In a tour de force of extreme transformation, Deanna Krueger appropriates diagnostic MRI films, rips them into shards, staples them together, and overlays them with monotypes to produce glistening abstractions in red, ice blue, gold, gray, brown and tea green. From a distance, Krueger’s photo-works are assertively attractive by virtue of their jagged textures and glass-like surfaces, but on closer inspection they reveal worlds teeming with detail that never betray any pattern or overall meaning, but involve the eye in the plays of line and form in each sector of the surface. Krueger drapes her works unprepossessingly on the gallery’s walls without frames—anything more would detract from their self-standing integrity. She titles them with references to astral bodies, flora and precious stones, but viewers are better off ignoring that new-age flourish and looking instead for the way that they open the doors of perception to exquisite psychedelic experience. (Michael Weinstein)
Through June 3 at the Illinois Institute of Art Gallery, 180 N. Wabash
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