Mural in Rosemont mall brings 'bold, evocative new life' to old painting

A two-story mural was installed this week at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago - the latest piece in the Rosemont mall's contemporary art program.

The abstract mural - titled "zip me up" - by Puerto Rican-American artist Candida Alvarez is above and around the elevator and stairwell doors on level two of the indoor shopping center.

"Much like clothes in the closet that we love and pull out to wear from time to time, 'zip me up' is a return to, and remix of, an earlier painting of a dahlia flower that lived on a Chicago rooftop," Alvarez said in an announcement.

"This commission by Fashion Outlets of Chicago was a wonderful opportunity to dive back into my own archive and remix this painting to give it a bold, evocative new life."

Alvarez, who lives and works in Baroda, Michigan, has been teaching painting at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago for two decades. She was commissioned by the city of Chicago in 2017 to create a 200 foot-long, digital painting on the Riverwalk, and had a 40-year retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Other recent installations included work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's Art of the Caribbean Diaspora exhibition, and the Whitney Museum of American Art's No Existe un Mundo Poshuracán in New York.

The mural is among some 20 site-specific commissions at the Rosemont mall's THE COLLECTION: Where Art Meets Fashion, an art program that also includes a rotating exhibition series and special programming.