’s also an antique fair as well, but I didn’t have time.

Overall, the fairs were an improvement over previous years when the fairs lost their way and galleries kept their best stuff for the Miami and New York shows. I saw some confusing booths, but I was still happy to find neat stuff. The Antena space is run by Miguel Cortez. I met Saul  Aguirre, who took this photograph as part of his art piece protesting the Arizona immigration laws. He used real manacles, to remind people of the reality of being picked up by the police. I enjoyed Miguel’s odd cell phone photography, including this piece.

Perhaps the most delightful thing was seeing how various Chicago galleries have really developed. The Corbett vs. Dempsey booth had a number of good pieces. I really enjoyed the  work of John Sparagana. Similarly, I liked the Greg Stimac pieces at the Andrew Rafacz booth. The Golden space has numerous good works from Jessica Labatte. Also worth seeing are the works of Zoe Crosher at DCKT, which is in New York. Crosher has done this weird elliptical photography based on the photos of a 1970s call girl. There were some intriguing, if a bit disturbing, photo collages by Todd Pavlisko at Charest-Weinberg and cool urban landscape geometries by Ross Racine at EO Art Lab, such as the one untitled piece below.

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