Elger Esser spent his youth in Rome before becoming a student of Bernd Becher in Düsseldorf, where he currently lives. This exhibition gave a general overview of Esser’s work via eight pieces, each representing the nearly constant repetition of the same scheme: the horizon between sky, earth, and water. Such extreme specialization—along with reiteration—of subject matter is the prerogative of many present-day photographers, in the same way that seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters concentrated on only certain types of imagery—seascapes, snowy townscapes, or rustic summertime views—for

Bertrand Lavier’s crowded universe of objects is taken from an iconographic territory that seems to have no limits. This stimulating survey, curated by Giorgio Verzotti within the historic setting of the Villa Medici, poses questions about genres and artistic languages—and provides responses that are sometimes disorienting, sometimes enlightening. The well-paced installation summarizes all the so-called chantiers (construction sites) . . . thematic types that repeat over time in Lavier’s production, with thirty-three works ranging in date from 1986 to 2008.

Lavier’s chosen strategy is irony. La