LOL at Albany Airport Gallery

At left, Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend by Benjamin Entner;
at right Self Portrait by Spring Hofeldt

In a way, the Albany International Airport Gallery is like an ongoing Whitney Biennial of the Capital Region. Curator Sharon Bates mounts just two shows a year, usually around a pithy theme, and she often populates these shows with work by artists she's spotted at other venues around the area, in a sort of sifting and consolidation process.

The downside of this approach is that regular viewers of local galleries and museums will encounter things in these shows that they've already seen before, sometimes quite recently. But those are not the viewers the Airport Gallery targets; rather, Bates creates for an audience of travelers, many of whom are not from around here and will never venture beyond the terminal as they seek ways to kill time between flights.

And, in more than 10 years of honing that aim, Bates has adopted a formula that really works - even achieving national recognition for excellence in cultural programming at airports. So, it's no surprise that the new show at the Airport Gallery, titled LOL, is fresh, funny and - yes - surprising, despite including some familiar work.

OMG by Brian Kane

While being humorous would seem to be a prerequisite for inclusion in this exhibition, there are many kinds of humor, and not everything here evokes giggles or guffaws. But some of the artists do purposely go for the laugh, particularly Tim Davis, whose sly, slapstick video sequence titled Upstate New York Olympics features such hilarious pursuits as Lawn Jockey Leap Frog and Snowman Jiu Jitsu, in which the artist is seen nonchalantly launching himself over little statues on display in yards of every economic demographic, and violently assaulting unsuspecting Frosties, ninja fashion. I like slapstick and, yes, watching Davis did make me laugh out loud, as it did the Three Stooges-loving friend who accompanied me.

Other work had a more sardonic appeal, such as Roger Bisbing's meticulously detailed, miniature construction titled Shaker Air, in which stoic wooden furnishings are arranged in the configuration of a 737 jet. Created specifically for LOL, this work's humor depends on your understanding of Shaker life, and the fact that the airport is on Shaker land.

Also thoughtful and evocative is Michael Oatman's installation titled Cesare Lombroso's House of Pizza, in which a slightly tongue-in-cheek narrative explores the unlamented stereotyping of the mustachioed Italian pizza man. Sixteen silkscreened variations of the character are arranged in a grid to illustrate the cultural phenomenon, but it's hard to get to exercised about a happy pizza guy when, well, happy pizza guys are such a good thing.

This is how you repay me? by Gregor Wynnyczuk

Oatman also collaborated on Forest Freshner with Brian Kane, in which the artists made an oversized version of the classic pine-tree car freshener, shaped and scented like a new car, and photographed it being hung in the great outdoors. Kane's solo contribution to the show is equally witty and Pop-inspired: a big, red word balloon that says "OMG!," just like every tween alive.

Also notable for dry wit and impeccable technique are the drawings of Andrew DeGraff, an illustrator who likes to tilt at iconic figures, and who makes you smile but also makes you think. His We are All Descended from Homeless People is, rightly, the poster image for the show; and his The Lord's Typewriter and The Selection of Darwin are wonderful comments on scientific and religious objects of worship, which also happen to be beautifully crafted works of art.

Equally beautiful are the three small paintings in the show by Spring Hofeldt,  which are more playful than funny, but which are so well painted they make you want to see many more. Her self-portrait distorted by a glass vessel in front of her face shows that not all postmodern feminist artists take themselves too seriously.

Two of the other three women in the show cover domestic topics (Minna Resnick on the family vacation; Joy Taylor on garden tools and personal accessories) in fun or self-mocking ways, but don't completely avoid the heaviness that seems to curse so many women artists since the awakenings of the '60s, and which doesn't plague the men quite so much, leaving them free to go completely off the wall.

Technically far more crude than Hofeldt or DeGraff, but just as clever, are the found-art musings of Gregor Wynnyczuk, who elevates kitschy paintings to the level of existentialist philosophy by placing black vinyl text on top of them, then adding evocative titles, such as What's gotten into you lately? and I'm not like the others. But his indirect take on personal issues is dwarfed by Benjamin Entner's 7-foot-long Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend, which just dives right into the outrageous way relationships make us feel.

The other artists in LOL are Torrance Fish, Linda B. Horn, Steven Rolf Kroeger, and Owen Sherwood. The exhibition, which is accessible to the non-flying public from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, will remain on view through Mar. 25, 2012.

