One of my favorite places to hang out in Chicago is the Chicago Cultural Center. Every time I step in, there's a new exhibit that blows me away. {Also, I'm a huge supporter of Project Onward as I mentioned once before in a post.} This last visit, it was an exhibit called 'Driven: New Trucks' by John Himmelfarb of abstract trucks that caught my eye. As the exhibit explanation stated, Himmelfarb is known for his "unique vocabulary of abstract forms which, depending on scale and composition, may range from pure abstraction to evocations of gesture, form, landscape, architecture, and even the character of an idiosyncratic written language."
At first, I wondered why someone would be so invested in trucks that they'd feel the need to capture them within artwork, but then I read the artist's thoughts. These works "are not about trucks but about us, our histories, skills and coping mechanisms, ambitions, and character." While I understand how they capture elements of the American life, I still have some trouble seeing how they present themselves as narratives of the human experience. Maybe I'm still looking at them in a too literal manner?
Either way, they are incredible. The few snaps I took do not do them justice, especially the sculptures.
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