Jamie Rodriguez at the ACCR

Totenkopf, Die Werbung, The Invisible Enemy - installation by Jamie Rodriguez

Jamie Rodriguez is one of the more interesting artists to have emerged on the local scene in the last decade or so, and his current solo exhibition at The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy is a well-earned showcase of his latest work.

A frequent prize winner in the annual Mohawk-Hudson Regional, Rodriguez has distinguished himself with challenging, multilayered installations that combine painting, drawing, and sculpture, often to a confounding effect, and this show, entitled Warenfetischismus: Commodity Fetishism is no exception.

Montserrat Landscape #1
oil paint on canvas 2019

I noticed from the first time I saw his work that Rodriguez is a very skillful painter, and this exhibition showcases that aspect of his art by featuring 15 oils on canvas, most of them sun-washed landscapes in an Impressionist style that clearly evokes Cezanne and Van Gogh. The four large mixed-media installations that comprise the remainder of the show all incorporate similarly executed paintings, a stylistic innovation I don’t recall having seen employed by any other artist.

So, labels aside, Rodriguez is a creator who ably applies whatever materials he needs to make his statements – and those statements are ambitious, on a global scale. These installations evoke international politics, with references to Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China and capitalist America; environmental issues, including water shortage, habitat loss, and pollution; economic matters such as the commodification of food; religion, via icons and altars; and historical references in the form of architectural elements, decorative tilework, and weaponry.

Argumentum ad baculum, (Fact Check:
To The unhinged and useful idiots, the
Revolution has been canceled as part of
culture, No Justice, No Peace for Wendy's,
The Rubicon has been crossed) - 2021
(detail view of installation)

The last item is perhaps the crux of this work, which openly concerns itself with war and conquest. But the naturalistic concerns are also central, as Rodriguez deploys multiple animal figures - foxes, lambs, raccoons, and various rodents among them - as avatars. His statement accompanying the show offers clear insights into his intentions, while welcoming viewers to make their own interpretations of the work. In part, it says: These narratives can draw attention to many different topics, that can be interpreted in any way the viewer connects … I want to evoke emotion and awareness of the individual to confront the issue of how art functions within a particular set of social and cultural patterns, historical perspectives, and belief/faith systems, while maintaining a sense of humor and humility.

That’s a lot to pack into any work of art, and Rodriguez gives it a good shot. My overriding response to this show is that it has a potent sense of urgency. The sprawling, highly detailed tableaux incorporate a great many carefully constructed elements, which undoubtedly have taken a lot of time to create, yet they still feel improvised, even slapdash in a way, as though the artist feels too pressed to add even the slightest extra bit of finish to his product. Only the paintings appear polished, serving as a counterpoint to the roughly representational sculptures into which they are integrated.

It’s enough to make you breathless.

Warenfetischismus: Commodity Fetishism - Artworks by Jamie Rodriguez will remain on view through April 16.

Polarity Integration: The Universal Game, Zwischenzug, Spiritual Algorithm, end game-"Transcension", Think, Think Tank? Paradigm Shifts
mixed-media installation by Jamie Rodriguez, 2021

Terry James Conrad: Object Permanence at Opalka Gallery

Terry James Conrad adjusts his musical installation at the Opalka Gallery.

all photos provided

We’ve all heard of the three Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – and most of us know that the first two are the more effective approaches to problems associated with waste. But they’re also harder to do, so we’ve tended to focus on recycling, which, also known as remanufacturing, has more and more clearly been revealed as not much of a solution at all.

Tin cans reduced to essential shapes

It’s admirable to try to reduce our production and consumption of stuff, but there’s a conundrum in it: Doing things – which often means making things – is what gives our lives meaning. And that goes double for studio artists. Just try to imagine all your favorite creators having built their careers without leaving behind a trail of stuff. Not at all likely.

All of which makes the unusual approach to making art that Terry James Conrad has pursued so fascinating. Currently the protagonist of a solo exhibition and series of events at Sage College’s Opalka Gallery in Albany, Conrad has taken that second R to heart, and made Reuse his raison d’etre. The result is both intriguing and – perhaps a surprise - esthetically appealing.