Rating: Highly Recommended
 

Forest Freshner by Brian Kane and Michael Oatman

Three exhibitions at MASS MoCA

I finally got myself back to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams this week after a too-long absence, and it was well worth the trip. As my museum-going companion succinctly pointed out, MASS MoCA made its bones by taking risks, and they always seem to pay off - even when something there doesn't work, you have to admire the effort.

At the very least, you have to be impressed by the scale of things at this gargantuan former factory complex, and you can count on the vastly abundant industrial forms that make up the physical plant to be esthetically pleasing and fascinating in themselves, sometimes even more than the art. One reason I made the trip now was to catch the tail end of an important installation by the German painter/sculptor Katharina Grosse, which opened many months ago and will close on Oct. 31.

Ungrammatically and, to me, annoyingly titled one floor up more highly, the piece combines elegantly sandblasted, pure-white forms in styrofoam with garishly spray-painted mounds of rocks and dirt that also contain a few recognizable objects, such as a massive wooden bench and articles of clothing. Also in this group is a floor-mounted, curved planar polygon that is either a painting or a sculpture, depending on your definition of those media, and through a door at the end of the gargantuan space containing these works are two levels of spray-painted rooms, one of which features a framed abstract painting hung on the wall.

Grosse's installation is exuberantly colorful, muscularly formal, richly textural - I could go on, but you get the picture - and I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Somehow, though, it left me cold. Can't really explain why that is, as I normally enjoy all those elements in a wide variety of art. The closest I can come to explaining this failure to ignite is that the piece just doesn't work as a whole, that despite its quantity it doesn't properly fill the space - that this artist has bitten off more than she could chew.

Others surely will disagree, and I encourage you to go and see for yourself whether you do or not - but I am willing to take the risk of saying in print that this piece is, at best, a beautiful and expensive mess.

Meanwhile, up on a catwalk, exposed to the elements and a real challenge to reach on rickety old legs is Michael Oatman's All Utopias Fell, a neo-retro-futuristic fantasy that extends Oatman's longstanding obsessions into his best work yet - an experiential time-and-space capsule that should bring out the kid, or at least the mad scientist, in all of us (pictured above).

Oatman is essentially a collage artist who regularly works in three dimensions as well, creating participatory environments chock-full of stuff: pictures, gadgets, artifacts and so on. AUF consists of an Airstream trailer with solar panel-festooned wings and deployed parachutes that appears to have crash-landed on the museum's superstructure. Its occupant is missing, but his incomprehensible, complex inner world is on full display in the ship he rode in on.

Visitors can enter and do as they please in this delightfully bizarre interior, which is accessible only in good weather (i.e. not during the winter months) and which will remain there indefinitely. It contains all manner of material related to energy - books, a bicycle-driven generator (I rode it, and it works), and more or less functional-looking living quarters (featuring a goodly supply of toilet paper and put-up tomatoes), along with an elaborately (but crudely) furnished electrical workbench and many, many mysterious electronic contraptions.

A full description would be next to impossible - imagine the contents of an artistically and scientifically inclined packrat's garage or basement all fitted into a tiny living space and you get the idea. As with past installations by Oatman, I was left shaking my head in wonder at his ingenuity, resourcefulness, sense of humor - even his sincerity. He's a space-age kid stuck in a postmodern man's world, but thankfully he's got what it takes to drag us back in time to where he comes from - and it ends up looking like a wonderfully twisted version of where we're going.

A third major exhibition that opened at MASS MoCA in May and will remain until March is titled The Workers (or The Workers: Precarity, Invisibility, Mobility); it originated in a smaller form in Mexico, and has been expanded for its incarnation here, to include 25 international artists and filmmakers who depict workers in various ways.

Equal parts art and propaganda, The Workers has a terrific concept and ends up being a fine example of something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Much of the art in the show is overwrought, as politically oriented art so often is, yet for me the show was still stimulating and enjoyable. As with most of the group shows I've seen here over the years, it uses the space of the galleries extremely well, allowing a comfortable flow from piece to piece and room to room.

A number of the pieces in the show appear to have been made specifically for it, in some cases by local artists, with an eye toward the detailed industrial past of the museum. This conjunction of purposes is the key to the success of the show, and I was somewhat surprised to find that I consistently preferred the pieces in the show that were related to this history.

Whereas some of the international work struck me as bombastic (for example a full-size gallows with an office water cooler set next to the trap door), some of the more local work was resonantly lyrical. My favorite pieces in the show included a wall montage of the torn-out bottoms of paper bags with the names of the factory workers who made them stamped on them (take a look at a paper bag, and you'll see one) by Mary Lum, who lives in North Adams; Los Angeles photographer Anthony Hernandez' Landscapes for the Homeless; and an installation featuring a chain-link fence and images from a 1970 strike at Sprague Electric by New York City-based Camel Collective (pictured below).

