Studio City

Six Chicago artists—two emerging, two established, two mid-career—garnering attention today.

By Deborah Wilk

(page 1 of 3)

Photography by Andreas Larsson

Deb Sokolow b. 1974
Multimedia

Photograph: David Ettinger/Courtesy of the artist

Detail of Someone tell Mayor Daley,
the pirates are coming, 2005

Deb Sokolow's exhibition "Someone tell Mayor Daley, the pirates are coming," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, portrayed a band of plunderers invading the city. The show notably drew kudos from the Chicago Tribune's art critic Alan Artner, often a skeptic of experimental work. At 31, this recent MFA graduate is having the sort of buzz most young artists dream about. Her work will be reproduced by the indie 'zine Punk Planet and seen in shows at the Three Arts Club of Chicago (up through October 27th), Pilsen's Polvo Gallery, and West Town's 40000. "Deb's show made me wish we'd got to her sooner," says Allison Peters, curator of the Hyde Park Art Center. "She's doing pretty amazing stuff." While Sokolow's style references comics, her observations are more philosophic. As a storyteller, she's a fan of the movies, but has no plans to dabble in video. "I would love it if someone made my work into a movie," she says. "But I really like to stay as low tech as possible."

John Phillips b. 1953 Painting
	Courtesy: Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery Bang, 2004
While the art world has recently offered an onslaught of representational imagery, John Phillips has mined the painterly terrain of abstraction for more than two decades. Indeed, he has been honored with an election to the New York–based group American Abstract Artists, which includes members such as Piet Mondrian and Brice Marden, and rarely opens its circle to artists beyond New York City. The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, and Columbia College have all shown Phillips's work. Despite his membership in such a venerable canon, his candy-colored palette and formally tight compositions-which of late seem to resemble goofy faces or droopy balloons-challenge the idea of painting as the highest of high art. The critic Kathryn Hixson has called the work a "mix of serious-minded abstraction and eye-hugging visual entertainment." As a professor at the School of the Art Institute, Phillips urges students to make work that "takes the history of painting into account." Phillips is represented by the Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery.