Possessed of a devilish imagination, Nicolas Lampert forages through old reference books, appropriating photographs and drawings from them that he photocopies, cuts up and recombines into monstrous hybrids of animals and machines that he photocopies once again to produce his seamless final images. Lampert is particularly partial to armored vehicles, which he creates by placing frogs, hedgehogs, turtles and grasshoppers on the bases of tanks. The resulting fantastical contraptions are at once ominous, endearing and pathetic—absurdly cute freaks of both nature and industry that belong to neither one and not even to themselves. The star of the show is a grasshopper tank in which the insect meshes so perfectly with the mechanism that we are momentarily convinced that a diabolical designer in the Pentagon had dreamed it up for some arcane psy-ops. (Michael Weinstein)
Through February 16 at Gescheidle, 1039 W. Lake.
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