In a series of 13 small, square pictures of trees, Alice Stepanek and Steven Maslin depict the transformation of tree branches from one season to another: without leaves, with buds, with leaves, with autumn foliage, and again without leaves. They have been painting landscapes exclusively for years now, directly from nature. Also included in this exhibition was a large, rectangular painting that showed the summer foliage of a tree, with a green shimmering surface.

We are all too familiar with landscape painting from art history—but what place might it occupy in contemporary art? Once the

One needed imagination and humor in order to enjoy this exhibition of Georg Herold’s work. For if one approached the work with tried and true ideas about art—questions about its sublimity, pedagogic intentions, or social relevance—one would simply laugh or nod in disbelief looking at his pot holders on wooden constructions. But this laughter, coupled with a joke or even cynicism, was generally stifled by Herold’s emphasis on the triviality of our daily life.

In these pieces, Herold worked playfully with pot holders. They are quite simply the materialization of a function, free of esthetic