Art Fair Viewing

Chicago had its major art fair this weekend at Merchandise Mart. The piece I most remember when asked what I saw -- a giant, green sea creature made of balloons -- probably says something about me and about the fair.

Some intriguing pieces did make me stop, look and think: Jose Cobo's wall crawling babies (these felt somewhat derivative of Juan Munoz), John Saparagena's sampled magazine pages (painstaking labor), and a small installation by Tony Oursler of a talking baby doll on a stack of pillows, with a projection on to the blank face of a doll as the source of talking, come to mind.

There was a little bow to spectacle: an artist encouraging patrons to wrestle in polymer jelly seems to have garnered the most attention in the small number of write ups about the fair; an ice cream truck at least occasionally doling out ice cream (though not when I was there) may come in second for situational bid to grab attention.

Generally, it felt like the galleries played it relatively safe and nothing felt groundbreaking or jaw dropping or overtly profound. Perhaps groundbreaking, jaw dropping, overtly profound are too high an expectation to set. With a lot of art under a giant roof, on multiple floors, even with the much improved, greater sense of open space and air at the fair this year, there's bound to be overload, and subtle work may get lost in the volume. I'm sure I missed some.