Mark van Yetter

Mark van Yetter’s “The Politics of Charm” indeed delights and beguiles, but all is not as it first appears. The show is primarily composed of two sets of works on paper, pastel-Fauvist in palette, marked with a hodgepodge of media such as pencil, watercolor, oil, and wax crayon. These are accompanied by a lone sculptural installation featuring a ceramic teapot and a pitcher on a pedestal. Such humble, incongruous materials draw the viewer into a visual world that is at once baffling and alluring, like a house of mirrors.

Doubling—in several senses—is central to the aesthetic experience van Yetter

picks February 02, 2023

Jeni Spota C.

One might be misled by the title of Jeni Spota C.’s most recent exhibition, “Works on Paper.” A more appropriate name might be “Works in Paper” or, even more accurately, “Wonderfully Weird Miniature Bas-Reliefs of Paper, Paint, Cotton, and Foam Core.” For this latest show, the artist has conjured thirteen Biblical apparitions from the fastidious manipulation of detritus.

Consider the fourteen-by-sixteen-inch collage Coat of Arms with Newlyweds (all works 2022). Four angels hold the titular shield above a married couple who are flanked by onlookers, including a pope in a miter and tonsured monks.