Andy Coolquitt, Frank Haines, William J. O’Brien

Artist Andy Coolquitt patches together an entire universe out of found material that’s accumulated at his house in Texas. Whether hanging on the wall or suspended low in the middle of the space, the lamps included in this group show are but a small quotation from his entropic artistic project. Constructed from found pieces of metal, these functional sculptures illuminate themselves more than the space in which they reside. In a second room, viewers encounter sculptures by Frank Haines and works on paper by William J. O’Brien. Whereas Coolquitt flirts with a plumber’s formalism, Haines is on the trail of a geometric ordering principle, one that at times verges on the mystical. A hexagonal installation in the cellar, placed in front of a wall lit with colored light, reminds one of a witch’s cave; upstairs, an agglomeration of thirteen photographs in shaped frames features at its center the image of a painted eye. O’Brien’s abstract and figurative drawings exhibit a deeply intuitive visual language of human faces and gestures, and they evoke the work of Jonathan Meese. Each of these three American artists samples everyday themes and forms to create his own personal cosmos.