The Workers is accompanied by a detailed brochure, fittingly printed on cheap newsprint in black ink. With written material that keys on "the uncertain fate of today's workers," it strikes a rather relevant chord - and one that I respond to more than some, having been laid off from my own job nearly three years ago. As with the logo (seen above, right), the catalog eloquently expresses this exhibition's roots in socialist theory, especially as it was embodied nearly a century ago by Mexican muralists, or more recently by artists of the Soviet regime. Clearly, this point of view still has life in our global culture and still inspires many artists.

Note: There are several other exhibitions also currently on view at MASS MoCA, including Memery; Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; and Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141. Additionally, there's an opening reception in the Kidspace gallery from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 1), which features several excellent artists, including Schenectady's Ginger Ertz, on a subaquatic theme. Seriously fun.

Rating: Highly Recommended

75th Mohawk-Hudson Regional at AIHA

Escape - Susan Stuart, oil on canvas

The 75th Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, commonly called the Regional, is at the Albany Institute of History & Art this year, and it is huge. Selected by prominent painter Holly Hughes, who considered 1,020 submissions by 235 artists (a record for the Institute, though still far fewer than the nearly 1,500 works submitted by 340 artists to the Hyde Collection last year), the final cut includes 160 pieces by 85 artists.

That’s about five times as many as the 35 works by 17 artists that were in the same show at the University Art Museum in 2003 (presumably a record low). Think of it – one Regional five times the size of another. It sort of boggles the mind. Just reading a list of the whole roster is hard work, and I’ll prove it by putting that list right here:

Mr Swifty - Linda B. Horn
Fake fur, foam structure, plaster shoes

Samuray Akarvardar, Jim Allen, Fern T. Apfel, Jaimee Atkinson, Sebastian Barre, Tina Baxter, Meredith Best, Pennie Brantley, Allen Bryan, James Burnett, Paul Chapman, Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri, William Coeur de Ville, Terry James Conrad, Peter Crabtree, Katie DeGroot, Chris DeMarco, Ginger Ertz, Ray Felix, Abraham Ferraro, Jessica Fitzgibbon, Richard Garrison, Charles Geiger, Barry Gerson, Gail Giles, George Gruel, Bart Gulley, Stephen Bron Gurtowski, Michael J. Gwozdz, John Hampshire, Patrick Harbron, Theresa Hayes, Sarah Haze, Andrea Hersh, Susan Hoffer, Stephen Honicki, Linda B. Horn, Renee Iacone, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, William Jaeger, Paul John, Richard Kathmann, Pooh Kaye, Scott Keidong, Sandie Keyser, Amanda Klish, John Knecht, Ivan Koota, Phyllis Kulmatiski, Gary Larsen, Naomi Lewis, Harold Lohner, Iain Machell, Mona Mark, Paul Mauren, Gwenn Mayers, Mark McCarty, Bryan McGrath, Michael McKay, Jenny McShan, Renata Memole, Michael Mooney, Robert Morgan, Art Murphy, Nedra Newby, Philip J. Palmieri, Liz Parsons, James Paulsen, Kenneth Ragsdale, Marc Rosenthal, John Ruff, Mark Schmidt, Deborah Schneider, Lynn Schwarzer, Jon Segan, Mary-Alice Smith, Charles Steckler, Susan Stuart, Barbara Todd, Ken Vallario, Nancy Van Deren, David G. Waite, Nicholas Warner, Edye Weissler, and Wendy Ide Williams.

With so many people chosen, I feel compelled to offer a few words of commiseration to those who were excluded: Remember, a juried show is by definition subjective. Don’t give up! There’s always next year … . Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the included were feeling a little put out to be part of such a broad presentation. After all, how special is it really to be one of the 85 "elite" from the region this year?

Empire Views with the Green
Nedra Newby, Watercolor

As it turns out, not so very special at all. The show is, indeed, too damn big. Beginning in the first small room that typically introduces AIHA exhibitions, it gets off to a very promising start with a large, vertical, black-and-white video projection of a doubled rushing waterfall that greets the visitor as if to say "this Regional is bold, get ready for a wild ride." Other works in that room, from traditional oil painting to Sharpie on whiteboard, express weather in many forms, setting an intriguing tone for the show to come - it will have themes in whole rooms or parts of them, an almost necessary strategy for presenting so much diverse work, and a wise one - though it fails to deliver on the promise.

