At an exhibition with a number of works claiming to respond to the paintings of Édouard Manet, you might expect to see, at the very least, pictures. Instead, “(TO THE SPECTATOR:),” staged by the anonymous collective Studio for Propositional Cinema, presented a series of texts, plus a performance, concerning spectatorship. Though the four main works offered oblique commentaries on different canvases by Manet, their art-historical points of reference, at least at first glance, appeared much more contemporary, as evinced, for example, by fragments or statements painted directly onto the walls in

German artist Florian Meisenberg has repeatedly staged confrontations between painted pictures and their digital siblings, and this was the case again in his recent exhibition with the lengthy title “Um, nice guy, good hospitality, but . . y’know . . I-I- I don’t think he knows how to turn on a computer. (brief pause) So . . . but th-the good thing is he’s filling the void . . uh, with coverage in xxxxxxxxxx at the moment so y’know they’re-they’re not drowning.”

Three sets of pictures were on view: a digital video tiled across four monitors, projections on the floor, and paintings on canvas. The