On the heels of a transitional presentation in Miami that highlighted four separate though related approaches to abstraction, the booth in 2020 will continue to promote artists that studied and spent years in Chicago but aims to focus on figurative elements in selected works by Chris Bradley, David Leggett, and William J. O'Brien. Bradley's new polychromed wood sculptures of cactus pads cutting through defibrillator cases render a standard safety mechanism inert, absurdly disturbed by nature. David Leggett takes cues from Imagist forebears utilizing the slickness of illustration and comic material, whether drawn or appropriated, to confront irony and address deep-rooted societal issues through humor, unfolding in often isolated moments of layered text and image. Skeletal vestiges of vessels and fractured human anatomy are motifs frequently found in drawings, sculptures, assemblages, and installations by William J. O'Brien. Fastidiously sewn felt cut-outs in black, white, and cream produce tapestries that while at once beautiful, are equally psychological and spasmodic. The common sum of the fragmentations found in all of the compositions on view underscores the complicated sentiment of dislocation that is impossible to ignore in this historic year.
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