Capsule Reviews

Censored and Sanctioned: Soviet Art of the Cold War 1956-1986 In its seventh of eight proposed phases of exhibition, Censored and Sanctioned: Soviet Art of the Cold War 1956-1986 feels more like a show geared to educate rather than to proffer artistic delectation. The show is concerned with bringing home the misperceptions Americans and Russians dealt with during the Cold War to a mass audience (the question: Does one exist in Abilene?) than pushing the envelope by way of new artistic form and experimental media. Perhaps an inevitable side effect of putting together a show at once historical, political and aesthetic is that a certain brand of dogma-lite has won out over actual art, making for a pallid, if not benign, form of curatorial censorship. If the show may not present us anything tragically hip or new in the way of artistic invention, it does make for a bizarre, hidden event in a small town. As such, Censored and Sanctioned distills one quality that is quintessentially American--that we are a country of extremes. In what other space-time continuum would you find a show devoted to an almost broad-minded comparison of the shared cultural pathologies of the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War smack-dab in the middle of a landscape where your choice of radio stations is limited to country music, right-wing talk radio and white-boy rap? Through March 27 at the Grace Museum in Abilene, 102 Cypress St., 325-673-4587.

Photographs by Daniel Gordon What look like images of enticingly boring still-life settings and a man flying lithely through the air? The photographs of the talented young artist Daniel Gordon. If youre the type who gets a kick out of the subtle perversity of the utterly banal, then youll enjoy looking at Daniel Gordons still lifes. Gordon makes photographs of photographs, constructing the whatnot everyday objects of his still lifes from photos of the real thing. These are mind-probing images that you really should not miss. Through April 3 at the Angstrom Gallery, 214-823-6456. Reviewed March 18.