By MADELINE HAPPOLD

Running in tangent with EXPO Chicago, Art After Hours is a citywide open gallery night inviting the public and EXPO Chicago visitors to view city art spaces during extended hours. The event features galleries, alternative spaces, and performance venues from across the city and surrounding suburbs. Coinciding with various evening exhibition openings, Art After Hours acts as an exciting kick-off to the fall art season.

Art After Hours will take place Friday, September 23 from 6-9pm. Below are highlights from a few of the many art spaces participating in the event.

Woman Made Gallery

Woman Made Gallery works to promote female-identifying women in the arts by offering a space for exhibitions, open studio space, and other programs. The galley is featuring artist-in-residence Adele Supreme, who will be creating original work in the studio space. Supreme specializes in large scale erotic artwork expressing female sexuality by reclaiming images of sexual oppression.

Woman Made Gallery will hold public open studios from September 22 through September 30, 2016.

Volume Gallery

Volume Gallery will be displaying Dead Frame, the third solo exhibition by Thaddeus Wolfe. In his new exhibition, Wolfe builds off his previous Assemblage series, continuing his craft of glassblowing and concentrating on the interaction of light through a glass medium. The phrase “dead frame” refers to the unseen structure on which neon tubes are mounted, a term derived from the neon sign industry. Wolfe has incorporated these neon structures into his newest works.

Dead Frame is on display from September 17 through November 5, 2016.

Catherine Edelman Gallery

Catherine Edelman Gallery will be featuring the first solo exhibition of Chicago-based photographer Clarissa Bonet entitled City Space + Stray Lights. City Space explores the nature of urban environments and the city's emotional and psychological impact on the body. In Stray Light, Bonet captures city landscapes by carefully constructing images of illuminated building windows at night-time to create a new, urban cosmos. Both inspired by urban landscape, the two photography exhibitions are presented in tangent with one another.

City Space + Stray Light is open from September 9 through October 29, 2016.

Wabash Arts Corridor

Wabash Arts Corridor

Enjoy a free tour of the internationally renowned Wabash Arts Corridor, guided by curator Neysa Page-Lieberman. Located in Chicago’s South Loop, the public arts hub features over 50 large-scale street art murals and installations, one of the largest concentrations in any city-center nationwide. The Wabash Arts Corridor was produced in partnership with Columbia College and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. The tour will last one hour, but attendees are welcome to stay for an additional art walk of the various Columbia College Chicago galleries.

The Wabash Arts Corridor tour will meet in the lobby of 623 S. Wabash Ave. at 6pm on Friday, September 23.

Ed Paschke Art Center

The Ed Paschke Art Center will feature the opening of “Beta,” the inaugural solo exhibition of artist Wasalu Jaco, or more popularly known as hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco. The show will feature a new work of acrylic on canvas painting, complete with a stamp of Jaco’s signature mori skull symbol. Wasalu Jaco is a three time Grammy Award nominated musician, visual artist, and entrepreneur from Chicago’s West Side. He had his first body of work featured at the SoHo House of Chicago in 2015 and used his own painting as cover art for his latest studio album “Tetsuo & Youth.”

“Beta” will open September 23 and be on display until November 30, 2016.

For more information on Art After Hours or EXPO Chicago, visit: expochicago.com

Top image: Clarissa Bonet, Mixed Use, 2016 © Clarissa Bonet