{"id":388713,"date":"2026-04-08T21:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388713\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:20:14","slug":"5-noteworthy-art-gallery-exhibitions-to-check-out-during-expo-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388713\/","title":{"rendered":"5 noteworthy art gallery exhibitions to check out during Expo Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

By far the biggest recurring event on Chicago\u2019s contemporary art schedule is Expo Chicago, an annual, high-end art fair at Navy Pier that draws thousands of art collectors and aficionados from across the region and beyond.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s edition, which will take place April 9-12 and feature more than 130 galleries from around the world, will be accompanied by an array of complementary events at museums, galleries and other art spaces across the city.<\/p>\n

Many of the city\u2019s dozens of commercial galleries take care to schedule exhibitions during this week that they hope will show off their spaces and lure museum groups and other art lovers who are in town for Expo.<\/p>\n

That is certainly the case with Gray on the Near West Side, one of the city\u2019s oldest and most respected galleries. \u201cOf course, we want to have a strong exhibition on view and do what we can to put our best foot forward,\u201d said Valerie Carberry, Gray\u2019s president and chief executive officer.<\/p>\n

In November, Gray began representing the estate of Roger Brown, one of the best known of the Chicago Imagists who died in 1997, and it will present its first exhibition devoted to the artist during Expo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something really relevant about his work,\u201d Carberry said, \u201cthat\u2019s reverberating not just with collectors today who are new to Roger Brown but, also, you can see things expressed in contemporary art \u2014 his sense of patterning and the clarity of his compositions.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/p>\n

In November, the Gray gallery began representing the estate of Roger Brown, one of the best known of the Chicago Imagists who died in 1997, and it will present its first exhibition devoted to the artist during Expo Chicago.<\/p>\n

The show, titled \u201cWeathervane,\u201d opened March 19 and runs through June 13. It features 11 of Brown\u2019s paintings from the 1980s and \u201990s that depict a tense relationship between the built environment and natural world, with many including looming storms and other dramatic weather phenomena.<\/p>\n

Along with the strong patterns and color contrasts in these semi-abstracted compositions, which can be read from afar, are often diminutive figures and vehicles that require viewers to lean in. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, they really reward that close inspection,\u201d Carberry said.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at four other noteworthy, diverse shows taking place around Chicago during Expo:<\/p>\n

Marshall Brown, \u2018Palaces and Prisons,\u2019 Western Exhibitions<\/a>, 1709 W. Chicago Ave., through May 30<\/p>\n

Marshall Brown, an architecture professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, uses the medium of collage to create often large-scale works that conjure what Scott Speh calls \u201cunconventional and almost impossible structures and worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The owner of Western Exhibitions in West Town discovered the architect and futurist during the decade or so he taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and became excited to show his creations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in artists who create their own worlds or who look at the world and try to envision it as a different place,\u201d Speh said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\u201cUnion<\/p>\n

\u201cUnion Hall\u201d by Marshall Brown<\/p>\n

Brown, who was showcased in 2022-23 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California, has had four previous exhibitions at the gallery. The first in 2013, \u201cCenter of the World, Chicago\u201d included three newsreel-like films with different speculative futures for the Windy City.<\/p>\n

This two-part show offers continuations of two series, \u201cPrisons of Industry\u201d and \u201cPrisons of Invention.\u201d The latter is inspired by \u201cCarceri d\u2019invenzione,\u201d a celebrated series of 18th-century etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi depicting intricate architectural fantasies based on Roman buildings.<\/p>\n

Jessica Diamond, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Fauquet and Jason Hirata, \u2018Ethical Managers Make Their Own Rules,\u2019 Bodenrader<\/a>, 1620 W. Carroll Ave., through May 2<\/p>\n

For the 2 1\u20442-year-old Near West Side gallery\u2019s exhibition during Expo, owner Ethan Kennemer has brought together the work of three related yet still contrasting conceptual artists from different generations.<\/p>\n

He first settled on the language-based work of Diamond, the best known of the three. She emerged in the 1980s in New York\u2019s downtown art scene and was featured in a long-running solo exhibition that ended in 2025 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Joining her will be Fauquet, a French artist who had her first solo show in the United States in 2024, and Jason Hirata, who explores the nature of authorship in his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the show gets at a core concern that I\u2019m always thinking about as gallery owner, which is how exhibitions function within themselves and how artists approach exhibition-making, which I think is always interesting and something that is sometimes taken for granted or overlooked,\u201d Kennemer said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

\u201cI Hate Business,\u201d 1989, by Jessica Diamond<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Bodenrader, Chicago<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Prints,<\/p>\n

\u201cEther,\u201d 2024, by H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Fauquet<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Bodenrader, Chicago<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Screws,<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Butter,\u201d 2025, by Jason Hirata<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Bodenrader, Chicago<\/p>\n

Youssef Nabil, \u2018No One Knows but the Sky,\u2019 Mariane Ibrahim<\/a>, 437 N. Paulina St., April 8 through May 23<\/p>\n

Vintage cinematic images of Cairo blur with childhood memories in Nabil\u2019s hand-colored silver prints \u2014 dreamy, nostalgic imaginings of his native city.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis work engages with longing, memory and return, and it\u2019s very cinematic but also emotive,\u201d said Emma McKee, director of Ibrahim in West Town.<\/p>\n

This show, the busy artist\u2019s inaugural outing at Ibrahim, follows a small solo exhibition that closed in January at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and precedes another that opens in May at the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay in Paris.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\u201cNo<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one knows but the sky,\u201d 2019, by Youssef Nabil<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Youssef Nabil and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Mexico City, New York)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first exhibition with an artist is always the most important, because it kind of sets the tone for the relationship,\u201d McKee said.<\/p>\n

She called the gallery\u2019s exhibition during Expo the most important one of the year. Gallery leaders were eager to showcase Nabil during that time, in part because he returns the gallery to its photographic roots and offers works that deal with both personal and collective histories.<\/p>\n

On view will be more than 15 photographs and three videos, including a 2015 one, \u201cI Saved My Belly Dancer,\u201d which features famed movie actress Salma Hayek, whose father is of Lebanese descent.<\/p>\n

B. Ingrid Olson, \u2018All Lock No Key,\u2019 Corbett vs. Dempsey<\/a>, 2156 W. Fulton St., through April 25<\/p>\n

Corbett vs. Dempsey co-owner John Corbett calls Olson a \u201chometown hero\u201d because the Chicago native and former intern at the gallery has achieved considerable success, including her inclusion in the prestigious Whitney Biennial in 2024.<\/p>\n

She will be featured at the Near West Side gallery during Expo in what Corbett said would be Olson\u2019s first solo show in Chicago since early in her career. It includes 40 works from the tiny to the monumental, including photo-based and found-object wall works.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"BIO_2026_AllLockNoKey_CvsD_BOB_004_web.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\u201cAll Lock No Key\u201d by B. Ingrid Olson<\/p>\n

Photo by Robert Chase Heishman for Bob<\/p>\n

At the center of the site-specific exhibition is an installation that re-creates a room in the gallery called The Vault, where it typically presents video and film works, with Olson offering a kind of turned-out version of the distinctive space she has long admired.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work deals with the body, the kind of ambiguity of perception and how one\u2019s own body responds to seeing a body represented. So, she is really interested in the notion of proprioception, which is how a body through the senses is aware of its own position in space,\u201d Corbett said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By far the biggest recurring event on Chicago\u2019s contemporary art schedule is Expo Chicago, an annual, high-end art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-388713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}