One of Conrad's presses in use - the paper
is at the bottom, under the cans

Conrad is essentially a printmaker, though this installation also includes numerous small sculptures, four handcrafted wooden guitars, and a large musical apparatus, in addition to three homemade printing presses that are being actively employed during the exhibition. The level of skill involved in all these works is extremely varied, from pounded, foil-wrapped tin cans that evoke outsider art to fancy woodworking and metalcraft on the guitars. Somewhere in between is the Rube Goldberg-esque music machine, which Conrad set into sonorous motion during my visit. (He’s in the gallery every Thursday adding a residency component to the show.) Unlike many sound installations, the contraption’s rhythmic emanations were not unpleasant or intrusive; rather, they suited the room and the other art in it quite nicely.

It’s worth trying to explain about those presses. Conrad has invented a unique method of printing, which uses gravity to create downward pressure on a matrix of folded, joined, and grouped tin cans that are placed on top of the printing paper. Each press is a multilayered stack of found stuff, not all of it functional, but all of it adding to the overall visual and symbolic effect of the conglomeration. After homemade inks are piped into the interior spaces of the cans, where they pool and soak for several days, an embossed and colored image will be permanently impressed upon the page, formed of deep lines from the cans’ edges and flowing colors within and around them.

Conrad has embellished these found cans with colored foils 

Conrad makes his inks from everyday sources like walnuts and rust, and uncommon ones, too, such as silt taken from 565 meters below the ocean. Many of the more than 30 finished prints in the exhibition are displayed without frames or glass, making it easy to examine their soft textures and subtle variations in tone. Others are shown in frames, most notably a suite of black-on-white lithographs embellished with pastel-colored frames - but the unframed works are the stars of the show.

Four Conrad prints

The prints are abstract and have equally abstract names, and they are fun, funky, even stylish, with geometric forms and an array of mostly muted colors. Their method of display appears to be yet another Conrad innovation: Angled out from the wall on painted wooden supports, and placed well below the usual eye-level of gallery art, they invite relaxed intimacy and close examination. The experience is enhanced by the opportunity to also examine the tin-can constructions that made these prints, as they are also on view in the gallery, along with a number of simpler transformations of tin cans that evoke early Modernist minimalism.

The show is billed as a survey, with prints ranging throughout the last 10 years. Most of them have white backgrounds, but a triptych entitled Benthic is brown and soft like suede, fully stained with walnut ink around its other colors and floating shapes. Benthic is also larger than the other prints, and super-fresh (dated 2021), suggesting a strong current direction.

Terry James Conrad: Object Permanence will remain on view through March 13. The Opalka Gallery is open to the public, with generous visiting hours that include Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. I highly recommend that you make time to see this outstanding show by a uniquely dedicated and talented artist.

Benthic 2021 - monoprints by Terry James Conrad

Unraveling at Opalka Gallery

Joan Grubin's E Pluribus is part of Unraveling at the Opalka Gallery in Albany

The artist Yura Adams has curated an important show at Russell Sage College's Opalka Gallery in Albany that features three other artists and herself. While it’s generally a faux pas for curators to include themselves in the show they’re selecting, Adams proves to be an exception to this rule, having plenty of experience organizing worthy exhibitions and events while being one of the region’s best and most productive artists.

Unraveling includes Adams, Joan Grubin, Ruby Palmer, and Christina Tenaglia, all of whom have ample room in the big space to spread their wings, and they all do so by bringing aspects of installation into their presentations.

Yura Adams - Geologic Time, acrylic and ink on Tyvek

Both Tenaglia and Adams have drawn or painted directly on the walls, while Grubin created her single, sprawling piece on-site; Palmer’s pieces aren’t site-specific, but they claim the space physically, in one instance by straddling a corner of the gallery. Altogether, the exhibition finds the right balance of scale and fullness without overcrowding the venue or overshadowing any of the art, which all works well individually and as a group.

A large panel near the entrance to the gallery introduces the show with a concise, cogent statement from the curator that explains the intention of the title, including equally valued interpretations that relate to the current unraveling (or falling apart) of society and the unraveling (or solving) of a mystery, in this case through the artists’ steady explorations. Her summary statement celebrating the act of “creation in the face of uncertainty” aptly describes the show’s purpose and relevance.

Though the curator’s introduction states that these are “four women artists,” it really doesn’t matter to me whether they are women or not. The qualities of perseverance and resourcefulness they exemplify are generally embodied by all significant artists (it’s pretty much part of the job description), regardless of gender.

Ruby Palmer used a minimalist dollhouse to display
ten small sculptures, five on each side

What matters more here, as in any contemporary art exhibition, is that the work is very good. Beyond that, one can seek to derive elements of a show’s meaning from the personal identities of its artists (and there are certainly many cases where that is the main point, or a significant part of it), but I don’t feel that urge in this case.

Rather, I respond to a strong collection of mostly abstract work that emphasizes form and color more than content. There is an arguably feminine perspective in Grubin’s wall-size construction, where the traditionally female craft of weaving is employed, and a few household objects that reference domesticity (including a loop potholder) are deployed, but it is so much more than that. After all, every one of us is caught in life’s vast networks, as helpless as the fly in a spider’s web. The title, E Pluribus, and the placement of tiny photographs of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela among the many parts, reveal a broader political interpretation and an inclusiveness that I think supports this point.

Ruby Palmer - Surprise Ending
acrylic paint on basswood

Palmer’s work also could be viewed through a feminist lens, but her dollhouse construction (as one example) could just as well have been made by a man, and its meaning would be little different if that were so. What stands out for me in Palmer’s work is her sense of humor, her playfulness, and a feeling of freedom, all of it enhanced by the power of her meticulous application of rich colors and materials. Some of her works are clearly inspired by stage sets, while others cross the line into domestic architecture. Either way, they are endlessly clever, whether simple or complex.

These strengths are also in evidence in Tenaglia’s collection of more than 30 discrete items, eight of which are wall drawings, all of them nominally presented as one piece under the title halftones and densities.  An additional installation is slyly tucked behind a freestanding wall, all of its many elements painted the same shade of gallery white as the wall itself. I particularly enjoy Tenaglia’s skilled-yet-roughshod handling of her materials, which range from raw wood to fired porcelain, and her innovative investigation of shapes.

An untitled object in painted wood
by Christina Tenaglia

Adams is essentially a painter, but she achieves a similar monumentality as Grubin and Tenaglia by stacking six large paintings into two rows, nearly filling the 16-foot height of the gallery’s end wall. Entitled Geologic Time, the six free-floating Tyvek sheets ripple and billow slightly, their utilitarian surface reflecting light in such a way as to seem almost transparent. These pieces are ever so vaguely figurative, and their scale is similar to human size, building a connection between our bodies and the environmental elements they draw from. These and several other works by Adams in the show emphasize form but also feature intriguing illusions of texture in a nod to printmaking and papermaking techniques.

Unraveling will remain on view through Saturday, Dec. 19. The gallery has generous hours (including through 8 p.m. on Thursdays) and is operating with smart COVID protocols: Masks are required, temperature is taken and travel/exposure questions answered upon entry, and a phone number is recorded for contact tracing.

Installation view of Christina Tenaglia's halftones and densities

A note on curating: There seems to be a trend – or a series of coincidences – in the region among certain artists, galleries, and curators. I couldn’t help but notice that all three artists that Adams chose for Unraveling were also included in a recent show entitled SpaceLAB at Troy’s Collar Works, which was organized by Julie Torres and Ellen Letcher. That pair, in turn, made up half of a panel of four jurors who selected the work for Infinite Uncertainty, the previous show at the Opalka. And Palmer was among eight artists included in Cut and Color, which recently closed at the Albany Airport Gallery.

MASS MoCA, at last

A view of James Turrell's Into the Light at MASS MoCA

A recent survey reported that just 13% of Americans are happy - the other 87%, may simply need a visit to MASS MoCA.

A lot of people hear the words "contemporary art" and immediately think they can't relate (why they seem to think they can relate better to 19th-century art - i.e. Monet - is beyond me). But the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is so friendly, and the art there so fresh and varied, that I believe it could make many converts of those stodgy grumps.

On a recent (much delayed) foray, my wife and I viewed nine exhibitions (among many others), and we really had a good time doing it. Need I explain that the place is huge, with nine buildings and some spaces so vast they might be better measured in acres than square feet? So it requires stamina, and a lot of time, if you want to try to see it all.

Blane De St. Croix - Hollow Ground 2020
(seen during site-specific installation)

The primary temporary show, entitled How to Move a Landscape, features several monumental works by Blane De St. Croix, an eco-artist committed to battling climate change by making art about the effects it can have in far-flung places, such as above the Arctic Circle. It also includes a great deal of smaller-scale work, covering a range of media from drawing to sculpture, installation, animation, and video, in addition to a research section that offers sketches, photographs, and other ephemera.

Unlike most political artists, De St. Croix hasn't lost his sense of humor - much of his work is quite playful, even as it confronts our pending global disaster. Notable in this regard is an electric train set that runs in a circle near the entrance to the exhibition, piercing a wall tunnel-like twice as it goes round and round. Its cars are loaded with modeled tranches of tundra, neatly offering a solution to the show's titular problem.

This witty miniature is balanced by a massive, tilting construction in the huge gallery beyond that looks for all the world like a life-size swath of melting glacier, which you can perambulate and walk under, and even poke your head up into (via some of its melty craters). Technically, De St. Croix's sculptural illusion is effective, yet it's also obviously a physically challenging bit of installation. Entitled Hollow Ground, I found it very likable and, frankly, far more interesting live than it looks in pictures.

Ad Minoliti - Fantasias Modulares

Underscoring De St. Croix's emphasis on scale is a "monumental miniature" entitled Broken Landscape IV that depicts a long, deep slice of the U.S./Mexican border. The meticulously crafted sculpture stands eye-high, and is dozens of feet long, with tiny details of grass, telephone wires, and, of course, the barrier fence marching along its surface.

Near the sprawling St. Croix exhibition is a relatively small one-room installation by the Argentine artist Ad Minoliti that more than makes up for its size by deploying great swaths of cartoon-bright colors. Indeed, Minoliti is something like Disney for the cultural elite (that's us, dear reader!), and served on this visit as a delightful palate cleanser as we moved on through the museum.

Ledelle Moe, whose massive concrete heads and figures occupy the famously football field-sized Building 5, is another sculptor utilizing scale to powerful effect. Entitled When, the installation seems to impose silent contemplation on its viewers, similar to the awestruck effect of standing in a vast temple or cathedral.

Ledelle Moe - Remain  at left; Congregation at right

While this collection includes works from as early as 2005, the show's central piece is current. 2019's Remain is an 18-foot-high kneeling female figure that evokes the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. In addition to the figure, Remain incorporates a complex scaffolding of metal rods that support innumerable small concrete forms of uncertain identity. The sculpture is deeply impressive even while remaining rather mysterious, as is the rest of the work in this show.

Another sprawling exhibition currently at MASS MoCA, entitled Kissing through a Curtain, engages with questions of communication, crossing borders (its 10 artists come from all over the world), and - obliquely - our current crises of COVID and racial injustice. Unfortunately, I found the work simply didn't engage my interest, much of it seeming to try too hard.

Justin Favela - Popocatepetl e Iztaccihuatl vistos desde Atlixco,
after Jose Maria Velasco, 2016

In one example, Justin Favela's painstaking paper and glue renderings of numerous landscape paintings by Jose Maria Velasco, which are provided as a starting point for the show, come off as merely colorful kitsch. In another, Kim Faler has suspended a panoply of enlarged sculptural renderings of chewed wads of bubble gum. Are you kidding me? In the end, I couldn't find the inspiration to care about any of these artists' obsessions.

On the other hand, the Them and Us/Ellos y Nosotros exhibition by the Mexican-American artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez), communicates and engages effectively across languages and and borders, using varied media while literally straddling the frontier between Tijuana and San Diego.

