The Best Booths at Expo 2024 Chicago

ACA Gallery

From opening to closing on preview day, the ACA Gallery booth was packed with people, including eager VIPs clamoring for Faith Ringgold’s wealth of works for sale, as well as the subjects of said works. Dressed in a selection of quilts and prints, ladies gather on the towers of the George Washington Bridge; a suit-clad orchestra entertains a well-dressed single lady; a lone seated figure gazes boldly from the frame. Last month, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago concluded its 60th anniversary Ringgold retrospective, aptly titled “The American People,” and at least one work from the show has made it to the Expo: French Collection Part One, #4: Sunflower Quilted Bees in Arles (1991), acrylic on canvas, lined with fabric. Ringgold was born in New York, but her stories about gender, class, race, and politics are heard everywhere in the United States.

Eric Firestone Gallery

Judging from Eric Firestone’s recent show (woe New Yorkers who missed a recent show about the Godzilla Collective), the gallery understands what it means to have a successful group show. No color, pattern or texture feels overly popular; every addition enriches everything, all in service of a grand purpose. The gallery’s booth at the expo was much the same, with a vibrant mix of paintings, ceramics and collages. A painting by Regina Granne from 1967-70 is one of the most interesting nudes to come at auction, a 2024 black and white collage by London artist and musician Cato is a promising teaser for his upcoming exhibition at the gallery.

Two outdoor scenes are logically paired. Soren Hope where is your paddle (2022-24), depicting what might have been a summer yard sale. In the painting, a bare-legged, barefoot woman sitting in a lawn chair accepts a dollar in exchange for a length of hose; a figure, beyond identifiable gender, struggles to put on cowboy boots. There is also the flower field painted by Huê Thi Hoffmaster, which is empty and only the petals bloom eagerly in the sun.

Andie Dinkin at Half Gallery

In a solo show at the Half Gallery booth, Andie Dinkin depicts interesting people enjoying a luxurious life in unfamiliar places. Audiences are neither late nor early, and any seasoned party goer knows this is the best time to attend the event. Strangers become confidants; small talk leads to arguments (or better yet, gossip). No one is too stiff or sloppy. With libations and moonlight, ordinary things—candlelight, cake, champagne—acquire an unbearable romance. If you look closely at the paintings, you will find wonderful figures from the history of art, such as the Windswept Mystery that reminds one of Remedios Varro, or the Big Fish that reminds one of Hieronymus Bosch Spirits scuffled with attendees (Willem Dafoe was seated, too). It’s easy to see why Dinkin won the commission to paint the walls of Gigi’s, a swanky new restaurant in Los Angeles—she understood color and composition, and more importantly, she understood why surrealism was desirable.

Voluspa Jarpa at NOME Gallery

One of the best parts of the expo is “Exposed,” a series of one-person and two-artist exhibitions represented by young galleries curated by Rosario Giraldez of the Walker Art Center. One of the most memorable Exposure galleries is the NOME Gallery, which brings together the incisive works of painter, sculptor and installation artist Voluspa Jarpa. She is no newcomer, having represented Chile at the 2019 Venice Biennale and participating in the Shanghai Biennale (2018) and the São Paulo Biennale (2014), but the Expo should make her more of a household name in the United States.

Jappa studies the history of hegemony—the repressive tools of secret police and world leaders that are easy to detect but difficult to eliminate. Faced with an enemy like false memory, she wields evidence of the past: government records, national symbols, eyewitness accounts, anthropological research.A ceiling-scraping installation called Decrypt (2021) as well as part of the live/in situ section curated by Amara Antilla. The work is from her “The Littlest Secret” series, which looks at eras of misinformation, such as the Pinochet regime and the Cold War. Inside NOME’s booth, volumes of edited records hang elegantly on the walls, albeit with a grotesque theme – the human zoo, a common phenomenon in 19th and 20th century cities. The installation shares space with a series of exquisite drawings based on first-hand accounts of pre-colonial Native American life. These communities are leisurely depicted in their daily lives, a sad and disturbing sight. The audience knows what horrors will follow.

Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Nancy Hoffman Gallery titled its Expo exhibition “Real, Real, Surreal, Hyperreal,” and organized its wares along these transparent divisions. As explored by the artists here, the concept of “truth” should not be confused with realism, which seeks to evoke everyday life as it is, free from speculation. Perspective rules the field, with artists questioning the materiality, value and memory of the world that makes up their unique existence. There’s something strange about the still lifes: Natalia Edenmont apparently handled the eggs roughly in her photos, wetting and cracking their shells in preparation for close-ups. The figures seem to have been pulled from a dream or semi-internalized memory, like the tiny figures leaping between the thorns of a pine cone in a Tiffany Shlain print. However, given Liu Hong’s virtuosity in blending personal mythology and national history, her portraits may best embody the theme of the booth. Liu, who died in 2021, called her style “crying realism” because her favorite linseed oil was allowed to drip so that the silhouettes of her subjects (many recreated from photographs) seemed to cry.The topic is Research on Manchu Bride (2015) Stylishly drawn, she materializes like a heroine rising from a solid golden background.

Cernuda Art

The brilliant colors and shapes at Cernuda Arte’s booth are not to be missed. This gallery from Coral Gables, Florida is a preeminent purveyor of Cuban art, bringing a buffet of modern masters from the island such as Wifredo Lam. One of the few artists born outside the United States and Europe to become art stars in the West after the war, Lin embraced the revolutionary tradition of Surrealism while combining its aesthetics with Afro-Cuban spirituality, tropical landscapes, and Cuban politics. Another standout at the booth is painter, performer and sculptor Manuel Mendive. Like Lin, Mendiv also drew on the related histories of West Africa and Cuba, particularly the connections between Yoruba religions, Santarianism, and Buddhism. His interpretation of painting is obviously less angular and more inclined to the mystery and plasticity of myth.Among the outstanding Mendev paintings on display is the title bluebird dream, The titular entity descends from the patchy sky with a friendly yet dejected expression. The follower—a human-like creature, limb-rich or not—approaches and holds out an empty cup to receive its blessing.

Lorena Torres of SGR Galeria

SGR Galeria from Bogotá, Colombia, presents at its booth a new ten-part series of paintings inspired by Lorena Torres’ romantic relationships and the deaths of family members in February and March. . The series, called “I Won’t See You Die,” is brooding rather than sentimental, often featuring a man and woman alone together. Each painting features a plump red rose, sometimes as a gift, more often as a weapon. The couple embraced, but the woman inserted the penis into her ex-lover’s back. On the other side, the two looked at the third figure lying on the grass with disappointment. A bouquet of flowers burst out from the bleeding chest of the fallen young man, but no one offered aid; on their deathbed, they stretched a hand to the empty sky. Torres, a self-proclaimed “heartbreak survivor,” was in the booth and called the show “cathartic.”

DC Moore

The most coveted commodity at an art fair (not art) is attention. How to attract collectors to your booth? How do you get them to stay? One answer might be the approach taken by DC Moore: pairing one or two historical artists (Jacob Lawrence, David Driskel, Robert Kushner) with contemporary artists who share a penchant for bright color and mystery ( Teresa Daddzio, Chie Fueki). composition. The gallery’s upcoming exhibition helps discover talented talent – ​​in this case, American painter and illustrator Amy Cutler. The gallery brought samples of her intricate drawings on paper and graphite that depict women, animals and chimeras, enacting untold folk tales.In gouache on paper start (2023), archers prepare for afternoon tea and shoot spotted horses from the sky. There’s something to be admired about a hybrid metaphor that refuses to easily disintegrate itself. Finding the secrets of these warriors requires courage and curiosity.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

Among the dazzling sculptures, assemblages, collages, paintings and more at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is an elegant ode to Chicago. The booth featured several artists known for their sophisticated studies of African American urban culture, including Eldzier Cortor, painter and distinguished printmaker; Archibald J. Motley (Archibald J. Motley, a master of color who was featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acclaimed Harlem Renaissance exhibition; Charles White, another famous Chicagoan whose paintings What he calls “an image of dignity” adorns public spaces across the country. Some pay homage to Chicago’s working class more explicitly than others.In Robert Colescott’s book Hotag!an impression (1981), a classic frankfurter takes up almost the entire canvas except for the bright blue sliver on top.