Allora & Calzadilla

True to their penchant for exploring the roots and meanings of words, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have titled their latest show “(En)Tropics,” explaining that the neologism comprises three distinct but linguistically related terms: entropy, tropics, and trope. Together these words underscore the philosophically salient gesture of “turning” (tropos in Greek), foregrounding the potentially productive aspects of entropy and prompting a reevaluation of the effects of the inexorable passage of time. On the page, this reads like heady stuff, and it inevitably recalls Robert Smithson’s own engagement with the second law of thermodynamics. Entering the gallery, one immediately confronts Ruin (all works 2006), a collected set of scrap-metal plates that have been painted black and hinged together to form a geometric floor piece that sprawls across the space; the hinges allow the work’s peaks and planes to be reconfigured at will. In an adjoining room, bandages have been used to rudimentarily graft plant parts to spiky cacti (Growth); they stand menacingly, waiting for their limbs to take hold. Finally, the video Sweat Glands, Sweat Lands hypnotizes with its depiction of a roasted pig spinning on a spit motored by the raised back wheel of a running vehicle. As the driver accelerates, so does the pig, and the reggaeton voice of Residente Calle 13—singing words written by the artists—describes a world in disarray moving entropically toward a monstrous horizon.