Karl Wirsum, “Unmixedly at Ease: 50 Years of Drawing”

Karl Wirsum first gained notoriety in Chicago during the 1960s as a key player in the Hairy Who?, a group of Second City artists whose outré figuration played off of comic books and outsider art. Wirsum’s own style, with its colorful mechanomorphic mash-ups of monsters, robots and totemic forms is exemplary of their aesthetic. This survey presents his equally eccentric drawings created over the course of his half-century career.