EXPO Chicago

Flowers Gallery will be exhibiting once again at EXPO Chicago, the International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art. This year presenting works by artists David Hepher, Patrick Hughes and Michael Wolf, each whose work is significantly influenced by architectural forms and elements within their chosen mediums. From the disorienting perspectives of three-dimensional relief paintings to monumental renderings of building facades around the world, these artists bring to light the intersection of art and architecture.

For 40 years, British artist David Hepher has focused his singular vision on the domestic high-rises of South London, through which he has channeled the diverse currents that have swept the international world of contemporary art. Finding his subject in the expansive social housing estates built throughout the 1960s and 70s, Hepher has captured the formal beauty of their grid-like structures as well as the physical and emotional traces of their inhabitants.

In paintings of the 2000’s the austere realist style of Hepher’s early work was replaced by an increased engagement with the physical nature of the subject matter, and appropriation of architectural elements such as concrete and spray paint within his mixed media paintings. Works have been prepared with a brutal shuttered concrete ground, which replicates the builder’s application of textured facades, and pushes the paintings to the brink of abstraction. The surface is overlaid with the spray can scrawls and slogans of found graffiti, alongside Hepher’s own marks and art historical motifs, softening the hard-edged geometric structures with the feathered curves of gestural expression.

Patrick Hughes has achieved recognition around the world for his lifelong exploration of perspective and visual paradox, through which he has engaged in a historical dialogue with the masters of the Renaissance and Surrealism, and has been aligned with scientific discoveries in the field of three-dimensional visual perception. Ever since the creation of his first ‘reverse perspective’, the Sticking Out Room, more than fifty years ago, Hughes has continued to confound viewers with his three-dimensional paintings, which appear to move in conjunction with the lateral movements of the viewer.

Historic architecture has played in an increasingly significant role in Hughes work, as well as the way his work engages with that of earlier masters. The city of Venice is a frequent subject of Hughes’ dazzling constructions, as prime examples of the way the artist reconfigures class Renaissance landscapes and perspectives.

The focus of the German photographer Michael Wolf's work is life in mega cities. Many of his projects document the architecture and the vernacular culture of metropolises. Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. 

The photographs in Wolf's series Architecture of Density are images made with a "no exit" photographic style, trapping the gaze of the viewer within the frame. Michael Wolf establishes himself not only as a photographer of the urban structure, but of the unexpected ways in which people adapt to and reconfigure this rapidly changing environment.

Densely populated and restricted by land mass, the city of Hong Kong has propelled itself upwards to contend with the lack of lateral space. Home to more sky scrapers over 150m than any other city in the world, the air is populated with a forest of high rises. Michael Wolf has been consumed by the social and architectural fabric of Hong Kong since he moved there in 1994 and witnessed its rapid expansion, sustaining an interest in the visual elements of the city and using his photographs to explore its socio-cultural phenomena.

For more information on the fair please visit www.expochicago.com