Paul Klein

Dawoud Bey's career and art exemplify the power of art. While a teenager living in New York, the now Chicago-based artist went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the noise and demonstrations regarding the highly controversial Harlem on My Mind show. But when he got there nothing was...

I'm in New York for the much anticipated Frieze Art Fair, which has blown the roof off how an art fair is supposed to look.

My objective in attending Frieze is to line up new experts for my artist empowering course, Klein Artist Works and wow did I score.

Tom Torluemke -- whose expansive show opened Thursday at Linda Warren -- is a marvelous, prolific, once-troubled, insightful, gentle, considerate artist of magnitude. His art is invariably autobiographical and touches on his difficult youth with an abusive father and a loving, deaf-mute uncle with whom a young Torluemke...

Richard Hull's new paintings at Western Exhibitions are splendid. They are completely different than what he's done before and they still look like him. It's always informative to visit artists' studios or see pictures of them and observe what art and reproductions they hang there. Over time those...

For a while now, I've been noticing that more artists are making socially conscious art, engaging with society more, creating less art for art's sake, and are more engaged, with larger visions. Perhaps this is in response and/or stimulated by Ai WeiWei. Next Friday, the 20th the Chicago Committee of...

Invariably, I prefer to preview at least three openings to write an ArtLetter, but recently there haven't been all that many shows opening that I felt like writing about. So I apologize for the hiatus. I also had surgery and got myself a new hip. So it was good to...

I've gone to meetings about a new Cultural Plan for Chicago and have heard the citizens insightfully want art & culture in their communities. I applaud their wisdom. The beauty of Chicago's segregated communities is that the neighborhoods have their own cultural heritage and identity and we are all benefited...

Of three really powerful exhibits opening this weekend the one that most excited me is Crossing Wires at the Evanston Art Center, opening Sunday. Powerful, new media, intelligent work, with timely commentary on today's social issues abounds. Much of the work is interactive; you get close and it...

There's a lot of new talent emerging on the Chicago art scene, right now; talent that is art-historically knowledgeable and relevant. Artists are taking risks and galleries are following suite.

Antonia Gurkovska is a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute and makes a worthy entrance, participating...

The value of three points I stress in my artist empowering, Klein Artist Works course, are borne out in exhibits unveiling tonight in Chicago.

In a studio visit with Veronica Bruce, perhaps three years ago, I noticed her paintings felt like they were constrained and wanted to burst...

One of my latest fascinations is how artists use rules -- constraints or systems -- in the process of making their art. In a show called Moves Thinks Repeats Pauses at Tony Wight, five artists employ arbitrary constraints. One of the artists photographs, prints, creases, rephotographs, reprints, recreases...

Linda Warren has moved to a larger, more handsome space, better for showing art, right around the corner from where she was. The gallery smells great with newly stained surfaces and the oil paintings by Emmett Kerrigan, who's hitting full speed with his new body of work.

Good art is no longer restricted to the established, expected areas in Chicago. Art venues are in the communities, office buildings, condominiums and just plain off the beaten paths. There are pluses and minuses to this. It is good for the communities that are not accustomed to art sites and...

With the waning popularity of physical books Brian Dettmer's tour de force pieces excavate the beauty, power and nostalgia of paperback novels. Like an archaeologist, he digs, explores and presents the evidence. This series is made from myriad paperbacks which relate to the phrases he's reproduced within them. The new...

Here it comes again, the MDW Fair; arguably the best, or at least the best feeling art fair on the south side of Chicago. Anchored at Geolofts, this is the second incarnation of the fair that debuted last spring a week before the mess that was ArtChicago.

Strong shows open this weekend in divergent locations. At Mush Room, in the Flatiron building, Ben Jaffe's photographs made from multiple manipulated photographic images read like paintings. Invariably they document Chicago and present us with places we often know but have never looked at as intently as the...

I got back from Los Angeles last night after taking in a couple of art fairs and portions of the expansive and significant Pacific Standard Time -- a look at art in L.A. between 1945 and 1980 which appears at some 60 cultural institutions.

This ArtLetter focuses predominantly...

We had another weekend of strong exhibitions opening. The long awaited arrival of the new DePaul Art Museum is here. The opening show, titled Re: Chicago is exceptional; full of treasures, contexts and curiosity. Some 40 Chicago art personalities (for lack of a better term) were asked to nominate an...

It's here. The day we've all been waiting for -- the start of Chicago's fall art season, one of the few weekends of the year when the majority of Chicago galleries open in consort and present some of their best art which tends to define the gallery and indicate it's...

The Chicago fall art season opens this week with a massive number of galleries presenting strong art, and they're all jockeying for position and your attention. But right now there are some strong pre-season shows opening -- if you want to see some good shows ahead of the herd.

I'm...