RECOMMENDED Passing through Las Vegas native Cayetano Ferrer’s installation “8 Corners” at Three Walls feels like a plunge into someone’s mental map—a free-associational taxonomy. In this case, it is a map of places that emerge in unexpected ways through art practice. One corner is sculpted with fragments of brick wall on the floor, opening onto binder clipped, inkjet prints of desolate, disused swimming pools. Another is a cube nestled in the gallery’s corner, overlaid with photographic prints that reveal the wooden trim and brick walls in distorted perspective. This latter piece is a physical version of three photographs of corners on Western Avenue overlaid with transparent versions of Asian shipping boxes, which actually foreground the mundane iron and mortar that they “contain.” This is not a surprising evolution for an artist who made an impression in 2004 with a series of eerily translucent street signs that framed rather masked the space behind. And while any individual piece in “8 Corners” might be a retread of old conceptual art tricks—think Rene Magritte, Robert Morris and Jan Dibbets—when placed in a matrix with other works of diverse media and content, they cohere to stirring effect. The ultimate effect is that “8 Corners” gently carves into its site, embodying and illuminating otherwise open tracts of space. Given the recent explosion in relational and site-specific art, Ferrer should prove be a young artist to watch. (Ian Bourland) Through October 13 at THREE WALLS SOLO.
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