It’s not easy to tell what’s going on in this image; which is perhaps what makes it so utterly beguiling. Gladys Nilsson’s work has been described as using a particular kind of “horror vacui” in which her frames burst with strange characters, scenes and shapes; often exploring ideas around human sexuality and borrowing from many worlds—comics, surrealism, the tropes of commercial adverting and more. Nilsson, like many of her peers in the group that’s become known as the Chicago Imagists—which also included Jim Falconer, Art Green, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca and Karl Wirsum—studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The group first exhibited together under the collective name Hairy Who, and went on to self-publish four comic books “as an affordable way of creating full-colour, printed accompaniments to their exhibitions that were more fitting to the artists’ aesthetic than a standard catalogue,” says the Hayward Gallery, which is hosting a touring show of the group’s work entitled How Chicago! Imagists 1960s & 70s, opening in March at Goldsmiths CCA in London.
