John Metoyer, "Curse of Eleusis"

RECOMMENDED

Women with undelineated white faces and closed eyes nearly vanish in a pinkish-white mist in Lou Raizin’s ultra-muted photographic images. Helmut Horn presents his color sculptural nudes in chiaroscuro, with their textured, illuminated and softened bodies bathed by shadows. Ian van Coller offers up segmented color portraits of hyper-dignified South African domestic workers at their places of employment. Always the sly deconstructionist, John Metoyer upends this meditative show with his “Curse of Eleusis,” where we are confronted by an old-fashioned kallitype print of a zombie in a stately dress staring at us through empty eye sockets, garnishing the visual buffet with the spice of a frisson. The four photo-artists here are emotional aestheticists, sharing an absence of pretensions to realism and evoking sentiments ranging from romantic idealism through mystery to sheer gothic horror. (Michael Weinstein)

Through August 22 at Schneider Gallery, 230 W. Superior