Yvette Mayorga Yvette Mayorga pink-on-pink ensembles transport you in worlds familiar and whimsical where the American Dream and the Latinx experience collide. Her mixed-media installations include sculptural works that bring rococo to mind—only she uses tools like pastry-piping bags and tips as she turns her canvases into heavily textured pieces that surpass even the most elaborately decorated cakes. Politics, race and identity (including her own childhood and her family’s immigration experience) play a significant role in her frosted candylands. And as the peaks and edges meet, one looks beyond the blindingly bright shades of pink and into nostalgia, memory and the many layers that make us who we are. (Vasia Rigou)
Matthew Metzger/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Matthew Metzger “We abstract failed systems enough to make them still seem viable, unfortunately,” Matthew Metzger tells me on a recent afternoon. “Abstract” is a verb, not an adjective, for Metzger, whose art practice projects images and objects from certain systems—biological, political, linguistic—into the visual through painting, concretizing the dictum that nothing is as it seems while appropriating the self-serious, market-driven abstract genre. The artist’s 2021 exhibition “Heirloom” at the Renaissance Society extrapolated referents into new objects ranging from facsimile to virtually pure difference; all with the sensation of an MRI convecting interior and surface. Metzger, an associate professor in the Department of Art at UIC, has mounted solo exhibitions at Regards, Corbett vs. Dempsey and Arratia Beer in Berlin and group exhibitions at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Fondation CAB in Brussels. “Coda,” a solo exhibition of new work, will be on view in New York this fall at Magenta Plains. (Emeline Boehringer)
Ayanah Moor/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Ayanah Moor Blackness and gender identity take shape in the form of paintings, prints, collage, drawings and performance as Ayanah Moor interrogates pop culture. She draws inspiration from music, the spoken word, advertisements found in vintage magazines and more to create works that provoke and inspire. Familiar images peek out of abstract compositions—a sort of transformative recontextualization that doubles as evocative commentary. While anchored in a historical perspective, Moor’s work remains ever relevant, urging the viewer to introspect, question and expand their understanding of intersectional identities as well as rethink the culture of our time in new and thought-provoking ways. (Vasia Rigou)
Matt Morris/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Matt Morris A description of Matt Morris’ work in the style of Fragrantica, the fragrance review website par excellence where the artist often writes (as well as nearly every major art publication including this one, where he once served as art editor), might mention main accords of queer excess, feminine gloom and confectionary atmosphere. The painter and perfumer’s incisive practice deeply regards scent, makeup and dress as accouterments that produce gender, class and race—rendering porous the body and its limits. In bruisy purples and pinks, Morris’ paintings glow through a soft haze, like the wisteria-toned figure in harlequin diamonds on view at Margot Samel in New York. Another from this series, of women’s photographic self-portraits, is on view at San Francisco’s / (slash) alongside a perfume with notes of swamp witch and Siberian rhododendron. Another recent perfume project, four porcelain-bottled strawberry eaux de toilette for Berlin’s 2022 “Musée de la Fraise,” included scents from berry-freshly-picked to overripe-bloodied-rot. Morris will exhibit work with Vincent CY Chen at Chicago’s Ruschman gallery next year. (Emeline Boehringer)
John Neff/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
John Neff School was in session for John Neff, who returned to the basics of photography ten years ago following a major solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society. Neff, a photographer, educator and curator (often at Iceberg Projects, where he was a founding board member and continues to program exhibitions) adopted a Pentax K100 and sifted the near-universal standards of intro photo courses that accompany new picture-making. The resulting photographs, shown in a 2021 solo exhibition at Regards, are erotic and ordinary, formal and personal—attuned to the scaffolding and structure of picturing. As are other projects, including a machine for reconstructing and photographing poses from gay male pornography presented at the MCA in 2010. Recent projects include a 2015 exhibition with the late Thomas Kong at Night Club in Chicago and long-form videos, one commissioned by the historic artist’s-artists incubator Artists Space. Neff’s work is on view in a group show at King’s Leap in Manhattan curated by Scherben, the Berlin Project Space where the artist has a solo exhibition opening in October. (Emeline Boehringer)
Soumya Netrabile/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Soumya Netrabile Soumya Netrabile channels her immediate and intimate experience in spending time with nature. Netrabile’s recent work of familiar yet unknown landscapes, sprung from walks along the forest preserve of the Des Plaines River Trail since 2019. By starting to understand the ecosystem, the air, the light, and the smell, her mindfulness and daydreaming grew. Netrabile’s abstract mixed-media paintings include charcoal, watercolor, frontage, collage and pastel. Her work will be exhibited at the Anat Ebgi Gallery this month. Though Netrabile is sometimes considered an emerging artist, she has been painting for thirty years. Soumya has been a visiting artist lecturer with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Lancaster Arts in the United Kingdom. (Nicole NeSmith)
