Betty Goodwin’s drawings explore the physical parameters of gesture, both real and imaginary. Working with wax, pigment, and ash, Goodwin creates life-size figures that seem to hover on enormous sheets of translucent vellum. Her characters are remote and faceless, caught between human presence and absence. She takes full liberty to remove a limb or extend the significance of a movement through repeated layers of opalescent color. In drawings such as Figure with Megaphone, 1988, the individual forms entwine themselves in a multiplicity of arm and leg movements that offer few clues. By stripping

Group shows have until recently often functioned as critical exercises, a gathering of works to illustrate a text. But exhibitions such as Jan Hoet’s “Chambres d’amis” or Kaspar König’s “Skulptur Projekte in Münster” have shifted the premises away from thesis-oriented criticism to a more open-ended structuring. These shows operate under casual guidelines, while text-based exhibitions are left to deal with the fact that contemporary criticism and art are operating in a booming, pluralist, noncritical art scene. This is a context in which implicit promises of authority don’t travel far.

Montreal-based