I loved this show for its audacity in making art out of common materials such as printed metal signs, cloth fabric, wood, neon, and kernels of corn, and for its liberal incorporation of the Spanish language (significantly, there are more than 50 million Spanish speakers in the U.S., though it is still not an official language here).

ERRE - Orange Country

ERRE (the written rendering of the Spanish rolled "r") is an ingenious creator whose installation at MASS MOcA incorporates a full-scale re-creation of a section of border wall as a divider between the show and the rest of the space on the second floor of Building 6 (a fabulous building, by the way, which opened about three years ago and is gorgeous all by itself).

His messages are both simple and complex, featuring a mysterious video of a fictional desert crime scene, proverbs presented as shimmering metallic-colored eye charts, a four-poster bed with a map of Mexico in pounded nails, and an elegant but deeply chilling curved cage. For me, this is what political art strives to be, but so rarely succeeds.

Wendy Red Star - Medicine Crow

More educational than political, but very pointedly cultural, is an exhibition in MASS MoCA's Kidspace gallery by the Native American artist Wendy Red Star. In Apsáalooke: Children of the Large-Beaked Bird, Red Star uses altered archival photographs to examine historical truths about her Apsáalooke (Crow) nation, and creates large-format color self-portraits that debunk stereotypical views of Native Americans.

Not just for children, this work is witty, well crafted, and draws you in. Though a timed reservation for the smallish Kidspace is recommended, we were allowed to walk in, as the space wasn't at capacity. Also, it's possible to visit just the Kidspace gallery without paying admission to MASS MoCA, should you so desire.

Speaking of planning ahead, in these pandemic days one must set up a timed entry ticket to visit MASS MoCA (and masks are, of course, required) but it's such a huge space that keeping adequate distance once inside is no problem. I found it easy to reserve a timed arrival window online, and when we got there a few minutes late due to road construction delays, we were ushered in with a welcoming smile.

More urgently, to view James Turrell's truly extraordinary exhibition Into the Light, one must gain a specific timed entry slot by "purchasing" a free ticket online. If you do, you will be treated to an immersive experience unlike anything you've ever been through (see images at top and bottom of this post). In it, your retinas will get a bit of a workout, and your cones (the color receptors) will be having a ball.

An example of a James Turrell hologram

Turrell is a light sculptor. How do you sculpt with light? Turrell does it by creating smooth, deep, white spaces and then washing them with liquid color. The illusions thus created are mesmerizingly potent. In one of the works constructed at MASS MoCA (and officially scheduled through 2025, though we were told that was extended to 2042), you enter the space and see effects both inside it (i.e. around yourself and the others in there with you) and outside its entrance (where the colors change magically in response to your eyes' mechanisms). It's hard to describe, but unforgettable.

Additionally, there are quite a few other works by Turrell, including about half-a-dozen holographic projections, numerous very sleek architectural models of his plans for lightworks inside a crater he owns in Arizona, and several other individual light sculptures, one of which resembles a snowy black-and-white TV screen (though it is actually a shaped, empty void). Some of these require that you enter a darkened space through labyrinthine path, and then let your eyes adjust. Others work in ambient light, creating spatial illusions that are simply fascinating. Go and see for yourself.

Note: Ledelle Moe's When is scheduled to end on Jan. 3, 2021, and ERRE's Them and Us will run through summer 2021, while the other shows we viewed appear to be ongoing, either without a published ending date or with one very far in the future.

It's also worth noting that When and Them and Us are curated by Susan Cross, who is the juror of this year's Mohawk-Hudson Regional Exhibition, set to open at the Albany Institute of History & Art on Sept. 19.

A view of James Turrell's Into the Light at MASS MoCA

2019 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region at The Hyde Collection

Mixed groups of individual works are a staple of this year's Mohawk Hudson Regional.

The Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region has rotated to The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls this year and, as ever, it is a must-see show for followers of the local scene. Now in its 84th year, the Regional will be on view at the Hyde through Dec. 4.

