Caroline Dechamby named one of her paintings Eye-Contact. Isabelle Scheltjens named a glass mosaic Thousand Eyes, One Soul. Go through our booth, or its viewing room, and you keep getting looked at, even by the works with no face at all.
Portraits that look back
Caroline Dechamby: Eye-Contact, Green Trousers, Rothko Jaune Rouge and Orange Dot (all 2026)
Caroline Dechamby is Dutch, lives in Switzerland, and has spent more than thirty years as a painter, designer and entrepreneur. Her idea sounds simple and takes nerve: she paints herself into the masterpieces. Sometimes it’s her whole figure, sometimes only a silhouette, standing inside a Picasso, a Basquiat or a Mondrian. The silhouette goes on plexiglass mounted over oil on canvas, so she is literally stepping into the picture. It’s a way of reclaiming art history, in a canon that was mostly men’s to begin with. Four of her 2026 paintings came to Chicago, and one of them, Rothko Jaune Rouge, points straight at Mark Rothko.
Isabelle Scheltjens: Thousand Eyes, One Soul (2026), The Future is a Big Kiss and Binta (2025)
Isabelle Scheltjens is Belgian and studied at the Antwerp City Institute for Decorative Arts and Crafts, where glass design caught her attention. Her portraits are put together color by color from thousands of hand-cut pieces of glass. We also brought two of her white marble busts, The Future is a Big Kiss and Binta, so you could meet her in two materials, one built up piece by piece and one carved away.
Lis Sam: Jardin d’Hiver, Printemps, Sous les Pétales Roses and Sous les Pétales Violet - Gold (all 2026)
Lis Sam was born in Tunisia in 1989 and moved to France when he was eleven. He never trained formally. He started on the street, with graffiti and tags, and ended up somewhere much quieter. His Blossoming Girls series began after a visit to a butterfly greenhouse in the south of France. The portraits are composed from naturalized butterflies and hand-shaped petals, which become hair, skin and background, and then go under museum glass.
Paintings that hold a feeling
Adam Umbach: Old Glory No. 1 and No. 2 (2026), Bee Blooms (2025) and Sweet Smells No. 2 (2025)
Adam Umbach was born in Chicago in 1986 and lives in Brooklyn now. He paints childhood objects with photographic precision and then roughs them up with loose, expressive marks, many of them made with his non-dominant hand so a little imperfection gets in. We brought two Bee Blooms (Goldsmith Light and Pale Yellow), two Old Glory paintings, and two Sweet Smells No. 2 (Smoked Moss and Split Peas). Then the show followed him home. The Weight of Play Comes Home opened at our Superior Street gallery on October 8.
Eric Alfaro: Love in Bloom, New Beginnings, Loving You, True Love and When We Met (all 2026)
Eric Alfaro trained at an academy of arts in Cuba and works in the United States. He starts from photographs, changes the colors, and then builds the paint up thick with a spatula, in acrylic or oil. Love in Bloom is acrylic on linen. When We Met is already marked sold in the viewing room. For the thinking behind another of his series, there’s the Fishbowl post.
Hunt Slonem: White Ascension House of God 2 (2024)
Hunt Slonem keeps coming back to birds, butterflies and rabbits, set against flat fields of color. He was born in Kittery, Maine in 1951, studied at Tulane and Skowhegan, and moved to New York in the late 1970s. The painting in our booth was White Ascension House of God 2, an oil on canvas from 2024. If you’ve wondered why collectors keep coming back to the bunnies, we wrote about what they mean.
Taher Jaoui: Temporary Reality, Exit the Loop, Synthetic Awakening, Portraits in Angles, Wrong Place, Right Time, Almost Dream State, A Quiet Edge and An Eternal Yes
Taher Jaoui took the long way to painting. He’s Tunisian-born and self-taught, grew up in a family of mathematicians, trained as a financial engineer, and spent years as an actor in Paris and Los Angeles before committing to canvas. The math never left. Mathematical signs and equations turn up inside his abstractions. He works big, on raw canvas, rotating it and coming at it from every side. Eight of his paintings were in the booth, seven from 2026 and Portraits in Angles from 2025. His work is held in the Enter Art Foundation in Berlin.
