SOFA Suceeds Where Others Stumble
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 8, 2010 7:40PM
Photo of a guest in the browngrotta arts booth at SOFA CHICAGO by David Barnes
Post By: Sam Booker
If you didn't get a chance to stop by the SOFA (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art), now incorporating the Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art, this weekend, we have few thoughts upon the show's wrap-up.
The exhibition is unselfconscious. If you were perturbed by how hard Art Chicago (in late April, at the Merchandise Mart) was trying, this was a welcome break. The tone was a little friendlier, you got the sense there might have been less gawkers there. For a lot of these galleries SOFA is the major event of the year to re-up their credentials to possible buyers, network with other artists and merchants, and, yes, strut a bit. The labels involved (intuitive, outsider, folk, sculpture, the opaque “functional”) limit audience, sellers and artists, which frees the show to focus on a narrow swath of territory. It's artistic tunnel-vision, which I think might be preferable to the shotgun blast approach of other Chicago art shows.
The show was held in the exhibition space at Navy Pier. All cultural shows should be held at Navy Pier. There's something about squeezing past rows of hypnotized children, smelling of popcorn and entranced by a live stage show of singing pirates equipped with authentic pirate hand-free mics, that enhances one's appreciation for life's finer things.
The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art was a worthy addition to the exhibition. It didn't distract overly from the SOFA-ness of the show, but it certainly added some welcome flavor around the edges. It's interesting that some of the art world mainstream has so coveted the "purity" and "directness" of outsider imagery over the last half century that "Outsider" work is now almost indistinguishable from the mainstream work that takes its cues from it. This work was more than just child-like renderings and crayola scribbles, it included material that paralleled Art But, comics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, etc. It's refreshing to see people desperately and unironically trying to make themselves understood, it's what art can be at its best.
The works on display were unafraid and unapologetic in their grasp of technique and material. Probably the largest difference between SOFA and Art Chicago is that SOFA is constrained to the physical, there are no “conceptual exchanges,” “spaces,” amorphous “experiences,” the work must have presence. Because of this the show acts (equally, and maybe more) as an exhibition space for facility, as much “below the wrist” as “above the neck”.