Charles Geiger's oil on linen Cactus
received the top award at this year's Regional.

Juried by Victoria Palermo, a longtime standout artist from the Adirondack region, this year's edition has a curated feel - Palermo didn't aim to select the best or most representative artworks so much as she sensed an overall direction of the submissions - a huge haul of more than 1,500 works by 365 artists - and pulled together a sweeping version of how she saw that vast body.

The main theme is climate, though numerous works unrelated to that theme are also included. A total of 92 pieces by 83 artists made the cut (many more artists than usual, but still maintaining a high level of quality). One result of that selection is that very few artists are represented by more than one piece. Instead, the show is largely organized in ensembles that build relationships and contrasts among the individual artists' works. While this approach can set your head to spinning, and may always not honor each artist sufficiently, it does make for a stimulating and rich presentation.

Rebecca Murtaugh is represented in the Regional
by a group of five ceramic sculptures.

The 2019 Regional is installed throughout the Hyde's many galleries (except the central one, where a fine traveling exhibition of prints by Picasso, Braque, and Léger holds pride of place through Jan. 5), an arrangement that can be disorienting at first, but which rewards persistent wandering with many strong experiences. A press release explains that artworks centered on the environment are exhibited in Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, the stairwell of the Museum’s education wing, and Rotunda Gallery. Submissions selected for the exhibition that aren’t related to climate are in Hoopes Gallery and Hyde House.

Jane Feldblum's mixed-media Winter Garden
is displayed on an antique chair at the Hyde.

In particular, the pieces in Hyde House are placed among the museum's impressive, historical permanent collection, providing sometimes intriguing, sometimes confounding collisions of style, material, and period. Past Regionals have included similar pointed installations, both here and at the Albany Institute of History & Art, providing a nice twist that I always enjoy. For a historic house museum to make space for such intrusions, even to the extent of displacing specific objects from its collection, is truly generous.

It's worth noting that Palermo's selections seem to include more three-dimensional work than most Regionals (no surprise there, as she is a sculptor herself), and far fewer photographs than usual (a bit confounding, as I have no reason to think she is biased against that medium). The photo-based works she chose lean toward the abstract, colorful, and process-oriented - just one is a straight, black-and-white landscape print.

John Yost's three-monitor video portrait
re-creates the look of 19th-century photography.

There are also several videos, always a plus when presented right, and the Hyde did a good thing by projecting three of these in rotation on a big wall opposite handy benches. An additional video submission (shown here at left) is tucked into a very quiet nook, but it won the Hyde purchase prize, so it's clear they meant no harm there.

Scott Brodie's acrylic on canvas
Project Lamentation Discard:
Decommissioned after Electric Shock
is oddly sentimental.

I also feel compelled to point out that the complex installation of this sprawling show feels natural, whereas the last Hyde Regional felt over-curated to me. We live in a time of curation - restaurants, clothing stores, cruise lines and so on all use the term now for carefully chosen and organized experiences. In the art world, too much curation can feel like a subjugation of the art itself. Call me old-school, but I still want the artists to lead, not their interpreters (including critics like me).

But curation is, of course, necessary. And, properly done, it can avoid the pitfall of undermining the individual pieces for the sake of a more overarching vision. I think this show reaches far, but still gives the individual artists enough room to breathe, enough space in which to be taken in directly by the viewer. That said, the viewer will need to take the time and effort to allow that interaction to happen.

Ryan Parr's oil on canvas Green Wall
transforms its subject using scale and perspective.

Among the chosen are many familiar names from past Regionals (including 2016 juror Michael Oatman), but many new names appear as well. This may not be the point of such a traditional format, but it sure feels right.

I was struck this week to realize that I've witnessed nearly half of the rather long history of the Regional (including a period in which I submitted regularly and was included often). In light of that extended view, I can state without a doubt that this Regional represents quite a robust peak in local artistic output. Perhaps, as the main theme might suggest, artists are inspired by a sense of urgency. Or maybe this is just a good place to be if you want to pursue art, which is never an easy task. Whatever the reason, it is cause for celebration.

