It might blow up, but it won’t go pop.” So goes the refrain that plays throughout hip-hop trio De La Soul‘s 1993 album Buhloone Mindstate, a reference to how the group’s music could appeal to a devoted audience but would never translate to popular success. The Elmhurst Art Museum’s latest production, “Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art”—a traveling exhibit that debuted at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California—retools that mantra: the artworks blow up (literally) and go pop (figuratively). As the title makes obvious, all the pieces on display are inflatable, and the show transparently intends to attract a wide audience. But these efforts aren’t just a bunch of hot air.
Today, inflatable art tends to be a fusion of these distinct stages of the genre, best represented by a roomful of fairly recent creations by local artist and SAIC professor Claire Ashley. The weirdly misshapen sculptures are truck-size and resemble the asymmetrical forms of early inflatable art, but the fluorescent, childlike coloring (the result of Ashley’s use of spray paint and children’s backpacks as materials) connects the works to the turn-of-the-century pieces.
Through November 27 Elmhurst Art Museum 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst 630-834-0202elmhurstartmuseum.org$8, free for students and those 18 and younger
