Chicago artist Deb Sokolow seems to be more influenced by Thomas Pynchon than by the Old Masters, and consequently it’s her blend of surreal humor and conspiracy theories that makes her art so refreshing. We love how Sokolow’s large, mostly paper-based works draw us into the text-based narrative of the pieces. Her works are like a giant, meandering comic book that place the viewer (“You”) into the narrative itself. The stories are always based on some stray fact or conspiracy theory—an anecdote from Willem de Kooning’s biography, the strangeness of the Denver International Airport—but the narratives take wild turns while collapsing fact and fiction.

Sokolow’s work is as visual as it is textual, and half the fun is in the irreverent asides addressed to the viewer. "Understanding Scarface" (2005) functions as a paranoid riff about how the film Scarface could be connected to Fidel Castro. We dig the homemade element of Sokolow’s art, too. Some pieces are over 40 feet long and held together by tape, filled with scratched out text, eraser marks, and additions. Sokolow’s hare-brained stories might try to convince us that Richard Serra is a mob hit man in "Dear Trusted Associate" (2008-2009), but her generous sense of humor is far from the paranoid theorists who inform her work.