Laura Berger’s show, “Into the Out,” at Fill in the Blank Gallery creates what at first seem to be borderline-saccharine worlds of smiling tree stumps and dancing bearded woodland creatures, and certainly one of Berger’s strongest tropes is of an inviting nature (a print for sale features the slogan “go back outside”). The paintings also re-imagine the natural world as a space of infinite potential, inhabited by various beings—equal parts manga and Dr. Seuss—paddling through undefined expanses and trees unanchored from the earth. However, these slight scenes, almost all of which feature a small group of various people and creatures in charming relation to one and another and their benevolent little worlds, carry with them a dark undertone of loss and subtle threat behind such blank and wide-eyed gentleness; one painting, for example, features two figures holding hands and entering a stream that enters the gaping mouth of a tree from which there’s no way out on the other side. Even the ostensible emphasis on the joy of relationship is undermined; in the most striking painting, two girls attempt to send speech bubbles to one another, but they pass by silently and create an unease that’s far more captivating than the obvious signifiers of cuteness and purity would suggest at first pass. (Monica Westin)
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
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