Here we are enjoying the start of summer but still there are exciting signs of fall that we can look foward to and even embrace now. 

In the art world here, and elsewhere, fall is the biggest cultural season of the year. In Chicago the defining event is undoubtedly the opening of EXPO CHICAGO on Navy Pier and the art events and exhibitions timed to open along with the fair. The first sign of the upcoming fall art season erupted on Wednesday afternoon when an interactive installation by artist Roger Hiorns (Luhring Augustine, New York) debuted on the Pier as the first work that is part of IN/SITU Outside.

IN/SITU Outside is a citywide initiative that provides the opportunity for EXPO CHICAGO exhibitors to present temporary public art installations situated along the lakefront and throughout Chicago neighborhoods. A retrospective view of the pathway will be on view at Polk Bros Park on the Pier from June 21, 2017 through EXPO CHICAGO (September 13-17, 2017).

“Siting internationally renowned artwork by artists such as Roger Hiorns speaks to the true collaboration between EXPO CHICAGO and Navy Pier,” said EXPO CHICAGO President | Director Tony Karman. “Navy Pier has a long history of working with the art exposition and presenting large-scale sculptures, and we are grateful to Michelle Boone and all at Navy Pier for recognizing the importance of presenting this work as a part of our IN/SITU Outside program. We are also grateful to one of our participating galleries, Luhring Augustine, for working closely with all of us to make this happen.”

The press release announcing Hiorns' work on Wednesday explains, "Hiorns’ interactive art piece is comprised of large-scale stainless-steel tanks, a compressor and foam, presenting the idea of continuous change in a joyous and ebullient manner.

The sculpture will produce giant foam clusters, which will be shaped by the wind and spread across the landscape. In this way, the artist engages with the surroundings, and blurs the lines between where the city begins and the art ends. The public is welcome to engage with the interactive installation, with the foam becoming the connective tissue between the individual and the artwork."

Hiorns said, “I look to put the human back at the center of the artwork. I look towards how the human may now look, how the human will look in the future. I have to respond to my local environment of inner city pollution and a world of deeply contaminated ideas, so I make these acts of purification and cleansing. I want the foam to breathe a language of perfection over the environment, and this machine is the symbolically living body, to cross over to the world of breathing form from the simple and un-formable foam.”

In case you thought you wouldn't make it out to Navy Pier before September, you now have an entirely cultural reason to make a visit much sooner than that, and that is just what the team at Navy Pier, led by former DCASE Commissioner Michelle Boone, is hoping for, following the extensive aesthetic as well as programming renovations that have taken place over the past couple of years.

Visitors to the Pier to see the work will be able to experience the daily foam eruptions at noon and 4pm. The installation is interactive and participatory, and the foam lasts for quite awhile after it erupts. 

More information on the 6th Edition of EXPO CHICAGO may be found here.

Top image: Roger Hiorns, A retrospective view of the pathway, 2008-17, Foam, compressor, and stainless steel tanks, Dimensions variable. Installation view, Atelier Calder, 2008, courtesy Luhring Augustine, New York