Chicago Design Museum’s 2013 Pop-up Exhibition “Work at Play”

The entry to the Chicago Design Museum’s 2013 Pop-up Exhibition titled, Work at Play. We had a delightful chat with Stuart Hall, gallery assistant, who stands in the background of this image.
 
A very interesting design exhibition occurred last month in Chicago. The 2013 Pop-up Exhibition titled Work at Play opened in conjunction with Chicago Design Week and ran for the entire month of June. Block Thirty-Seven, located at 108 North State Street, was the venue for one of Chicago Loop Alliance’s newest Pop-Up Art Loop galleries, a 17,000-square-foot space on the building's third floor. One of the charters of Pop-Up Art Loop is to: “Transform vacant Loop storefronts into vibrant temporary art galleries throughout the year. Taking its name from one of the original 58 city blocks established in 1830, Block Thirty Seven was there at Chicago’s birth. Today it stands as an iconic symbol of Chicago’s future.” The building is a symbol of regeneration and one of Chicago’s newest downtown landmarks.

The premise for the exhibition states, “For many, the compulsion to create is constant. It’s unstoppable. Beyond the hours at the office, we create, we make–we play. In an attempt to find our own voice, we may stumble upon a visual language that can speak for and, perhaps, inspire others. This year, we celebrate the blurred line between work and play.”

Here are a couple of examples from the exhibition:


Matthew Hoffman
Fresh Start/Start Fresh — 2013
44 x 77

Artist statement: “Fresh Start/Start Fresh consists of a rotational two-word ambigram created from a single connecting line. This optical illusion reminds us that every day can be a fresh start.”

Note: Shown above is my test of Matthew’s work where I took the liberty of playing with his word image of “fresh” by rotating and stacking it underneath. —thank you.


Thomas Quinn
Everything We See is a Perspective, Not the Truth — 2013
When viewing at a certain point, the text becomes aligned.

Artist statement: “Anamorphic typography is a special experience in which an arrangement of letters look perfectly set from a single point within a room, while looking wildly distorted from all other points. The message takes this experience and ties it to a larger point about seeing situations from another perspective.”