Lina Maple at SARCA

Lina Maple at SARCA - Let's Get Glam

This fall at the Frieze Art Fair in London, Dora Fobert's fiber based paper negatives were a critics' pick. The exhibit, ALIAS, created fictional wall captions next to the beautiful ghostly black-and-white images questioning: if Fobert were alive to retell the story of her work today, what would she say? This open-ended question may never get answered, but here is a look at SARCA's newest fall/winter additions in Dora Fobert style, and we're saying, Let's Get Glam!

Modern Day Muses

Artists rely on a continual renewal of inspiration - a source of creative reserves. Nowadays technology provides a level playing field for artists, allowing them to have their finger on the pulse of contemporary culture to which they can respond creatively. But the story is always more interesting when there is a person and relationship that inspires the artistic endeavor. Here are some of my favorite 20th century artists with their muses.

Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick

Jean-Luc Godard and Ana Karina

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Suzanne Mallouk

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton

The People of Pilsen

In recent years, new opportunities have surfaced for artists that challenge the convention of the traditional gallery. The current lull in urban real estate has stimulated the growth of the pop-up gallery, a relatively low cost vehicle which allows artists and gallery owners to create custom event-based environments to display their work. In the heart of one of Chicago’s most vibrant emerging art communities, Pilsen, there is an abundance of low rent empty storefronts near 18^th Street and South Halsted run by Podmajersky.

showPOD on view at 18th and South Halsted:

Lina Maple at SARCA

Lina Maple at Sarca: Which Came First - The Artwork or The Garment?

It has been said that fashion is an attempt to realize art in living forms. Sometimes the similarities are more conceptual, where it is the ideas, inspiration and intent that draws fashion and art together, and other times, the similarities are more blatant. Being someone who is constantly exposed to contemporary art, I cannot help but make references towards it.

When I first spotted the T-bags owl shirts at SARCA, I immediately associated them with downtown New York artist, Aurel Schmidt, who appeared in last year’s Whitney Biennial and is currently releasing a book of drawings with Pulitzer prize winning poet, Franz Wright. Her work, which questions conventions of beauty by finding the beauty in ugliness, often appropriates cigarette butts, beer cans, trash and debris, but uses exquisite detail and craftsmanship in making these seemingly grotesque things transform into an aesthetically pleasing work of art.

I made a similar connection between Myne’s olive dress and New York based artist, Dalek, whose summer exhibit, “Prism Break,” at the Hurley SPACE Gallery used colorful and repeating geometric shapes to create an optically stimulating environment and uncover the secret abilities of color.

In today’s era, where high fashion is being deemed somewhat of a performance art, solidified by New York Fashion Week’s move last year to Lincoln Center, one of New York’s most reputable artistic depots, it is undeniable that artists are influenced by fashion, just as fashion is influenced by art. The question becomes, which came first?

In the Mood for Magenta

With winter just around the corner, I have been feeling especially drawn towards everything magenta. It is such a rich color that beautifully accents pale skin tones which makes it the perfect choice for this season's nail color (pictured OPI's Suzi Says Da), wardrobe (pictured Valentino Fall/Winter 2011) and jewelry (pictured Ana Hagopian necklace). Dieter Mammel uses the color magenta in his Magenta Lovers series to express the concept of sheer bliss, passion and love as depicted in the imagery below. Much of Mammel's work focuses on the use of colors as a metaphor for emotion and a strong depicter of mood. While not outwardly conceptual, Mammel's work is nevertheless thought-provoking.