At EXPO Chicago 2025, Galleries Take Dangers and Discover Room to Mirror

There was maybe an surprising confidence to be noticed when the 2025 version of EXPO Chicago opened its VIP preview on Thursday, April twenty fourth. Regardless of lingering anxieties over tariffs and broader inventory market volatility, the temper at Navy Pier was one among relative buoyancy. “There’s all the time been somewhat little bit of a fearlessness to Chicago collectors,” mentioned Tony Karman, the long-time president of the truthful. “They wish to be taught, and so they’re not afraid to ask questions. They’ll take dangers on new work.” Within the face of trepidation, Karman invoked the civic mantra: “Chicago is the town that works,” including that, on this explicit case, it’s working as “a metropolis for the artists.”

The twelfth version of the truthful, on view via April twenty seventh, is the second held underneath the possession of artwork truthful conglomerate Frieze, which is basically seen within the modifications to EXPO’s programming. Most notable at this yr’s version are the 20 Korean galleries taking part in a particular collaborative program with the Galleries Affiliation of Korea (GAoK). The initiative attracts on the synergy between Frieze’s Seoul truthful and its concurrent neighbor KIAF Seoul, including a world dimension to the truthful’s usually regional basis.

“We most likely would have by no means been capable of manifest something near a 20 gallery particular part, and that occurred due to discussions that befell due to the relationships with Frieze,” mentioned Karman. “There’s this historical past of Korean galleries which have completed a Chicago truthful, not simply EXPO Chicago, however previous iterations of festivals in Chicago. So, it wasn’t odd for the Korean Gallery Affiliation to return to a metropolis that for many years has hosted and allowed Korean galleries to achieve success.”

On the VIP preview, a local-leaning crowd of collectors, curators, artists, and college students packed the aisles, giving the opening hours a tone that felt each buzzy and casual. The truthful options greater than 170 main galleries from 36 international locations, and this yr’s version contains over 50 first-time exhibitors, furthering a way of renewal within the acquainted structure of the Navy Pier. This was mirrored throughout cubicles on the truthful, the place a number of exhibitors took an emboldened strategy to their shows. “Galleries [are being] true to their program and never afraid to carry work that’s difficult, provocative, and equally as stunning,” Karman mentioned.

Certainly, this strategy was exemplified on the sales space of SECRIST | BEACH, the Chicago gallery co-founded by ex-financier Invoice Seashore and artwork supplier Carrie Secrist. One half of the sales space was dedicated to “Grasp Class: Contained in the Final American Museum College,” a presentation tied to their present exhibition within the metropolis’s West City, that includes work by portray and drawing alumni from the College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago (SAIC) spanning 2000 to 2025. This contains works similar to Jeffly Gabriela Molina’s intimate portrait of two bare ladies, Emotions (2023), priced at $16,000. For Seashore, this sort of institutional-oriented presentation is “a litmus take a look at for the market,” noting that a number of works had already bought in the course of the preview. “I really feel there is a break the opposite method,” he added.

That very same sense of optimism was significantly prevalent throughout the visiting Korean galleries, and several other embraced emotional resonance as a counterweight to financial tensions of their shows. Seoul’s EVERYDAY MOONDAY, for instance, introduced a solo exhibition of 45-year-old Korean artist Moonassi, that includes a choice of ink and acrylic work on Korean hanji paper, priced from $7,000 to $18,000. The gallery selected to carry the artist’s introspective drawings to the truthful with the sense that collectors “are inclined to prioritize emotional and conceptual worth,” in line with director Diny Lee. In instances of rigidity and uncertainty, Lee added, “Artwork that gives reflection and emotional readability typically turns into priceless.”

For lots of the worldwide galleries in attendance, it wasn’t a totally stress-free journey to Chicago. Ashley Kim, assistant supervisor of Seoul-based Suppoment, acknowledged the problems posed by tariffs (artwork, it ought to be famous, is broadly understood to be exempt from tariffs) and broader uncertainty, significantly because the gallery made its EXPO debut. Nonetheless, the choice to take part felt like a pure one: The gallery beforehand maintained an workplace in Chicago and noticed worth in returning to the town with a targeted presentation. The sales space featured works by three Korean artists related to the Seventies Dansaekhwa motion: Lee In Seob, Yoo Mi Seon, and Lee Soo Hong.

“[These artists] wish to spotlight that not every thing you expertise must be good,” Kim mentioned. “It’s like how gentle and darkish work—as a result of there are darkish moments, you come to understand the sunshine, and vice versa.” That sensibility was particularly current in Lee In Seob’s Untamed; grains of time (20250212) (2025), the most costly piece within the sales space, priced at $65,450, which layers gestural strokes of cobalt blue and taupe over a textured white floor, evoking a meditative rigidity between distinction and calm.

Different exhibitors, in the meantime, approached the truthful with a contact of trepidation in the direction of the Trump Administration, however discovered their worries quelled within the first few hours of the truthful. Michael Lewin of Montreal-based gallery Wishbone instructed Artsy, “Clearly, we had lots of concern going into an American truthful from a Canadian perspective, however the reception we’ve acquired has simply been heat and wonderful.”

All the things on view on the gallery’s sales space is priced underneath $10,000, together with work by French artist Magali Cazo—large-scale ink-on-paper landscapes and nudes—and Chicago-born, L.A.-based artist Mia Weiner, whose silk and cotton tapestries discover themes of femininity and sensuality with quiet depth. Lewin mentioned he needed to carry works to Chicago “with out the type of bravado that one would discover within the Miami market or within the New York market.” To him, EXPO is “much more right down to earth.”

This choice for emotionally resonant work carried over to San Francisco–based mostly re.riddle, which made its EXPO debut with a presentation by Paris-based Mongolian artist Odonchimeg Davaadorj. With costs starting from $800 to only over $6,000, the sales space included crimson watercolor works on paper and a commanding set up: 5 large-scale, red-toned figurative cutouts depicting a nude lady, flanked by two owls and two shorter figures, set above a mound of red-streaked grime. The end result was uncooked, symbolic, and a refreshing strategy to a sales space presentation.

“We determined to carry this physique of labor as a result of it’s conceptually strong,” mentioned the gallery’s founder, Candace Huey. “We have been knowledgeable that Chicago appreciates and understands conceptual rigor and mental challenges. Our programming is all the time interested by modern artwork discourse, and Chicago performs a heavy position in that and in shaping these narratives.”

Different galleries are approaching EXPO with a slower, extra meditative rhythm. Los Angeles’s Megan Mulrooney, additionally making its debut at this yr’s truthful, is presenting a two-person ceramics sales space from Maddy Inez and Josh Cloud, rooted in themes of therapeutic. Inez—the granddaughter of Betye Saar and daughter of Alison Saar—introduced glazed ceramic works impressed by the matilija flower, a species of poppy that solely germinates within the presence of smoke. Created in response to the California wildfires, her compositions mirrored the thought of magnificence rising from devastation. Cloud’s works—ceramic constructions that look like collaged collectively—replicate on queerness and identification, complementing the emotional register of the sales space.

“There’s one thing stunning about speaking about vegetation and therapeutic…within the face of such devastation and aggression,” mentioned Mulrooney. “Individuals perceive that given the tumultuous world, it’s very nice to talk about artwork and discuss artwork, to present voices or make clear voices which can be misrepresented or not heard.”