Go, enjoy the show and, in particular, keep an eye out for more from this very impressive lineup of creators, who also just happen to be your neighbors.

This group of prints and paintings, organized around the theme of landscape,
is part of the 84th Annual Regional at The Hyde Collection.

In Brief: Yura Adams at Lake George Arts Project

Yura Adams speaks in front of her 12-part installation Fast Earth Wall at LGAP

I first became aware of Yura Adams' paintings when I saw them on the final day of a solo exhibition at John Davis Gallery in Hudson last year. So, naturally, I was excited recently to learn she would be showing at another favorite venue, the Lake George Arts Project's Courthouse Gallery in Lake George Village, this spring.

Cold Morning Foggy Glow 2018, oil on canvas

The show, entitled Fast Earth, features some of the best work from the John Davis exhibition, as well as a good portion of very different new work created in handmade paper and mixed media. The contrast is striking, both in style and content, as Adams has chosen in the new work to confront our global climate change crisis by constructing a storyboard of free-form pieces on one large wall of the gallery. The 12-part installation requires decoding, handily provided on a printed sheet, and nicely written in a terse almost poetic style. Adams describes the piece as a "speculation on the redesign of earth by climate change" and as "a transition of meaning." This challenging and complex effort is unusual in abstract art, and incorporates a range of materials including vinyl, inkjet printing, and acrylic.

Twilight Flourish 2018, oil on canvas

Meanwhile, on the other side of the gallery, three of the earlier  paintings shimmer brilliantly (two are shown here). Though they read as abstract, they are inspired by and aim to depict rare and specific effects of light. Here, Adams indulges in her love of science, from which she has learned the causes of the visual phenomena she has observed and attempted to recapture in paint: crystals in the atmosphere or on the ground.

The results are not just interesting as strong color compositions; they are also worthy of greater attention, as they reveal unknown truths about the world we think we see, but don't really understand.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday afternoons; the show continues through June 14.

Like Sugar at Tang Teaching Museum

Installation shot of Like Sugar at Skidmore College's Tang Teaching Museum

photograph by Arthur Evans

The exhibition Like Sugar, on view through June 23 at Skidmore College's Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery in Saratoga Springs, is an unusually thought-provoking show that, like its namesake, still somehow comes off seeming insubstantial.

Organized by the Tang's Malloy Curator Rachel Seligman and Skidmore English professor Sarah Goodwin, with input from three other Skidmore faculty members, Like Sugar may suffer from the too-many-cooks syndrome, as it attempts many diverse things. Is it about art? Of course. Food? Check. History? Global economics? Advertising? Health? All of the above.

Julia Jacquette, Two Tiered Cookie Platter, 1997
enamel on wood panel

As an art exhibition, Like Sugar is a bit sparse for my taste, but it features some very good work. Unfortunately, several of the best artists in the show are represented by only one piece each, which can be frustrating. On the plus side, while the show has very much to say, it doesn't overwhelm the viewer with didactic panels or unbearable preachiness - it manages to maintain a light playful tone despite the deadly seriousness of its content.

I think the show makes plain just how conflicted we are as a society - and individually - about sugar. It's killing us, but we love it. Historically, the sugar trade drove the creation and growth of the horror of the slave trade. This is delved into through visceral works by Kara Walker and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and alluded to in historical and contemporary documentary photographs also in the exhibition. Even honey bees get some of the blame - or credit - from both the scientific perspective and the creative one, as a video piece in the show records an experiment demonstrating their preference for sugar, and three fascinating sculptures in the show are a collaboration between a human artist, Garnett Puett, and comb-making bee colonies.

Advertisement by Sugar Information Inc.

Among the most shocking materials in Like Sugar are the many mid-twentieth-century magazine ads collected and presented in a grand collage and also individually, where we can see the audacity of Madison Avenue's efforts to sell a nutrition-free, highly caloric product to an unsuspecting and exuberant post-war consumer. As a child of the '60s, I was the direct recipient of the concepts these ads promoted, and it particularly struck me that the majority of the artists in this show were too - born between 1959 and 1965, a rather narrow demographic band to see in a large group show.

