Aaron Delehanty's Visible City

By Lauri Apple in Arts & Entertainment on May 8, 2009 6:45PM

For its year-long installation series, Finestra Art Space asks its artists this curatorial question: "“How do you see your formal expression (forms) as a manifestation of your ideas (concepts) in the context of [the] Space, your artistic practice, and the first decade of the 21st Century?" Featured artist Aaron Delehanty answers that question with Visible City, an exhibit of paintings. Delehanty's work is dramatic and expansive, depicting landscapes dominated by factories, quarries and other remnants of industrialism juxtaposed with brightly colored skies.

This is Delehanty's first solo exhibition in Chicago, and the premiere of a more complex installation -- also called Visible City -- that combines painting, experimental map-making, sound, the Internet, and other media to create a city where humans and nature actually get along. The "visible city" is not futuristic, but instead representative of more humane and more functional version of the present that, unfortunately, humans seem to be incapable of accomplishing (though parts of Austin, TX come close). Be sure to check out the other galleries and studios in the Fine Arts Building as part of Second Fridays.

Opening reception Friday, May 8 from 5-9 p.m. 410 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 516.