Unless it’s referencing popular graphics, postmodern drawing often retreats from the aesthetic page and collapses into a maze of detail. Technical illustration does the same thing, accompanied by text suggesting that analytical study will result in a greater understanding of some organic or mechanical function. Xiaowei Chen’s ink drawings resemble biological specimens, but they are more about life as an incomprehensible mess, as a high-school freshman might contemplate the innards of a dissected frog stretched out on a cold white laboratory counter. There may be something a bit elegant about how all the dead tissue hangs together, but the primary reaction has to be one of puzzlement and dismay. As a Chinese artist, trained in Beijing, she creates scroll-like, endless narrations that extend beyond the visual field. But as a contemporary artist, critiquing the world rather than celebrating it, she offers no enticement to stop the eye to savor areas of detail. The subject matter is not always as creepy as the countless corpses depicted in her ink drawing of a “Mass Grave.” But most of her pieces are neatly done invitations to share nightmarish confusion and pain, the bottomless pit that Surrealism has been excavating for nearly a century. (Chris Miller)
Through June 30 at Maya Polsky Gallery, 215 West Superior
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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