Art Chicago Part II

More notes about artists at Art Chicago 2007

William Conger is a Chicago painter who works with bold, strong color geometric patterns and designs with distinct lines in abstract patterns. There is a hint of a reference to the natural and man-made world in these paintings, as the titles suggest. The patterns consist of solid, firm shapes of mostly solid color and a sturdily constructed forms that seem to have mass and substance, even though they are rendered for the most part as flat on the canvas surface. Personally, I like the abstract, controlled line and form with which Conger works.
http://www.art.northwestern.edu/faculty/conger_portfolio.html

Don Colley had one painting at the Carl Hammer gallery, a gallery that had a lot of art work I liked. His painting showed a human-like creature, perhaps a gremlin, perched aboard what looked like a bomber plane. This painting evokes a sinister atmosphere with its limitation to conveying the scene in dark blue that turned into violet blue and black. The clown and satiric, cartoon-like figures that Colley paints work well in adopting a critical attitude toward weapons of war. This particular painting reminds me of the social engaged art that satirizes authority in Jose Posada's broadsides and some of the German expressionists like Otto Dix and George Grosz. http://www.artnet.com/artist/153021/don-colley.html

Nathan Slate Joseph creates fascinating works by applying pigment to steel and then riveting the individual sections to a canvas like surface. The subtle variations of one color, here it's blue, the slight hint of surface texture and varying depth created by overlapping the individual mostly rectangular blocks of steel creates quite a visually compelling surface. Also the steel glistens and catches light in different areas and from different angles, adding to making this apparently simple surface quite complex. This is a work of amazing originality and makes you realize that though it's no doubt difficult to use materials originally, it can still be done. http://www.artnet.com/artist/26481/nathan-slate-joseph.html

To be continued.