RECOMMENDED Although artist Isaac Wasuck works in paint, he deals in flesh. By extracting organic layers from the carcasses he implants on canvas, Wasuck plays with assumed cultural realities through the manipulation of actual organic ones. Layers of tissue most commonly amputated from the subjects of his arcane portraits include the muscular and follicle—perhaps the two most destructive to the perception of androgyny. Removing these characteristics also forces the viewer to focus in on the core of the skeletal axis and punctuates how smaller bones dictate the construction of a face or a shoulder. The declared purpose of all of this was to create something explicitly non-deliberate. Yet, clearly certain paintings in the series belie this intention. Others betray it outright. Ultimately, the exhibition displays a progression that shifts from the over-imposition of message to the abandonment of it, which, at its worst, spells equal folly (such as, for example, when influence seems drawn from a seventeenth-century surgeon’s manual). For Wasuck, promise lies somewhere in between. (Patrick Klemz). Through Dec. 1 at Logsdon 1909, 1909 S. Halsted
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