Theo Rosenblum

“Raw Deal,” Theo Rosenblum’s second solo exhibition, is a journey into an enchanted forest of kitsch, craft, and the adolescent mind. Rosenblum’s creations depict fairy-tale grotesqueries in chaos: a large bear escapes his shackles, violently thrashing through fields of attack dogs and popcorn, while the prophetic taproot in King Carrot (all works cited, 2010) ominously greets viewers on his sculpted, faux bois throne.

Contextualizing Rosenblum’s sculptural tableaux are two disparate and methodologically conflicting series of paintings. Several large-scale works, whose bubbling fluorescent green

picks August 26, 2010

“Grass Grows by Itself”

It is clear from “Grass Grows by Itself” that the recent accumulation of environmental traumas and social malaise has prompted some artists to retreat inward. The eighteen artists exhibited here evince subtle, meditative strategies, in keeping with the Zen proverb from which the exhibition takes its title: “Sit quietly, doing nothing, as when spring comes, the grass grows by itself.”

Although the investigations on view trace back to the 1980s, with the inclusion of Carmen Herrera’s geometric abstract paintings and Wolfgang Laib’s brass cones resting on beds of white rice, curator Sima Familant