New artwork reconstructs Chicago riverfront

(Above) Shibuya Umbrellas 4, a 42-inch-square digital image by artist Tom Leighton, combines real architecture from Chicago, New York, London, Paris, and cities in Asia. Marina City is placed between the Unitrin Building and the Statue of Liberty. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

17-May-11 – Marina City and the Chicago River are part of a familiar city “deconstructed and retranslated” in two works of art that were displayed at this year’s Artropolis.

London’s Tom Leighton created the images by digitally altering real photographs. In 2007, the art magazine Art of England said Leighton’s images “appear to be of existing places but are instead imaginary Utopian cityscapes.”

“They aim to capture at once the beauty and paranoia within mass culture, the crowd and the architecture that houses this.”

Familiar cities, explains the article, “are deconstructed and retranslated, disregarding the constraints of physical possibilities, akin to a memory.”

In Venice 4 (left), Wacker Drive appears to overlook a crowded Italian piazza. Under a sky filled with parachutes, Marina City, prominent in the background, sits next to mountains. Space between the two towers is efficiently filled by what appears to be Marina City’s new neighbor in real life, 353 North Clark. Leighton said in 2007 that he tries to balance his images between real and fictional. “As much as I pull apart to construct my urban view, I also aim to create a believable view of the world.”

In 2006, at the age of 25, Leighton won two big art awards in the U.K. His work has been exhibited in London, Paris, Tokyo, and in the U.S. After appearing at Merchandise Mart earlier this month, the images will be on display later this week in San Francisco. He is represented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery of London.

 Website: The Cynthia Corbett Gallery