The city and the joke
Gregory Watin: GSB (2022), Everywhere (2023) and Installation of 9
Gregory Watin is French and photographs city buildings that time has roughed up, then turns the photographs, drawings and found materials into collages. He works fast on purpose, so an idea doesn’t fade before it lands. He describes the city as colored and rhythmic rather than sad. GSB is mixed media on wood and plexiglass, and Installation of 9 is a grouped piece.
BYĆ: Family Heist (2026), Chicken at the Top // Louboutin (Tan) and (Rouge) (2025), and Shakespeare in Love (2025)
BYĆ is Swiss, funny, and pointed about it. He works across street and contemporary art, mostly in mixed media on recycled card stock, and aims his humor at hyper-consumption and intolerance. The Chicken at the Top works are the clearest example in the room, and the Louboutin pair came in Tan and Rouge. Family Heist is marked sold.
Built, bent and folded
Nemo Jantzen: Next Station (2025)
Nemo Jantzen was born in The Hague in 1970 and painted billboards in Antwerp before he found his current method. He sets hundreds of stainless steel nails into a wooden board and winds one continuous thread between them, working from a photograph, until a three-dimensional picture appears. Next Station is white thread on black. His work is held by the GEM Museum in the Netherlands and Museum POPA in Switzerland, as well as at Mandarin Oriental New York.
Rodrigo Franzao: The Quiet Architecture of Memory, Waves of Quiet Eternity, The Shape of Change and The Patience of Becoming
Rodrigo Franzao is Brazilian, lives in New Orleans, and trained in literature, art and museology. He makes layered paper reliefs from hundreds of carefully folded strips, sometimes with fabric and recycled materials, in patterns that echo cycles in nature. Environmental awareness runs through all of it. Read his titles slowly. Three of the four date from 2026, and Waves of Quiet Eternity is from 2025. His work is held in public collections including the National Arts Club in New York and the Museum of the Superior Court of Justice in Brasília.
Gil Bruvel: Feeling the Light (2025)
Gil Bruvel was born in Australia, was raised in the South of France, and takes the human form apart into planes and viewpoints. Dalí, Ernst and de Chirico sit behind his work, and so do architects like Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. Feeling the Light is made of stacked wooden sticks. In his Bending the Lines series, figures are assembled from thousands of wooden shafts and the wood is charred, which his artist page ties to the impact of life on the body.
Véronique Locci: KLEIN NEON BLUE (2026)
Véronique Locci was born in Saint-Tropez in 1965 and works from a studio in Paris. She shapes Murano glass so it curves inward, which bends reflections and pulls the room around the piece into the picture. KLEIN NEON BLUE is nearly three feet across, with a high-gloss chrome finish. With a title like that, the comparison to Yves Klein’s blue is hard to avoid.
Every work shown, in one place
Prices weren’t published in the viewing room. Contact our Chicago gallery for pricing, availability and shipping.
Two of these works, When We Met and Family Heist, carry a sold mark. What happens to the others is up to whoever looks next.
Frequently asked questions
Which artists did Carousel Fine Art show at the Chicago Art Fair 2026?
Thirteen: Caroline Dechamby, Adam Umbach, Taher Jaoui, Gregory Watin, Rodrigo Franzao, Eric Alfaro, Isabelle Scheltjens, Véronique Locci, Nemo Jantzen, Hunt Slonem, BYĆ, Lis Sam and Gil Bruvel. The booth held close to fifty works in a 1,000 square foot room.
Which artist at the booth was born in Chicago?
Adam Umbach, born in Chicago in 1986 and now based in Brooklyn. His exhibition The Weight of Play Comes Home opened at our Chicago gallery on October 8.
Where can I see these artists’ work in Chicago after the fair?
At Carousel Fine Art, 230 W Superior St in River North, Tuesday through Saturday from 9 AM to 6 PM. The full viewing room is also online.
Can I buy a work I saw at the Chicago Art Fair?
Contact our Chicago gallery. The team will confirm availability and follow up with pricing and shipping.
Which artists make sculpture?
Isabelle Scheltjens (white marble busts), Véronique Locci (dimensional glass) and Gil Bruvel (stacked wooden sticks) showed sculptural work. Nemo Jantzen’s thread-and-nail pieces and Rodrigo Franzao’s paper reliefs hang on the wall but have real depth.
Who is Hunt Slonem?
Hunt Slonem is an American painter born in Kittery, Maine in 1951, known for repeated images of birds, butterflies and rabbits in a neo-expressionist style. Our booth showed White Ascension House of God 2 (2024), an oil on canvas.