The Urban Imaginarium at Marwen

There’s a school of thought that discourages the use of wall text in art exhibitions. “Why should those elitist curators explain the art to visitors?” I imagine its adherents saying. “Let the people interpret it for themselves.”

The problem with this empowering, inclusive approach is that no one is spared from the ensuing train wreck if your exhibition emphasizes conceptual art. Though “The Urban Imaginarium” highlights innovative projects by talented artists such as Noelle Mason and Jan Tichy, their works are undermined by the dearth of information about them.

Mason’s Ground Control (El Paso/Ciudad Juarez) (2007) is incomprehensible to viewers who don’t know its politically charged history: The wool rug’s abstract design, a green line rippling through a mostly yellow and brown field, reproduces a satellite photo of the work’s titular cities. The artist had the rug manufactured by two Mexican artists “in exchange for the amount of money it would cost a family of four to be illegally transported across the [U.S.-Mexico] border,” she writes on her website.

In an exhibition statement, curator Steven L. Bridges explains that he intends “The Urban Imaginarium” to address the unprecedented pace of urbanization around the world and to introduce a variety of artistic practices to the young students in Marwen’s classes. It succeeds in doing both: The show includes painting, photography, video and paper art as well as interactive projects such as AREA Chicago’s Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago (2006–present), which invites us to draw our own mental maps of the city. Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today’s amusing Where the Grass Is Greener (pictured, 2009) exposes the pitfalls of an environmentalist utopia. But too many of these imaginative pieces can’t speak for themselves.