Art in Chicago: Part 1 Dominic Moore

Hi everybody,

I have created a blogger spot, to share all things art, writing and more with the world, and my friends. I hope you will enjoy my travel logs with some amazing art, and some links to check out! This is the first of a few articles I intend on writing on the art I saw while in Chicago.

After the Art Now Fair here in NY, and meeting some cool people at the Packer Schopf Gallery: http://www.packergallery.com/, I once and for all made a little weekend trip to the "Windy City." Coming to Chicago was something I have wanted to do for a while, and there were just so many arrows that kept pointing me in that direction. While all my travels are not quite what I intend for them to be, sometimes with less comes more, and in this case, my trip to Chicago actually exceeded my expectations. Being in New York for such a long time has perhaps in some twist actually boxed me in. While New York seems like the mecca of creativity and art, I find NY can also be very isolated in it's art world, and sometimes in general. I found a little bit of breathing room in Chicagos art scene and people, and it was just the thing I needed.

At the Art Now Fair I fell in love with the selection of artists that Aron Packer exhibits, the kind of art and work that I like to see in galleries. Work that is labored over, detailed and well thought out. All the work I have seen come out of the Packer Schopf Gallery is fresh and vibrant in it's content and concept. The Gallery is currently exhibiting the work of Dominic Paul Moore, I encourage anyone in Chicago to check out this guys work. The full selection of his work can be seen at: http://www.packergallery.com/moore/moore.html
The work is very thought provoking, as there are what I interpreted as three sets of ideas in one universal series. Dominic processes a great deal of relevance from what a regular party may not acknowledge or see in something as simple as a myspace profile, or a page out of "Boy's Life" Magazine. It was great to talk with Moore about his series of work, and the think process behind each piece. The myspace profiles that he has meticulously drawn and painted with graphite and gouache are a sort of "death mask", because the profiles he is showing us are people who no longer in this world. One in particular that I found revealing was this piece (below) of a twenty year old girl. If read over carefully, quotes like "Love to make her week, alcohol to make her strong" and "Don't Worry about the people in your past, there's a reason they didn't make it to your future" become the mantra she lived by, and ultimately what lead to her death. Her life itself was ended due to a drunk driving incident, someone else's carelessness. Each profile drawing makes a kind of eulogy of their lives, with phrases, and comments from friends.


Some of the Series is a body of work displaying different medical procedures dealing with breathing. It's not always often I have the good fortune to speak with the artist, but I got to talk about these works in more detail, and they are a play on what the viewer initially sees and the title of his drawings. The drawings excel in technique, but once again have a very curious double meaning. This one struck me called "Shhhhh... It's Okay", (shown to the right).

The Drawing here shows a man apparently assisting a woman who has passed out, but the question remains in the title. The work holds sophistication while exploring a sinister underlining.

One last duality that I learned more about was that of two drawings, copies from clip outs of Boy's Life Magazine. One clip out is about a boy who talks about being part of the NRA, and the other is about a white boy who dresses in traditional Native American clothing as part of OA (Order of the Arrow). You come to realize that the boy dressed in these clothes is actually a white child. And not a Native American at all. His face is actually rather blank, and clueless.

I find the work of Moore an awakening into what we see in passing by, but rarely stop to investigate. It made me consider the content of my own online profile.

Also showing at the Packer Schopf Gallery are new paintings done by Hank Feeley. While Hanks work differs in content and color schematics from Dominics work, it is equally multifaceted. I got the idea that I was being taken into a dreamlike world of objects we may see in our subconscious memory. I recognized product and design elements, clippets from our memories that are fused into a collage of color and recognizable figures. What I liked about Feeleys work are elements I combine in some of my own work, his figurative line work and combination of rendered objects. If you go and look at the body of the work, you will see how the figure plays into several of the paintings, but you will find them as negative space, or portals into another world. This one (to the right) for some reason just reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, her figure somewhat hidden in the lattice of a complicated daydream, or falling down the rabbit hole. Like a stream of consciousness; these paintings reflect to me what our minds do not control or alter. It signals to me the question of: what items from the material world are leftover,or what stuck out the most from your day? Your week? I love the subtle graphic nature, and painterly skills exhibited on each canvas.