Henry Darger

Audio commentary

This is a 'page' from Darger's over 15,000-page masterpiece "In the Realms of the Unreal", produced while he was a hospital custodian in Chicago.  To look at his work is to enter into a bewlidering world of epic drama involving children, often gruesome scenes of torture, but also a sense of underlying hope and justice.  He is perhaps the best-known 'outsider' artist.

At Jennie Richie the truck got trouble-some on the plank bridge near a tributary of Aronburg's Run

Academic

collector

Curator

gallerist

Amy Cutler

Most of the figures in Amy Cutler's works are women, who are often represented in slightly bizarre scenes, rendered in exquisite detail.  She makes me think of a contemporary Persian minaturist, representing the strange rituals of contemporary American life.

Peddling in the Poppies

Daisy Japulija

Daisy Japulija is an aboriginal artist from the remote community of Yungngora (Noonkanbah) in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia.  Her works use abstraction to tell ancestral 'stories' in a pictorial language that resonates with Western abstraction, but is rooted in alternate realities.

Billabongs Daisy

Adjani Okpu-Egbe

This work by Adjani Okpu-Egbe immediately made me think of the tumultuous times we are living in right now.  2020 has been a year of contrasts: isolation for many, but also a great tidal wave of rage and claims for overdue justice.  This remarkable work embodies that energy for me.

Bearing Witness To Dystopia: Multigenerational Genocide, Fascism, And Rumours Of Civil War

Joseph Grigely

This deceptively simple work by Joseph Grigely is part of a series in which he cuts out representations of music and sound from mass media.  Grigely has been deaf since the age of 10, so these frozen and silent images take on a whole other layer of meaning when we think about what it would be like to experience the world in silence all the time.

Songs Without Words (Bartok)

Angela Fraleigh

I love Angela Fraleigh's mix of old master techniques with contemporary painting. Her works ooze with the spirit of the Baroque and sheer joy in the sensuality of painted skin, but they also hint at critiques of how women have been objectified through the history of Western art, a tradition she seems to both relish in, and also be able to view critically.

One by one they have vanished into the blank behind their names

Kay Rosen

I could help but smile at this work.  Kay Rosen is a pioneer of language art who often uses visual and verbal puns in her work.  In this work she lists the many Popes who made it to the 10th in their chosen papal name (thus the Roman 'X'), and ends the list with Malcolm X, who famously rejected his birth name as a legacy of slavery.  

Palimpsest

Valerie Potter

Valerie Potter's embroideries narrate very intimate scenes from her life and her emotions.  The intimate scale of the works, and their hand-made character make them simultaneously 'warm' but also powerful in their insight into her inner world.

Untitled (VP9)

Abraham Palatnik

Abraham Palatnik is best known as a pioneer of Kinetic art in 1950s Brazil (a piece was recently on display at MoMA NY).  In common with many modern artists of that period he was also a prolific designer, and it's a real pleasure to see this striking set of tables by him.

Three low tables

Amy Feldman

I was drawn to this work by Amy Feldman because of its energy and slightly clumsy (in the best way!) vitality.  It drawns from many aspects of American mid-century painting, but has a joy and atmosphere that is quite unique.

Duly Doom

A personal reading of Intersect Chicago 2020 by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, curator and co-founder of Preview.art.  The selection draws from the many media and artistic traditions present in the fair, looking for areas of intersection across creative categories.

Intersect Chicago | Intersections

Intersect Chicago | Intersections