You can't get anywhere near Chris Gentile's sculpture. You can't walk around it, squinting at the way the art's bulk interacts with the light from the gallery's windows or lack thereof. At "Reincarnation Blues," you're forced instead to look at the work through the artist's own eyes via his camera lens, since he exhibits only the photos of his often large, abstract sculptures, not the pieces themselves. Using everyday materials — paper, office supplies, clay, even maraschino cherries in one startling piece — Gentile makes broad statements, and then constricts them through the photo process. One image, for example, finds him wrapping everything in a room in paper and masking tape: a ladder, tables, shelves, the floor. You'd like to walk through it, beautiful and alien as it is, but you can't, so take a closer look at the photos.
July 2-Aug. 15, 2009
