St. Louis Art Capsules

Newly Reviewed
Meth and Hot Dogs Reviewed in this issue.

When We Build, Let Us Think That We Build Forever Home, or a sense of place, seems to be an ever-elusive but primary concern for the creative set, as this group show by local artists confirms. B.j. Vogt piles strata of Styrofoam and tufts of green twist ties to create a mountainous, occasionally green-sprouting form based on the shape of his arm. Christine D'Epiro consumes a discrete gallery space with a floor-to-ceiling patchwork of paper bags painted black and punctured with small holes that reveal bits of luminous color. The body, here, becomes a kind of location; and what seems like the density of night becomes a dense, all-consuming place. Also participating are Jessica Kiel-Wornson, Brea McAnally and Peter Marcus, who explore the spirit of the habitable environment from the stock form — or shards of form — of a house. Through September 30 at The Luminary Center for the Arts, 4900 Reber Place; 314-807-5984 or www.theluminaryarts.com. Hours: 2-7 p.m. Tue.-Wed. and noon-5 p.m. Sat.

Ongoing
Bazuco The aftermath of this eponymous arts collective's one-night takeover of the gallery space is a media melee of burst-piñata pieces, band and art-collective paraphernalia, flags, videos and sound equipment at rest. The absence of Bazuco is palpable despite all the leftover promotional media, making the show a lawless display of aura, or the artist a kind of ever-elusive white rabbit, busily manufacturing the art of busyness offstage. The collective, which formed in Colombia in 2005, seeks to dismantle the dual scourges of capitalist consumerism and the futile war on drugs via the empty production of salable propaganda and the flagrant touting of the unabated illegal drug industry. Hence what one sees at the gallery is a video of the opening-night performance of Dead Druglords, a band, and its assorted mock-terrorist high jinks alongside the glorified relics of their commodification. The band — and collective — have long since left the building, and strangely, it's this sense of something one can never grasp that makes for the work's biggest draw. Through September 1 at Boots Contemporary Art Space, 2307 Cherokee Street; 314-773-2281 or www.bootsart.com. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Wed. and Sat. and by appointment.

Built: Kranzberg Exhibition Series Six St. Louis-based artists — Mike Behle, Stan Chisholm, Sarah Frost, Craig Norton, Cameron Fuller and Sarah Paulsen — were chosen to transform the small rooms of Laumeier's gallery space into site-specific installations for this annual exhibition that usually focuses on the work of just one local sculptor. The decision to select artists whose work is not predominantly three-dimensional to expand their practices to fit installation art's all-consuming proportions, and thereby exemplify a current trend, is an interesting idea, if something of an assignment. The resulting work feels equal parts challenging and strained — that is, challenging for the artists to execute, no doubt, but an unnatural extension of their native impulses. Chisholm, Norton and Fuller/Paulsen, for instance, translate their distinct two-dimensional aesthetics in a way that comes across as somewhat stiffly set-like. Frost (who won a 2008 RFT MasterMind award) and Behle struggle to make their pieces cohere more naturally and transcend their disparate consumer materials. As a whole the show feels like a curious maze of backdrops to actions — particularly all the trials that go along with navigating, or in this case, building, unfamiliar territory. Through September 6 at Laumeier Sculpture Park, 12580 Rott Road, Sunset Hills; 314-821-1209 or www.laumeier.com. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. (Outdoor grounds open daily from 8 a.m. to sunset).

Bruce Burton: Observation and Formulation St. Louis-based Bruce Burton transforms this small gallery into a contemporary Cabinet of Wonders, re-articulating the space with an eye equally attuned to contemporary materials and design as to natural oddities — an eye that, in turn, trains the viewer's eye to see subtle, unlikely relationships. Like the Renaissance Wunderkammer, Burton curates an environment where correlations between collected objects are unexpected and evocative rather than predictably serial: a square piece of copper echoes with a square piece of mirror; a pile of moldering orange peels wears a patina similar to a single rusted screw. While the space can be experienced as a whole installation, its scrupulously plotted elements function dually as individual art pieces, with respective names. This movement in and out of closely viewable detail makes for an experience of endless play and infinite and irreducible curiosity — the residue of which follows one out of the gallery and into the world, made suddenly rife with peculiar nuance. Through September 4 at PSTL Gallery at Pace Framing, 3842 Washington Boulevard; 314-531-4304 or www.paceframing.com. Hours: 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat.

Home from Work to Find Your Spaniel Turned Into a Wolf St. Louis-area artist Alison Ouellette-Kirby presents seven variations on the theme of the small green house from the game Monopoly. Home, chance, the ideal dream and desperate horror of domesticity — all of these ideas come into play as the perfectly simple form of the game piece variously manifests itself out of collected dog and cat hair, the sterling silver of a ring crowned by an enormous piece of cubic zirconia and doghouse-size sheets of Plexiglas on which a projection of a ferocious-looking spaniel mutely barks. In Longest Way Round, Shortest Way Home, three weighty cast-iron houses roll on a large seesaw-like track; they tend to collect heavily on one end unless the viewer uses the handle and exerts a little muscle to get them balanced in the center. All of the work is executed with such pristine craftsmanship that the ideas and sentiments behind it are communicated with inevitable clarity. Through August 29 at Good Citizen Gallery, 2247 Gravois Avenue; 314-348-4587 or www.goodcitizenstl.com. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. and by appointment.