Robert E. Paige/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Robert E. Paige Drawing inspiration from a rich tapestry of sources, including African American decorative arts heritage, traditional African art and textiles, the rhythms of jazz music and the principles of Bauhaus, Robert Paige is a multidisciplinary artist and arts educator working across textile design, painting, collage and sculpture to shine a bright light on Black culture. Part of both the Black Arts Movement, which was hailed as the artistic arm of the Black Power Movement, and the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA), Paige is primarily a textile painter known for the Afrocentric 1970s Dakkabar collection at Sears that highlighted Black culture and his unique “Kool-Aid” palette. His work, featuring vivid colors and abstract geometries, brings together the historical and the contemporary, while at the same time leading the viewer toward serenity, connection and the appreciation of everyday beauty. (Vasia Rigou)
Ebony G. Patterson/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Ebony G. Patterson Working with mixed media to address social and political issues—think glitter, conch shells, sequins, fabric, toys, beads, faux flowers, jewelry—the Jamaican-born artist and educator has come a long way. Ebony Patterson’s work, vivid and colorful, is bold in subject matter as well as emotional response. Otherworldly flora and fauna create unexpected environments that evoke serenity but also awe and a sort of darkness. For Patterson, race, gender, class and violence are never too far removed from her intricate installations. Experience it up close at her summer exhibition at New York Botanical Garden. (Vasia Rigou)
Julia Phillips Primarily working with ceramics, metal and stone, Julia Phillips crafts objects intertwining functionality, human form and societal power dynamics, drawing from personal experiences, memories, and subconscious desires. Her pieces have a close connection to the body, often featuring ceramics cast from her own contours, enhanced by multi-fired, layered, flesh-toned glazes. Think of them as everyday objects, tools or apparatuses of sorts that double as metaphors for complex social experiences. Balancing between personal and collective perspectives, her work exposes intimate nuances and urges viewers to connect with experiences beyond their own. (Vasia Rigou)
Pooja Pittie Pooja Pittie’s immense abstract paintings are cosmic in scope and her mannerly mixed-media pieces shine with gauzy blooms of color. Pittie’s practice is a sustained inquiry into the ever-changing relationship between her body and mind. A self-taught artist, with a MBA in accounting from the University of Chicago, Pittie turned to her art full time in 2016. She was a 2022 recipient of the 3Arts/Bodies of Work Fellowship and a former HATCH resident at Chicago Artists’ Coalition. With a solo show opening at McCormick Gallery in March of 2024, she is perhaps most importantly an artist unafraid to delve deep within to find the stars that lie under one’s skin. (Annette LePique)
Celeste Rapone/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Celeste Rapone Known for her unapologetically bold and vibrant paintings that conjure scenes from personal memory and art-historical imagery, painter and educator Celeste Rapone—represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; and Josh Lilley Gallery, London—has received national and international attention, presenting works at art institutions such as the Hyde Park Art Center, ICA Boston, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and Georgia Museum of Art. Describing teaching as an endeavor that she loves, Rapone received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 and is an adjunct professor there in painting and drawing. (Nicky Ni)
Anders Herwald Ruhwald Working with ceramics comes naturally to Anders Herwald Ruhwald. Creating a wide range of sculptural works that vary in scale and material, he turns “mere” physical objects into living and breathing ones. His continuous exploration of the medium extends beyond formal technique: it goes deeper into the relationship between the material and the body—and even other living organisms, such as plants. “Object for Three Plants (Petitot’s Dream #6-10),” featuring red clay planters’ filled with live foliage, serves as the perfect example. Interestingly, the plant within becomes as integral to the work as the ceramic structure that surrounds it. In Ruhwald’s artistry, nature and sculpture effortlessly converge. And as his often-glazed creations, with their otherworldly form and color palette, come to life, they exude a palpable mystique that’s hard to disregard. (Vasia Rigou)
David Schutter For David Schutter, painting is a philosophical inquiry. The artist and educator who splits his time between Chicago and Berlin—teaching at University of Chicago and Universität der Künste Berlin, respectively—paints about the making of a painting. His slow series of grayish, ghostly works, shown at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in 2017, fixated on the painted surface where spectacles imploded in darkness, prompting Artforum to call him a “colorist in denial.” The series has grown bigger into “Night Work,” Schutter’s solo exhibition that took place this summer at Verein by Association in Zurich—curated by the “rock star” Documenta-curator, Adam Szymczyk, with whom the artist worked in the fourteenth iteration of the quinquennial. Schutter is a Guggenheim Fellow and his works appeared in “Monochrome Multitudes,” a major exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art in 2022. (Nicky Ni)
Deb Sokolow/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Deb Sokolow In Deb Sokolow’s work, visual art merges with writing—the two are inseparable. All of her work but the “Drawings without Words” series contains both. Drawings that contain three-dimensional components are discussed in a mock-architectural hand, printed within the margins or in the very center of her tongue-in-cheek compositions. Sokolow, who got her MFA at SAIC, has shown her work in museums including the Hirshhorn, the MCA, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a dozen others where it resides in the permanent collections. She is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Skokie. (Susan Aurinko)
