Owned and operated by Chicago doyen designer Jason Pickleman, Lawrence & Clark gallery is a nearly impossible-to-visit self-made space on Chicago’s art-starved North Side. Pickleman, an avid and savvy collector with a strong eye for smart, captivating work, shows largely his own collection on a semi-regular evolving basis. Bootleg Banksys and Warhols complicate each artist’s already complex relationship with appropriation, while production layouts from Kara Walker’s first museum monograph question the value of presence of the original work vis-a-vis the artful reproduction. Pickleman, who has designed hundreds of artists’ books, many for Chicago-based artists, combines his particular taste and expansive connections to make exactly the kind of collection that fascinates, both for what it says about the artwork and what it speaks of the collector.
