For her first solo gallery show, Laura Matei, a young Romanian artist living in Italy, forged an unexpected union between canvas and sewing needles. Four white canvases hanging in a row tracked the progression, from left to right, of an acrobat walking a tightrope. The figure was “drawn” by passing black thread through the eyes of needles stuck through and protruding from the surface of the canvas.

Exact in its geometric conciseness, fascinating in its airy lightness, Funanbolo, 1999, is also ironic, since, while remaining almost disembodied, it presents itself as a kind of bas-relief. Matei has

The first thing one noticed in Christiane Löhr’s recent show was the barely tangible presence—it could almost be described as an absence—of a sculpture made entirely of horsehair. Skillfully tied together and attached to both ceiling and floor, extremely fine black threads delineated the outlines of a volume, which the eye, only after considerable effort, gradually perceived as a set of three intersecting cones. Occupying the entire front room of the gallery, the structure animated the space with its impalpability, instilling in the viewer the fear either of not seeing the work clearly or of