Positioning himself atop parking garages and behind the windows of office buildings and hotels that place him at mid-height, John Dowell satisfies his craving for dense urban skyscraper beauty by shooting clear and reposeful color cityscapes at dusk and in the dead of night, emphasizing the glittering windows that surround him and sometimes granting us a distant peek inside. Dowell confects his most tantalizing eye candy at the last fading glimmers of dusk, when the lights gleam against softly hued skies. Drawn to Atlanta and Chicago, Dowell’s takes of our very sweetest home (as it appears to be under his lens) reach their zenith in his image of the garishly illuminated Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s fronting a phalanx of twinkling towers that stand behind it like corporate sentinels. Far from sending up the fast-food emporium, Dowell looks down on it as a treasure of our times that is there to amaze and delight, as might a wonder of the world. (Michael Weinstein)
Through April 23 at Schneider Gallery, 230 West Superior.
Second Sets: A Review of John Sparagana at Soccer Club Club Sparagana subverts the static documentation of a time-based medium by imbuing the image with an infinite set of potentialities—his blurred images shimmer like specters of time and space ready to unfold.
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.
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.
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