Art Galleries & Museums

Opening this month at Kavi Gupta in Chicago is a new exhibition of works from Mission School painter Clare Rojas. Egret includes a range of works, representative of Rojas’ diverse practice, which has encompassed printmaking, painting, murals, and sculpture. Included in this exhibition are 100 small abstract sketches in gouache, created by Rojas as part of her daily practice. There are also nine large oil paintings and several sculptural works. In the past, Rojas’ work reflected her interest in folk art and folklore.

A fixture in modern art since 1954, Alex Katz’s radically cropped portraits and bold landscapes foreshadowed Pop Art. His wide brush strokes and meticulous composition combine abstraction and representation, with a style faintly reminiscent of woodblock prints. Approaching his 90th birthday, Katz began applying to unmistakable style to landscapes, diverging from the portraiture he’s known for. The resulting exhibition, Grass and Trees, explores three motifs: grasses, roads and trees.

This week at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York, Los Angeles–based artist and designer Tanya Aguiñiga debuts a body of work representing her social justice-based artistic practice. Aguiñiga’s Craft & Care includes diverse projects and objects, bringing together fiber art, furniture design, performance art, and community engagement to document the lives of people living binationally.

Chicago's unique culture and history, as seen through the eyes of its residents, is on view in a striking new photography exhibit opening at the Art Institute of Chicago on May 12. In his 1951 book "Chicago: City on the Make," Nelson Algren offered bittersweet praise for the city: “Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies.

Chun Kwang Young’s solo show, Aggregation, opened May 3rd at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York. Chun’s otherworldly assemblages incorporate both sculpture and painting. His freestanding sculptures and low-relief wall hangings are crafted of triangular cones of antique mulberry paper, or hanji, tinted with tea or pigment.

This month at Carpenters Workshop Gallery is an exhibit of decadent works from Italian designer Vincenzo De Cotiis. As the name suggests, “Baroquisme” is the designers reimagining of the Baroque aesthetic for the 21st century. Known for its ornate designs in rare and fine materials, Baroque may seem at odds with much of the sleek, modern design of the recent past. Handmade by skilled artisans, this collection of seating, lighting, tables, and cabinets offers the textures and luxury of Baroque, with clean modern lines.

Now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Essma Imady’s installation, Thicker than Water, is a heart-rending contemplation of the effects of Syria’s civil war and the realities of life as a refugee, including leaving friends and family behind and the strangeness of navigating a new home. Syrian-born Imady moved to the US to get her MFA just before war broke out. Her work explores the tensions and anxieties of refugees and immigrant parents.

Currently on view at the Seattle Art Museum, three garments from Jono Vaughan’s ongoing series "Project 42" combine beautifully crafted, often elaborate clothing with performance art in a passionate, bittersweet memorial for murdered transgender individuals. Created to raise awareness of the violence faced by transgender people, the artist plans to create 42 of these memorials, referencing the shorter average lifespans of transgender people.

Rhona Hoffman Gallery opens its new location at 1711 West Chicago Avenue with Judy Ledgerwood’s fifth solo gallery exhibition "Far From the Tree." Featuring bright colors and repetitive patterns inspired by quilting and other decorative arts, Ledgerwood subverts the viewer’s expectations of abstract painting with unexpected color combinations and tactile globs of paint that bleed from one section into another.

“Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II” at the International Center of Photography in New York City is a documentary exposé on a seldom-acknowledged history of American paranoia and racism: it examines the wartime internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.