Cast: Photographs by Jin-Ya Huang In her photographs, Jin-Ya Huang turns fuzziness and blur into a visual vocabulary of the indecipherable. The illegibility of her images is by no means frustrating. The combined result of the artist's secret prop choices and photo-digital process, these images will keep you guessing while visually enthralled by their beauty. Is "Vortex" her pudenda or a flower? Is "Circuit" the vertebral column of a robot or miniature television sets on fire? Through July 10 at Mulcahy Modern, 408 W. Eighth St., 214-948-8595. Reviewed June 3.
Concentrations 44: Matthew Buckingham, "A Man of the Crowd" Matthew Buckingham's film work is an exercise in refracted perception. The piece consists of photographs and film in two adjacent rooms. The juxtaposing of somber black-and-white photographs and the pyrotechnics of film installed according to the architecture of video installation makes an otherwise cloying and nostalgic piece interesting. The film installation takes place in a long, rectangular gallery where a loop runs, also in black-and-white, of two men perambulating through Vienna, one in pursuit of the other. Bisecting the space is a two-sided mirror that deflects and refracts the film projection onto the facing wall. Onlookers are intended to become pedestrians on the streets of Vienna as through bodily interaction your shadow becomes part of the piece. Basing the work on Edgar Allan Poe's "Man in the Crowd," Buckingham renegotiates timeworn and obsolete themes of alienation and urban life in the 20th century. Through June 20 at the Dallas Museum of Art, 214-922-1200. Reviewed April 8.