Featured Review: Not Real

Featured Review: Not Real Making something out of nothing — the nothing in this case being the phenomenon of lens flares, those opalescent flashes that appear in photographs or film footage as a result of misdirected light — sculptor Eric Troffkin crafts jewel-shaped plastic forms and collects them in dangling, mobile-like clusters, or in stacked and interlocking heaps on the gallery floor. The pastel-colored objects slowly twist and glimmer in the sharp beam of stage lights, causing their glossy surfaces to emit their own lens flare-like reflections. Light-box photographs of the dangling mobiles captured in static compositions make yet another physical avatar for the fugitive camera effect and underscore the larger notion of theatricality inherent in most things deemed "art" (or simply beautiful). It's a playful exhibit of creative whimsy acting out the role of natural caprice, all executed with such a high degree of craftsmanship that it makes the false reality appear more like the Platonic truth — or, at least, like the more appealingly exuberant of the two. Through December 19 at Good Citizen Gallery, 2247 Gravois Avenue; 314-348-4587 or www.goodcitizenstl.com. Hours: noon-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. and by appointment.

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• Eric Troffkin

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