CHICAGO — In 1951, the French painter, sculptor, and Artwork Brut founder Jean Dubuffet delivered a lecture on the Chicago Arts Membership titled “Anti-Cultural Positions.” There, he stated that the one Chicago artist he needed to satisfy was Ivan Albright, “the master of the macabre,” who was recognized for his morbidly detailed depictions of the human determine. The artists who attended that lecture embrace George Cohen, Leon Golub, Theodore Halkin, and June Leaf, all of whom would later be thought of members of the Monster Roster, a time period coined by the artwork critic Franz Schulze in 1959.
Looking back, Albright’s idiosyncrasy, together with Chicago’s museums, the College of the Artwork Institute, and town’s isolation from New York’s artwork world set Chicago’s artists on their very own course, distinct from these of their Manhattan counterparts. That dynamic historical past has at all times intrigued me.
Even after the web opened us as much as the world, Chicago artists have continued to answer their very own wealthy historical past, and make some one thing out of it. With every succeeding technology, it will get denser and extra advanced because it branches into new territory.
Geoffrey Todd Smith, “Chicago Armadillo” (2023), acrylic, gouache, and ink on paper
I used to be struck by this potential to be contemporary and difficult, and contribute to this historical past, after I encountered the exhibition Geoffrey Todd Smith: Meeting at Western Exhibitions. The present’s 15 works on paper are rendered with humble supplies — gouache and a gel pen — and vary in measurement from 6 by 4 to 47 1/2 by 60 inches. I see Smith’s work as an implicit critique the expensive fabrication and supplies which can be widespread in New York’s artwork galleries, and their embrace of large-scale works, one thing lengthy rejected in Chicago.
The works’ monochromatic grounds present a foundation for the palette Smith makes use of to depict his compressed, multi-part types. His vocabulary consists primarily of circles, augmented by round-edged rectangles and shapes resembling a microphone. Utilizing totally different coloured inks, he meticulously attracts zigzagging strains throughout the shapes or round their edges, which make the circles seem volumetric. Continuities and disruptions of the strains and colours add to the work’s visible intricacy.
Geoffrey Todd Smith, “King Cobralabra” (2024) gouache, acrylic, and ink on paper
Smith’s artwork sits on the cusp between eccentric abstraction and automatic sci-fi figures, whose vibratory coloration relationships share one thing with Op artwork and Georges Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884–86), within the assortment of the Artwork Institute of Chicago. The interplay of interlocking and overlapping circles, and shifts between symmetry and asymmetry, preserve the viewer’s consideration transferring and refocusing. On this approach, for all of the associations they might fire up, these items are actually about seeing — a topic that’s not typically held in excessive regard lately. This emphasis on seeing and opticality can be what distinguishes Smith’s artwork from earlier generations of Chicago artwork, who had been dedicated to creating photos, and rejected abstraction. Smith employs summary repetition to push up towards a picture with out absolutely crossing over. He could have been guided by Chicago’s preoccupation with the distorted determine, however the place he has gone is surprising.
We have no idea if Smith is depicting machines, people in protecting fits, or extremely adorned faces of beings from an unknown world. With their humanoid eyes, and the quirky titles of the works, his items are emblematic of a world that we have now lengthy lived in, from Marvel Comics and films to toys and video video games, and the one we’re getting ready ourselves for, dominated by AI. It’s an imaginative area the place something can occur, permitting us to ponder the unstoppable incursions that robots and AI have made in our lives, and contemplate the totally different penalties of our automaton future. What’s unsettling — and Smith clearly is aware of this — is that no matter we think about won’t be what occurs.
Geoffrey Todd Smith, “Self-Portrait With Eyes In the Back of My Head” (2024), gouache and ink on paper
Geoffrey Todd Smith, “Shamrock Chic” (2024), gouache and ink on paper
Geoffrey Todd Smith: Meeting continues at Western Exhibitions (1709 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) by April 12. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
