Josh Brand’s solo exhibition “Nature” was striking for its comparisons of opposing qualities—black and white, nature and city, large and small. Numerous photographic works were uniformly hung along the walls of the gallery like strings of punctuation marks, and as his subject matter was on the whole sedate, they collectively instilled a sense of contemplative reflection among those viewing them. The exhibition comprised unique palm-size black-and-white C-prints, alongside several larger photographs and works made using hand-manipulated photographic paper. The subject of all these works was,

Until now, you may have given little thought to Assyrian beards. In fact, they are remarkable things, with tiers of spiral-like black curls perfectly aligned to produce an almost architectural construction with which to adorn the face of the Mesopotamian male. Renee So has evidently given considerable thought to the contours of Assyrian facial hair, along with other well-selected highlights in the history of human self-design: In the artist’s tabletop-size ceramic sculptures, a variation on this beard is doubled and formed from a repeated pattern of semispheres glistening in delectable metallic