Bill O'Donnell, "Spreading Tree"

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Crafting little-yet-homey toy houses and their presumptive miniature interiors, Bill O’Donnell embarks on a meta-photographic adventure, setting his creations in real environments, playing with scale and engaging in blatant deconstruction; we see the results of his conceptual practice in small-format muted color images that evoke—of all things—nostalgia. Deconstruction reaches its limit when O’Donnell shows us a tiny outbuilding held in the palm of his hand with a sylvan glade in the background, presumably where he will plant his next scenario. There is no attempt in any of O’Donnell’s postmodern images to deceive the eye into believing that it is looking at the everyday perceptual world; he goes for pure childhood play—the carefree joy of building sand castles, fielding armies on the counterpane and, of course, deploying little houses, all with some fuzz and blur to make the postie simulated memory game complete. O’Donnell admits that he likes his fun to be “time-worn and frazzled.” (Michael Weinstein)

Through November 2 at City Gallery, 806 N. Michigan, (312)346-3278