Capsule Reviews

Louise Bourgeois Etchings Much more interesting than pop star-turned-Kabbalah expert Madonna and more creatively charged than the bête noir of academe, Camille Paglia, Louise Bourgeois channels change like a chameleon with a penchant for maintaining the same warm place in the sun. Though she has perfected the art of reinventing herself, hers is a paradigm of discovery and reinvigoration based on maintenance of a good thing: sex, gender and the role memory plays in our everyday lived reality. Undaunted by age--she's 94--Bourgeois continues to revel in the world of sex play and possibility. The transparent bodies of the man and woman in "The Couple" reveal sexual penetration at work. All the while the woman stands on the man, her red heels atop his bare feet. In the two prints "Male and Female," two subtly sexualized cats stand head-to-head with caricatured genitalia. The sinuous and undulating line of these etchings markedly contrasts with the orthogonal edges of "The Rectory," a stoic rendering of a Georgian temple-fronted facade that reads like a house of discipline. The order and tight craftsmanship of this work are the means of imaginative whim and play. Through October 1 at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, 5020 Tracy St., 214-521-4322. (Charissa N. Terranova)

John Pomara Contemporary Legend Pomara takes painting to a level of intergalactic communication, with every blip-line running across the shiny taut surfaces of his painting reading like a trail line of a shuttle shooting through space. He's a futurist working in an ancient medium, a cyber-naut floating through space with paintbrush and squeegee in hand. Pomara has been bestowed the much-deserved honor of Texas "legend." More than a mythic figure, though, Pomara is a realist who sees painting's new potential in the digital age. In "Track and Field" (1997), a series of 45 photocopies, Pomara transforms a Xerox machine into a painting tool, manipulating paint drips as the copier-camera scans away. This survey of the artist's work includes paintings and print work from the early '90s to the present. The power of this show is in teaching us about the gifts of one artist using the ready-at-hand, from copy machine to desktop software, photographic pixel to digital bit. Through October 22 at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, 2801 Swiss Ave., 214-821-2522. (C.T.)