The second room takes us in a completely different direction, immediately understood as being all about color. As a shameless color junkie, I have no argument with that, and found many pleasing pieces gathered there. But, in the next (and largest) room of the museum's second-floor spaces, this crispness of organization begins to break down a bit, and some questionable decisions become apparent. (The layout, by the way, was planned by Hughes.)

WC #6 - Paul Mauren
Aluminum, wood, ceramic tile

What at first seems to be charming quirkiness of placement - a very subtle and small box assemblage by Jon Segan is placed well above eye level; three large color photographs by Mark McCarty are forced into a tall totem - turns into extreme imposition in the form of seven works by five artists being jammed into an awkward and tight group on the gallery's end wall. This type of problem recurs in the next large room, where two color photographs by Chris DeMarco are interspersed with two watercolors by James Burnett, a distracting way to show them.

I've heard this increasingly common phenomenon called "curator as artist," and I've seen it work better in truly curated shows - but, when it comes to presenting so many unwitting individuals in a juried regional, I think the artists deserve the respect of less interpretive placement. Had the two DeMarcos simply been placed side by side with the two Burnetts, we still would have gotten the point that they are closely related, without seeing them diminished.

Meanwhile, as I trolled the show for favorites and new discoveries, I found it harder and harder to respond with any energy to the art - even the works I knew immediately to be among the best seemed to have lost their oomph to the crowding and - more to the point - to the juxtaposition with other works that, frankly, should have been edited out. Inclusiveness is a beautiful philosophy, and I think it works extremely well on a youth soccer team. But, when it comes to presenting carefully made and meticulously installed artwork, less is very often more.

If the juror had gone one more round in her process, and retained only the strongest 80 or 100 pieces, all of them would look stronger still. Instead, they are made to keep company with lesser art - not just one or two odd choices, but dozens of them - and this, again, leaves them diminished. Which is a shame, because there is a bunch of terrific art in this show.

Umatilla - Ken Ragsdale, Inkjet print

Among the highlights for me were new works by familiar names: Richard Garrison's four wittily bloodless Circular Color Schemes; another set of four works by Fern Apfel that blend color-field abstraction with simple realism; Paul Mauren's wall-hung aluminum and wood sculptures; two fine color portraits by photographer Peter Crabtree; and two "non-narrative silent videos" by Bil Jaeger.

Equally compelling were works by people new to me, including: Ken Vallario's highly polished neo-Surrealist paintings; two paper collage abstractions (and a painted one) by Bart Gulley; Terry James Conrad's intriguing small geometric constructions in paper and other materials; and two luminously dark color photographs by George Gruel.

These and many other works in the show will shine through the clutter and hold your attention as you make your way through this challenging but very worthwhile presentation. Note that admission to the Institute is free on Fridays and two-for-one on Saturdays through August. There will be Artists Gallery Talks at 6 p.m. on the next two 1st Fridays: Aug. 5, and Sept. 6.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Eunjung Hwang and Ati Maier at UAlbany Art Museum

When you've been to as many shows at as many venues as I have, you start to see patterns emerging, curatorial consistencies that hold up over time from one place to another. So, while the current pair of solo shows at the University at Albany Art Museum are fairly cutting-edge, they hold few surprises, because they cleanly fit into the curatorial pattern that has been established there.

Eunjung Hwang: Three Thousand Revisits and Ati Maier: Event Horizon are presented separately, though they have enough in common to be compatible: both artists have created their own fantasy worlds populated by cartoon-type characters, and both have turned to digital video as an extension of their drawing and painting habits. It also happens that each is an immigrant living in New York City, which may inform the inside/outside perspective their works embody.

But here the similarities taper off quickly. Huang, who is female and was raised in Korea, has a simplified style of drawing and painting that pulls from dreams and Buddhist concepts of the spirit world to create quasi-narratives that often feature brutal violence and orgiastic behavior, yet somehow remain charmingly naive.

Maier, who is also female, grew up in Munich, Germany, and was educated in Vienna. Her extremely vivid palette harks back to the groundbreaking approach of certain European painters of about a century ago, but Maier is clearly looking forward as she crafts visions of otherworldly experiences that are heavily influenced by science fiction and graffiti.

Despite a great deal of visual complexity and sophisticated layering techniques, much of Maier's work feels superficial, even decorative. It has that art-fair commercial air about it. Three large pieces that form a group on one long wall depict roller-coasterish landscapes that could be in outer space or underwater; their corners are rounded, an odd affectation that adds to the commercial flavor of the work.

