The 13th edition of Expo Chicago is currently buzzing as huge squads of museum directors, curators, and collectors have descended on the Windy City this week for the fair. This edition is smaller than years past, with a pared-down group of 130 exhibitors—coming from cities as far-flung as New York, Tokyo, Memphis, London, Buenos Aires, and Lagos—spread across the Navy Pier.
“The scaling down in size allowed for a raising of the bar in terms of the overall quality of presentations. It’s a more manageable size,” John Corbett, co-principal at Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey, told ARTnews on the fair’s first day.
There’s much to see at the fair, but here are five must-see presentations to catch before the fair closes on Sunday.
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Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber at Patel Brown
Image Credit: Courtesy Patel Brown Based in Winnipeg, Canada, artist duo Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber previously worked with Marcel Dzama as the Royal Art Lodge collective. Their work in painting and sculpture, combining images and cheeky text, had me laughing out loud: one sculpture of stacked, fictitious books includes one cover whose spine reads “Famous on the Inside.” (Relatable!) Another large painting, built of modular small tile-like paintings, has a panel showing a book titled “Itinerant Lothario,” an irresistible verbal combination.
Patel Brown, which has locations in Toronto and Montreal, is offering small works for as little as $1,000, sculptures for between $5,000 and $20,000, and large paintings for between $15,000 and $40,000.
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The Grammont Missal at Les Enluminures
Image Credit: Tom VanEynde, for Les Enluminures. If you thought you couldn’t find an illuminated missal from 1500s Belgium at Expo Chicago, a fair much better known for modern and contemporary art, you will be pleasantly surprised at the booth Les Enluminures, a manuscripts dealer with locations in Chicago, New York, and Paris. The gallery, which also participated in TEFAF Maastricht last month, is offering this rare artifact for $575,000. One of two volumes, the other is held at a Glasgow library, this 13-inch-high book was created for Jan de Broedere, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Grammont. Its pages harbor five of what the gallery calls large miniature paintings, and a number of smaller ones. Fascinatingly, the book had over the centuries lost two of its paintings, but the gallery has since able to locate them, in two different private collections. Now, the book is whole again, according to Sandra Hindman, founder and president of Les Enluminures.
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Pao Houa Her at Bockley Gallery
Image Credit: Rik Sferra Pao Houa Her’s parents, members of the Hmong people, fled Laos in mortal danger after siding with the Americans during the Vietnam War. Her portraits—showing men posed in their military regalia, including some her relatives who fought on the side of the US—are formally simple and emotionally resonant. It’s worth noting that the Lao-American Veterans Association is still fighting for benefits for these men, who recruited by the CIA and then hung out to dry by American authorities. Likewise, Hmong people were specifically targeted in the recent surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Twin Cities, where Her is now based. “They were arrested, hunted down,” the artist told ARTnews. “Agents raided Hmong-owned businesses.” Her large, framed photos, in editions of three, are priced between $12,000 and $17,500.
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Robert Nava at Night Gallery
Image Credit: Jonathan Nesteruk “It costs a lot to look this cheap,” Dolly Parton once said. Robert Nava’s paintings may look hectic and hasty, and like the work of a child, but we know it takes hard work and real freedom to let go of our received ideas of competency and correctness. The artist, an East Chicago native, counts the Chicago Imagists as an early inspiration, and, having moved to New York after attending Yale, he also holds Jean-Michel Basquiat as a major influence, Night Gallery founder Davida Nemeroff said.
Commanding the booth is his Volt Dog, Batteries Dragon (2025), in which the titular beasts cavort against a pink ground, accompanied by summary depictions of a tree, a submarine, and bolts of lightning. The canvas is painted in oil and acrylic, with some sections having the feel of an airbrushed piece of graffiti hastily thrown-up. He worked on it over two years, according to Nemeroff.
By the end of VIP day on Thursday, the gallery had placed paintings by Nava at prices as high as $200,000.
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Aliza Nisenbaum at Anton Kern and Regen Projects
Image Credit: Courtesy Anton Kern and Regen Projects New York–based artist Aliza Nisenbaum, who earned her BFA and MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will be in the spotlight in a big way this June, when the Obama Presidential Center opens. She’s painted a huge indoor mural in the interior of the Chicago Public Library branch that will set up shop there. On view in this shared booth are her portraits (priced from $20,000 to $200,000), which are the result of a prolonged exchange with her sitters, whom she often depicts numerous times, and who become participants in the work. One shows a mariachi band from Los Angeles that not only performs but also teaches future generations. Some of the figures who appear in the sprawling Obama mural appear in the portraits in the booth, so eagle-eyes collectors may have chance to own a painting related to Chicago’s next major cultural center.