Clearly, we were all affected, and the impacts are still seen in the obesity and diabetes epidemics that plague the United States today. These diseases are explored in a display of public service graphics that attempt to scare people straight off the sugar track, and in photographs and paintings that simultaneously seduce and disgust.

Emily Eveleth, Big Pink, 2016, oil on canvas

One of the strongest pieces in the show, which is used prominently in publicity for it, is a six-and-a-half-foot painting by Emily Eveleth entitled Big Pink, which employs scale, gorgeous painterly flourishes, pastry worship, and frankly pornographic effects to drive home several points at once. Like the ad pictured above, which advises eating cookies rather than a healthy lunch as a weight-loss strategy, it's creepy - and irresistible.

All in all, Like Sugar may be overly ambitious, but it got that way for important reasons. More art exhibitions should make such efforts, even if falling short is almost inevitable.

And, while you're in the neighborhood, check out a first-rate three-person show at the Saratoga Arts Center. Passing Time, on view through June 15, features paintings, photographs, and sculptures by Paul Chapman, Harry Wirtz, and Rebecca Flis (respectively). In a happy coincidence, some of Flis's ingenious cast works are made of - you guessed it - sugar. I promise you will like.

Rebecca Flis Ironscapes, cast iron, crushed red stone, steel perimeter

Dia:Beacon

Robert Irwin - Excursus: Homage to the Square3, installation view

If you've never been to Dia:Beacon, and you like modern art, then add it to your list.

I took advantage of November's first major holiday to dash down to Beacon in time to see a major installation by Robert Irwin that was slated to close on Nov. 26 (as this posts, there's just one day left - sorry, folks!), and to stroll around the grounds both inside and out that Irwin had a hand in designing.

While this experience was worth the trip, so is everything else about Dia:Beacon - no need to be discouraged by the Irwin ending, there's still plenty there to revel in whenever you go. Now 15 years old, the vast museum created from a former Nabisco box factory presents unique opportunities to see some of the 20th century's greatest monumental works of art. In the words of the Dia website, "each gallery was designed specifically for the presentation of one artist’s work. Examples include Dan Flavin’s series of fluorescent light “monuments to V. Tatlin”; Joseph Beuys’ mixed-media installations such as Fond III/3 (1979) and Fond IV/4 (1979); Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses (2007); and Michael Heizer’s North, East, South, West(1967/2002)."

Looks like a piece of plate glass but is merely
a rectangle marked in yarn, by Fred Sandberg

The Irwin piece, entitled Excursus: Homage to the Square3, found itself in perfect company with these and the other regularly exhibited artists. It's an experiential, immersive, architectural construction that uses white wooden frameworks covered with white scrims to establish a matrix of rooms (which, incidentally, are rectangular, not square), each of which is lit and punctuated by a set of four vertically oriented fluorescent tubes. The tubes are covered by intricate layers of color filters, establishing a sort of totemic system that makes each room unique. Watching other people, including children, wander among - or streak through - the spaces added to the fun.

On this visit, I had limited extra time to explore, so I made sure to stop with a couple of favorite artists (Fred Sandberg, Blinky Palermo), while also checking out ones I knew not at all. Sandberg's super-minimalist yet hyper-real yarn constructions did not let me down, as invisible planes floating in space emerged from his pieces inexorably to all present (see photo example at right, above).

One discovery was the work of Mary Corse - big white or black paintings that go through shimmering changes with each glance, due to a swirled surface of tiny glass beads. I also quite enjoyed Walter De Maria's final work, a ghostly trio of restored (actually, transformed) 1950s pick-up trucks, each with three shiny obelisks sticking up from its bed like alien invaders.

In between came a big hall of wonderful John Chamberlain sculptures, which recently had a flotilla of many spindly boat-like pieces added, forming a fine, fresh counterpoint to his bulkier constructions of junked car metal. To anyone who might suspect that twisting and welding and coloring huge slabs of steel into fresh forms isn't a fine art, I suggest you see this work.

To everybody else, I say have a good time whatever you do!

Hall of sculptures by John Chamberlain