Two constellations of smaller works mirror this style (and each other, with perfectly matched configurations of size and shape), though the earlier the works go (back to about 2002), the more clearly they show a diversity of influences including anime and geometric abstraction.

Maier's two videos in the exhibition are animated versions of these garishly hued adventurescapes. The one titled Space Rider seems to imitate a video game such as Tron; the longer one (over 7 minutes) is more ambitious - titled Event Horizon, it clearly aims to depict visually what can never be seen in reality: the activity at the edge of a black hole.

Hwang also takes influences from video games (specifically Pac-Man) as well as anime, but her approach seems much more personal than Maier's. Whereas Maier seems to be trying to impress us with her skill and flash, Hwang seems compelled by uncontrollable impulses to obsessively draw and redraw an endless series of very small critters and characters (hence the show's title) that may make no sense at all to the viewer but must have an existence nevertheless.

Whether in the many animated videos on view here (actually, they are countless, as several small monitors show many very short snippets, while other larger monitors show countable longer films), or in the series of 15 22-by-28-inch pencil drawings titled What We Are You Will Be, or even in the five inflatable sculptures that depict some of her creatures in larger form, Hwang's world remains her own - we are merely spectators.

A couple of early videos from 2001 retain narrative threads (one is unironically titled If You Play With Ghosts, You'll Become a Real Ghost), but the more recent work, often titled Future Creatures, is more free-flowing and circular. In these, Hwang employs several different styles, including line drawings, watercolor, smoothly digitized color, and a combination of her images with calendar-art landscape photographs.

If you liked the style of Peter Max, you may like the darker underbelly that Hwang explores in a similar way. Equally, if psychedelia turns you on, you will probably get into Maier.

Both artists will be present at a closing reception set for 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 1, which was scheduled because the show's opening reception was cancelled by a snow storm. The show ends on April 2.

Rating: Recommended

Artworks shown (from top):
Ati Maier - Savvy, airbrush, ink, woodstain on paper, 2010
Ati Maier - video still from Event Horizon, 2010
Eunjung Hwang - video still from Future Creatures, 2009
Eunjung Hwang - What We Are You Will Be, pencil on paper, 2010
Eunjung Hwang - video still from Future Creatures, 2009

Note: An earlier version of this post had misidentified Maier as male. I regret the error, which has been corrected. - db

Uncertain Spectator at EMPAC

A visit to RPI's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center is an otherworldly, futuristic experience, and the exhibition Uncertain Spectator fits it to a tee.

Curated by EMPAC's Emily Zimmerman, Uncertain Spectator includes mainly high-tech and video-based art, as you would expect, by 10 artists (or collectives) from all over the world. But does the show meet the expectation created by its theme, which is anxiety? I'm not quite sure.

First, a little about the setting. EMPAC is a gigantic, super-modern building that virtually hovers over Troy, with massive shapes and expensive surfaces that make it truly a work of art in itself. I approached from the most obvious entrance, which, with its big, curving driveway, appears welcoming enough. But a little confusion ensued.

There are lots of doors (which, despite the absence of any visible staff, open readily enough), no apparent elevator, and lots and lots of stairs. I'm fit enough, so I decided to ascend on foot. There, the adventure began, as curious sounds emanated from hidden speakers nearby, immediately alerting me to the fact that my arrival had been detected.

I'm not OCD, but I did count as I climbed - ranked 14 steps at a time between landings, five or six flights of stairs brought me alongside the curving belly of the building's main theater, which occupies its center like a massive, docked spaceship. Slightly out of breath, I arrived at the 5th floor lobby, and the apparent beginning of Uncertain Spectator.

Yet, true to the promise of its title, I was already feeling uncertain. The sound installation that had greeted me at the bottom of the steps continued to emit nifty noises, but was it part of the show? (the answer seems to be "no"); though there was some signage, labeling, and display copies of the show's catalog, along with large take-away posters by Anthony Discenza on a spotlit pedestal (an example of his signage art is shown above at right), much of the lobby space was forbiddingly dark, and still I saw no people (though at times I thought I heard people - live or recorded, it was impossible to say).

Having been directed in a message from EMPAC's PR man to retrieve a copy of that catalog from the 7th-floor box office, I dropped my coat on a bench and resumed my upward trek. After a differently paced flight of steps (I think it went 12-12-20), I summited near a tremendous desk in a cavernous upper lobby, in the center of which I recognized an electronic sculptural installation from the show. Behind the desk was a small, young woman and on top of it was a catalog with my name on it.

