Traditionally I tend to think of painting in terms of illusionism. In this sense, John Okulick’s wall constructions serve as a pun on painting’s two-dimensionality. To take an example. Hercules Bound to Fail (the titles are puns as well). Here the edges of a diamond donut are drawn in receding perspective by slats of wood tilted into the wall. A golden fleece fiber is sandwiched between the inner and outer edges which are bound together with rope. The image looks like a piece of sculpture flattened into a Ron Davis shaped canvas which, conversely, through its illusionism implies three-dimensionality. But a pun is a pun. And what does one do when the amusement is over?

—Susan Heinemann