An atmosphere of hushed stillness permeated this exhibition of nearly colorless sculptural work by the late Argentinean artist Victor Grippo. The silence was gradually broken as one became aware of a faint hum, like the noise of a smoothly functioning laboratory. In Analogía I, segunda versión, o Energía (Analogy I, Second Version, or Energy), 1977, dozens of potatoes—a recurring object in Grippo’s art—are scattered over a table and chair and attached to electrodes of copper and zinc, generating an electric current that is registered on a meter. In Vida, Muerte, Resurrección (Life, Death,

On the one hand, these painted cardboard sculptures of animals, farm objects, and country scenes are exactly the kind of thing that gives contemporary art a bad name. With their sloppy brushwork in cheap poster paint, kitchen-table construction materials (tape, glue, cardboard boxes, and toilet-papertubes), and subject matter straight out of elementary school, these small sculptures seem to have been concocted just to elicit the usual “My kid brother could make that!” On the other hand, this was a highly crafted, old-fashioned art exhibition, with each work placed centrally on its own white

The colors in Josef Kramhöller’s photographs are gorgeous: Deep reds, golds, yellows, they hold the promise of something very special—if only one could get things in focus. Even the blacks are luscious, but everything is a blur. In one photograph, there’s a hint of a jewelry display, but other than that the eye finds little to grasp. A closer look, however, reveals that the center of each photograph is, in fact, precisely in focus: a single fingerprint left by the artist on the window of one of London’s more exclusive West End shops. Laid out before us, the goods on display nevertheless remain

Can fashion photography ever be truly radical, or can it only be radical chic? The answer may seem self-evident, but only under the assumption that politics sits in judgment: Placing desire in the service of consumption, the fashion photo necessarily betrays desire’s radical potential. Shot for an ad for Jaeger, British photographer Jim Lee’s Baader Meinhof, 1969, in which the model’s elegant coat only just steals the scene from her haughtily upheld machine gun, illustrates the attendant problem clearly enough: The image would have been equally offensive to a conservative, appalled at the