And so, the adventure continued. After a perusal of the Marie Sester piece I'd spotted, which hissed and shrieked at me as I moved about its white, shag rug and five colorfully upholstered chairs, a spectral-looking but friendly young man beckoned me to enter one of the dark corners of the space; there, beyond a parted black curtain, a fascinating black-and-white film by Jesper Just was showing. Its soundtrack consisted of a haunting theme harmoniously whistled by a trio of actors. The handsome man and two beautiful women of significantly different ages seemed to be performing a wordless seduction a trois in a lavishly appointed Gothic-style room, explicated by many softly lit closeups of their hands, eyes, and lips.

Worried that I'd never escape the clutches of this siren song before seeing the rest of the show, I stepped back through the black curtains, with a promise to the young man that I'd return to finish viewing the 10-minute cycle (I did). By this point, I was beginning to understand that the show was scattered about these two floors, and that much of it was in the form of projections in various screening studios, as indicated by signage leading to them.

One of the benefits of this design, aside from the obvious necessity of using available studios for such screenings, was that it introduced me to a good number of the (apparently) many theaters of different sizes in this marvelous building. I added to that exposure by checking out the interior of the main theater - it is an awesome piece of architecture, a stunningly beautiful example of acoustic design, and much warmer than you might think it would be, as it is made almost entirely of wood. My footsteps echoed sharply throughout the space - I imagine a concert there would sound terrific.

Back across the gangplank (yeah, the ship metaphor is blatant) onto the lobby floor, I resumed my search for the elements of Uncertain Spectator, and first noticed one of many slick-looking hand-sanitizer dispensers that stood vigil here and there. Were they part of the show? Alas, while there's no doubt they were anxiety-induced, this turned out not to be the case - the young woman behind the desk helpfully informed me that they were merely a vestige of the campus's response to the 2008 swine flu epidemic. Even so, I hazard that any artist who might wish to claim them as a clever installation piece would have a reasonable excuse to boast inclusion in the show.

Another unrelated art installation (made of color-coded light fixtures) guides the path to a screening room where an animated film by Jordan Wolfson features Coke bottles filled with sloshing milk that march relentlessly along dark city streets (image above at left). Anxiety inducing? Nah, just grating.

Somewhat clearer, though scarcely innovative, were two videos showing on monitors in the original lobby. One, by Kate Gilmore, depicts two simultaneous views of the artist as she laboriously squeezes herself through a tight, cobbled-together channel. The other, by Tue Greenfort, presents an overhead view of a trapped couple in a white-cube art installation as they collaborate to make their escape over the wall.

These closely relate to a nearby series of photographs from a 1968 happening by Graciela Carnevale, in which gallery goers are locked into an empty space and eventually break its plate-glass window to get out. These three documented performances essentially form a show within the show that addresses topics of control and entrapment. But how well does it express anxiety?

Also nearby is a meticulously constructed kiosk with an electronically controlled and illuminated graph by Susanna Hertrich that depicts colorful bubbles of hazards such as gun crime and cancer in relation to their corresponding degrees of public outrage. This Reality Checking Device (shown at top of post) works well, but struck me as merely a good start.

Similarly, the French collective Claire Fontaine offers a dozen American quarters that have been modified to conceal curved blades (and which I am describing based on photographs, because the piece was missing due to its container having been vandalized). The connection to the box-cutters used on 9/11 is clear, but one still looks for greater revelations.

Far more effective, in yet another dark theater, is a color film projection of a man performing monologues, by the collective SUPERFLEX. Here, the large, dark, empty projection room, the hugely enlarged, droning, anonymous interlocutor, and the pointedly hypnotic and economic/social/political content of his words conspired to transport me to a place where they may have been cause for concern. At last, this was a work of art that fulfilled both the promise of the show and the elaborate technology behind it.

This film alone, and the stunning EMPAC building, are reason enough to go see Uncertain Spectator before it ends on Jan. 29.

Rating: Recommended

Also of note in Troy is the exhibition titled Daughters of Aspasia by Jeri Eisenberg and Gail Nadeau at the Photography Center of the Capital District. These two well-known regional artists extend the photographic medium well beyond traditional methods, presenting an extremely subtle coordinated effort in this show.

Nadeau's work consists of extensively manipulated and colorfully painted personal images that read almost as a diary of her real or imagined family life; Eisenberg shows four triptychs and one quadruptych of extremely soft-focus images of landscape themes related primarily to atmospheric effects (example below). It's a show well worth seeing.