2 Must-See Art Openings This Friday

This Friday's art openings both grapple with our ADHD world. But they respond to the challenge of keeping the viewer's interest in markedly different ways. 

See one or see them as a pair — a good excuse to visit both Grand Center and Maplewood.

Andrea Tharian: Haven
Kranzberg Arts Center
501 N. Grand Blvd. | www.kranzbergartscenter.org
Opening 5-9 p.m. Fri., Sep. 2. Continues through Oct. 30.
The title of St. Louis artist Andrea Tharian’s show is meant to be taken literally. Haven, her installation of ceramics and paper forms, is meant to capture your attention wholly and in the process create a respite from the pressures of the outside world. Tharian’s monochrome palette and the repetition of cut-paper forms work together to create a soothing, meditative ambiance. The hope is that you will ignore your phone and your fake online friends in favor of admiring the organic shapes that appear and reappear in the assemblage. Those flowers, branches and antlers have more to offer than another mealtime update/photo combo anyway.



Jason Hoelscher: Iconographic Overdrive
Hoffman LaChance Contemporary
2713 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood | www.hoffmanlachancefineart.com
Opening 6-10 p.m. Fri., Sep. 2. Continues through Sep. 24.
Like Andrea Tharian, painter Jason Hoelscher is concerned about his audience’s attention span. But rather than seducing you with detail, he strives to create what he terms “short attention span paintings for the short attention span culture.” His minimal “data plane” paintings are designed to punch as much visual information into your face in the shortest possible span of time — a blink of the eye and you’ve see it all. Hoelscher’s hope is that each individual viewer will get the most out of that info-burst as possible, or at least as much as they need for their own enjoyment. A longer examination of each painting might yield more information (and Hoelscher does work his own in-jokes into many pieces), but getting the reference is not a necessity.