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Wednesday, February 02, 2005

“Next in the Gallery…” - Herron Gallery – Feb. 2, 2005 – 4 stars

A great show of unlike works that visually mesh cleanly together is what this current installation of “Next in the Gallery…” successfully presents. New to the current configuration of artists are the astrophotographic works of Scott Johnson that intelligently manipulate technology into remarkably serene images of the cosmos. His approach infuses hours of film exposure, special optics, and varied observatory locations to create amazingly surreal and transcendental translations of the universe. His work represents another artistic category. The caliber of work in this show by all artists in it is superb and should not be missed. Through February 24, 2005. www.herron.iupui.edu. 317-920-2420. – Mary Lee Pappas


• Unpublished comments: The talent in the room is rather overwhelming to be completely frank about this particular show. To begin with, the toyish 2d/3d work of Chicago artist Karl Wirsum is perfectly playful as his vividly colorful and patterned characters cling and flank the walls heightening their sense of animation. His flawlessly smooth paint application and color sensibility effectively give more than life, but personality to his pieces even with their skewed perspectives and jello jointed anatomy. On the other end of the aesthetic spectrum, Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky’s large scale post-industrial chromogenic prints (most on loan from the Indiana based John C DePrez and Lee Marks collection) are crisply real, gritty, and ripe with a forlorn mood, but still so beautiful. “Shipbreaking #49” features an abandoned and well worn steel rig the color of fire in the ocean with two ships on either side heraldic and distant. He’s captured a warm, hazy horizon line of gloomy grey that fades into a pink and then to yellow in the sky.” His work is truly stunning.

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