Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures  |  Adult
Boston  |  Portland  |  Providence
 
Books  |  Dance  |  Museum And Gallery  |  Theater

The devil in the details

‘Drawn to Detail’ and ‘Laylah Ali’ at the DeCordova, Esteban Pastorino Díaz at the SMFA, and Student Loan Art Program at MIT
By RANDI HOPKINS  |  August 28, 2008

mg_in
Laylah Ali, Untitled (2008)

In our multi-tasking, ADHD-prone world, where we watch two TV channels while texting and listening to our iPods, it’s hard to imagine stopping to look at drawings that don’t coalesce till you let them pull you in and spin you around a bit. Yet this kind of art work can also seem a canny mirror into the intricate twists and turns of our neural network, a reflection of the complexity of our cognitive experience. Opening at the DeCordova Museum on August 30, “DRAWN TO DETAIL” offers drawings by 26 artists whose work tends to the obsessive, repetitive, laborious, and intricate. The likes of Julie Mehretu, Tom Friedman, Jacob El Hanani, and Louise Marshall mix it up between the forest and the trees, sometimes losing the larger context in the act of mark making, sometimes finding order in what could be taken for total chaos. At the same time at the DeCordova, the new drawings of “LAYLAH ALI: NOTES/DRAWINGS/UNTITLED AFFLICTIONS” introduce language into Ali’s rich œuvre, as she organizes snippets of text from various sources into brief vignettes that interact with her characteristically ambiguous characters.

A hand-crafted camera mounted on a kite and a homemade stereo-panoramic camera moving at a constant speed to produce a three-dimensional image are the unusual means by which Argentine-born photographer Esteban Pastorino Díaz creates his art. “SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES: ESTEBAN PASTORINO DÍAZ” opens at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts August 29. A former student of mechanical engineering, Pastorino designs and builds each of his cameras himself, and he produces images that “see” things from a unique point of view, whether that’s the kite’s-eye perspective, or the turning of real places and people into strangely doll-like versions of themselves, or light-box presentations that, when viewed with 3-D glasses, give the disorienting illusion of movement.

Also of note: Boston Sculptors Gallery kicks off September with “THERE: MAGGIE STARK,” a mixed-media installation exploring paradoxes of time and space, and “CHRISTOPHER FROST,” with work by an artist known for his playful, transformative way with common objects. And MIT’s List Visual Arts Center opens its annual “STUDENT LOAN ART PROGRAM EXHIBITION AND LOTTERY” on September 2, with some 400 framed prints and photographs by Sarah Sze, Dana Schutz, Do-Ho-Suh and many others. Although you have to be a MIT student to borrow the work, the exhibit is open to the public.
_Randi Hopkins

“DRAWN TO DETAIL” and “LAYLAH ALI” @ DeCordova Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Rd, Lincoln | August 30–January 4 | 781.259.8355 | “SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES: ESTEBAN PASTORINO DÍAZ” @ School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 the Fenway, Boston | August 29–October 13 | 617.369.3718 | “THERE: MAGGIE STARK” and “CHRISTOPHER FROST” @ Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave, Boston | September 3–October 5 | 617.482.7781 | “STUDENT LOAN ART PROGRAM EXHIBITION AND LOTTERY” @ List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St, Cambridge | September 2-14 | 617.253.4400

On the Web
DeCordova Museum:
www.decordova.org
School of the Museum of Fine Arts: www.smfa.edu/exhibitions
Boston Sculptors Gallery: www.bostonsculptors.com
List Visual Arts Center://web.mit.edu/lvac

Related:
  • Talent shows
    The 2006 DeCordova Annual, plus ‘Art, Theatre, and Engineering’ at MIT
  • Walk on by
    Bill Arning tours art at MIT; Alexander Dumbadze examines sculptural form at Brandeis; books and dioramas at NESAD
  • Who are you?
    "Identy Construction" at G-A-S-P, "Sensorium II" at MIT, "Traveling Scholars" at the MFA
  • More more >
  Topics: Museum And Gallery , Laylah Ali , Esteban Pastorino Diaz , School of the Museum of Fine Arts ,  More more >
  • Share:
  • RSS feed Rss
  • Email this article to a friend Email
  • Print this article Print
Comments

Live from St. Paul: real-time updates at thePhoenix.com/Election2008
More: DNC 2008
ARTICLES BY RANDI HOPKINS
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   TIME BOMBS  |  August 27, 2008
    ‘Atomic Afterimage’ at Bu, Foreclosures and Risk Structures at MIT, and the Cultural DMZ At Simmons
  •   THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS  |  August 28, 2008
    ‘Drawn to Detail’ and ‘Laylah Ali’ at the DeCordova, Esteban Pastorino Díaz at the SMFA, and Student Loan Art Program at MIT
  •   ONE WORLD, SEVERAL DREAMS  |  August 12, 2008
    “Business as Usual: New Video From China” at MassArt, “Text in Video” at Axiom, and “Many Kinds of Nothing” at Montserrat
  •   RUBBER SOUL  |  July 29, 2008
    ‘Momentum 11: Nicholas Hlobo’ at the ICA; ‘12 X 12’ in Provincetown
  •   FLORA, FAUNA, AND THE FEMALE FIGURE  |  July 15, 2008
    Art Nouveau Jewelry at the MFA, ‘Players’ on MIT’s Media Test Wall, and ‘Nascent’ at NESAD

 See all articles by: RANDI HOPKINS

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



Featured Articles in Museum And Gallery:
Monday, September 01, 2008  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
StuffAtNight Latest:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2008 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group