Dreamy Scenes
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To create the delicate look of his pieces, Sjovold applies thin layers of paint with a brush, then uses a palette knife to press out the ridges and soften the boundaries between colors. His objects look misty, as if filtered through a veil of emotion–a soft-focus effect that also signals the painting’s artificiality. Subtly orchestrated color variations bring the image to life. Sjovold cites the desert landscape as a key inspiration: he lived in the Mojave for two years between his undergraduate schooling and graduate study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned an MFA in 1990. He says the desert sensitized him to the varieties of white and gray in what seems at first monochromatic sand.
As a teenager Sjovold was a political cartoonist, and he says he still uses objects to symbolize ideas. The most humorous painting here, Titanic & Mockorange, shows a blooming mock orange bush in the foreground and behind it a bulbous ship “sinking” into what appears to be a round blue tarp laid on the ground. Sjovold, who painted the ship from a giant inflatable amusement park slide, sees the work as an observation on the way our society takes “human tragedy and converts it into entertainment.”
Info: 312-226-3500
Where: Byron Roche, 750 N. Franklin