Diana Solis/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Diana Solis Artist-photographer Diana Solis has been a Pilsen resident her whole life, studying photography, art and art history at Columbia and UIC. Solis’ photo inspiration was Graciela Iturbide, and she was lucky enough to have the late Esther Parada as a mentor. Her work is in the collections of the MoCP, the DePaul Art Museum and the National Museum of Mexican Art, among others, and in many private collections. She’s shown her work in Spain, Germany and Mexico, but says her proudest achievement has been creating murals for the Pilsen community. Solis says of her career, “Art is my life’s work.” (Susan Aurinko)
Catherine Sullivan/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Catherine Sullivan With solo exhibitions in the Hammer Museum and Tate Modern, and past participation in the Whitney and Moscow biennials, artist Catherine Sullivan couples her practice with teaching in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. Though Sulllivan’s work is multivalent—her art nimbly moving between the worlds of film, theater and performance—collaboration is at the heart of her work. Sullivan has regularly spoken on the collective nature of her productions and considers the performers she works with to be her true medium. As Sullivan wraps her latest film, her storied career speaks not only to the power of performance but the possibilities of change, of work, and cooperation. (Annette LePique)
Maryam Taghavi/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Maryam Taghavi Artist Maryam Taghavi’s work is that of meaning-making. Taghavi uses sigils inspired by the Islamic occult practice of Simiya in painting, sculpture, performance and multimedia installation to both articulate and transform her world. This idea of transformation is also useful when considering Taghavi’s career. In addition to teaching at the School of the Art Institute, her work will be installed at O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 5 for international arrivals at the end of summer. In the fall she’ll have an installation at Gallery 400 and will wind down 2023 with a solo show at the MCA, which will be entirely translated into Persian for the first time. Also, two paintings were recently acquired for the University Club of Chicago’s permanent collection. A recipient of the 2022 Chicago Artadia Award, Taghavi is an artist reshaping the city’s art scene, space by space, through the magic and movement of possibility. (Annette LePique)
Amanda WIlliams/Photo: Joseph A. Mietus
Amanda WIlliams Artist and architect Amanda WIlliams is a keen observer of the built environment and visual landscape. Raised on the South Side, her work is influenced by the unique and specific cultural experience of Blackness in urban spaces. Her 2015 photo series “Color(ed) Theory” saw derelict houses slated for demolition in the Englewood neighborhood turned into an exploration of color and community. By painting each dwelling entirely in one color she delves into the symbolism behind each hue. The series shows how Black consumer culture created its own visual narrative specific to its community. Her 2020 public art project, “What black is this you say?” explored Blackness, literally in the presentation of twelve different shades of black, but also figuratively in the Black cultural experience. Her artistic practice investigates the intersection of race and space. Her community activism is inspired by those themes as well. She’s a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective, an organization dedicated to dismantling white supremacy in art, design and academia. As a multihyphenate, everything in her work is about the reality of Black people in urban spaces. She shows that those untold stories are worth investigating, defining and sharing. (Jen Torwudzo-Stroh)
Derrick Woods-Morrow “Gravity Pleasure Switchback,” Derrick Woods-Morrow’s first major solo exhibition, recently on view at UIC’s Gallery 400, is named for early pleasure devices, including an infinity-shaped rollercoaster track designed by ingenious and often uncredited Black engineer Granville T. Woods. The cyclic churn through the lives of Black Americans, especially Black Southerners, of pleasure and trauma, remembrance and forgetting, and labor and rest combine with the artist’s deep interest in sex, intimacy, and fantasy in work that imagines queer pasts and futures. Woods-Morrow’s momentum is building: the artist received the Creative Visionary Award from the Black Artists and Designers Guild this year and completed a residency through the 3Arts Camargo program. He was also named a Schiller Family Assistant Professor in Race in Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. A 2021 Sundance Grantee, Woods-Morrow exhibited with photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya at the Whitney Biennial and completed a short film with art and activism organization Visual AIDS in 2019 that premiered at MoMA in 2022. Important group exhibitions include shows at Kunsthal KAdE in the Netherlands and “Open Structure” at the University of Manitoba, curated by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Grace Deveney, as well as Chicago presentations at the MCA, the Smart Museum of Art, and ENGAGE Projects, which will host an upcoming exhibition. (Emeline Boehringer)
Nate Young Nate Young’s mixed-media work engages with issues of race and racialization, and explores the systems and objects that affect one’s beliefs. Often in his work, Young addresses theological themes through text, diagrams or architectural elements. Young often uses elemental signs and symbols such as arrows, circles and grids. Young has been an assistant professor in the Department of Art, School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2016. His work has been shown in various selected solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. Young is also featured in many permanent collections, including DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. (Nicole NeSmith)
Hall of Fame
Alberto Aguilar Candida Alvarez Dawoud Bey Nick Cave Julia Fish Tony Fitzpatrick LaToya Ruby Frazier Dianna Frid Maria Gaspar Theaster Gates Michelle Grabner Richard Hunt Barbara Kasten Judy Ledgerwood José Lerma Tony Lewis Lou Mallozzi Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle Kerry James Marshall Gladys Nilsson Jim Nutt William J. O’Brien Claire Pentecost Dan Peterman William Pope.L Michael Rakowitz Richard Rezac Dzine/Carlos Rolón Diane Simpson Edra Soto Jessica Stockholder Deborah Stratman Tony Tasset Temporary Services Jan Tichy Chris Ware Anne Wilson
