In a brilliant postmodern paean to classical modern painting, Crisanta de Guzman creates searing surrealistic color scenario photographs in the computer from her own shots and appropriated photographic images, and then hypes them up to produce seamless ultra-graphic brightly-colored simulations in the styles of the old masters set in contemporary times. Guzman’s photo-works are imbued with an impressive range of deep-cutting meanings; each of them evinces its concept stunningly, as in “Overhang,” in which we see, from behind, an unsuspecting girl walking down a sunny suburban street as a tornado of detritus, including an SUV, a house for sale, and bird-like and leaf-like shards (actually “folded fake million dollar bills”), descends on her, perhaps to sweep her up into it. With a nod to “The Wizard of Oz,” Guzman observes: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” The loss of innocence and its inevitability haunt Guzman, giving her still dramas poignancy, as in “Icarus’ Sister” where the subject kneels before a tattered dress with wings that is bedecked with orange and red feathers and is mounted on a headless dressmaker’s mannequin, as jumbo airliners soar effortlessly through the sky outside a window. (Michael Weinstein)
Through October 10 at Woman Made Gallery, 685 N. Milwaukee Ave.
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.
