Arts & Entertainment

St. Louis Art Capsules

Malcolm Gay encapsulates the St. Louis art scene

By Malcolm Gay 

Opening

Didi Dunphy: Playscape A sculpture exhibition that brings the playground into the gallery. An instructor at the University of Georgia, Dunphy calls her colorful creations — skateboards topped with colorful padding reminiscent of candy sticks, an orange seesaw, a set of bright tasseled swings — "friendly monuments." In inviting viewers to play with the work, and, in essence, become a part of the exhibit itself, Dunphy gives gallery-goers a shared and slightly goofy experience, stripping away the pomp and making the experience more accessible. March 7 (reception and talk by the artist 6-8 p.m.) through April 20 at the Millstone Gallery at COCA, 524 Trinity Avenue, University City; 314-725-6555 (www.cocastl.org). Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. — Malcolm GayStan Strembicki: Memory Loss and Lost Library Though separate, these two series of photographs by Washington University art professor Stan Strembicki concentrate on the damage Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans in 2005. In Memory Loss, Strembicki focuses his lens to re-photograph images of anonymous family members at unknown events he found in family photo albums littered around the Lower Ninth Ward. The snapshots were re-shot in situ, and many are partially obscured by water damage; it's as though the storm were actually erasing people's personal histories. In the other series, Lost Library, Strembicki focuses on the loss of cultural memory inflicted by Katrina, by photographing books from a devastated library, capturing them one last time among the leaves and dirt before they're re-absorbed into the ground. March 7 (reception 6-9 p.m.) through March 29 at Philip Slein Gallery, 1319 Washington Avenue; 314-621-4634 (www.philipsleingallery.com). Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat. (MG)

Talk to Me: Voices of Kiln-Formed Glass Curator Susan Taylor Glasgow gives us an international roster of glass artists whose deeply personal work evokes the passage of time and its mutation of meaning. Kiln-formed glass is well suited to the task. Says Glasgow: "Unlike blown glass or glass work directly from the furnace, kiln forming is an indirect method of shaping, allowing for delicate details and complex imagery." The result is a collection that challenges our everyday understanding of glass and its rigidity. Here glass is formed to look like sheets of paper curling away from one another, or a group of cubes whose interchangeable sides have been inscribed with images of soldiers, dancing girls or leafless trees. Showing concurrently in the rear gallery is Eden Found, featuring the work of metalsmith John Baltrushunas. March 7 (reception 6-8 p.m.) through April 20 at the Craft Alliance Gallery, 6640 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314-725-1177 (www.craftalliance.org). Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. (MG)

Ongoing

Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider In earlier projects Los Angeles-area sculptor Deborah Aschheim has explored the relationship between the cyborg and the surveillance state, most notably in her critically acclaimed multi-part installment Neural Architecture. More recently the artist has been exploring the nature of memory. Alzheimer's disease runs in Aschheim's family, and initially the artist embarked on her current project as a defense against forgetting. She submitted a list of her 25 favorite words to Bay Area musician Lisa Mezzacappa, who (along with other musicians) created songs for each word. Aschheim, in turn, created sculptures designed to play the songs. The idea: Our linguistic and auditory memories use separate neural pathways. By creating new sensory associations for these words, Aschheim might be able to protect them from the ravages of memory loss. The result is a series of boldly colored hanging sculptures — made of plastic tubing, LEDs, monitors and funnels — that resemble the circuitry of the human nervous system. Through May 11 at Laumeier Sculpture Park Museum Galleries, 12580 Rott Road, Sunset Hills; 314-821-1209 (www.laumeiersculpturepark.org). Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. (MG)

Dan Flavin: Constructed Light Limiting his palette to mass-produced fluorescent tubes of varying lengths and colors, Dan Flavin, who died in 1996, made a career distilling these ubiquitous artifacts of bureaucratic life into their purest form. The result: a body of reserved, minimalist work that at once extracts these relics from their workaday commercial context and reformulates the sites they inhabit with their refulgent glow. As installations, many of Flavin's works are site specific, leaving the stewards of his estate with the thorny question of whether in re-creating his works they are, in effect, creating new works of art. For this show, Tiffany Bell, director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné project, and Steve Morse, who worked as Flavin's chief technician for many years, have chosen several works that rely more on architectural situations than on specific sites. The result is a meditative show that both accentuates and quarrels with the natural grace of their setting. Through October 4 at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3716 Washington Boulevard; 314-754-1850 (www.pulitzerarts.org). Hours: noon-5 p.m. Wed., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. (MG)

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