Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective Just as Freud's rejoinder that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" was deceptively simple, so too are Robert Bechtle's paintings of shiny jalopies, suburban tract housing and ground-hugging strip-mall architecture. Bechtle treats these dumb objects as chunks, wedges and slivers of flat-image composition. The pink and gray roadster of "'56 Chrysler" is immediately identifiable as an automobile. It is also the middle building block of a tripartite horizontal structure on canvas. Bechtle strikes a balance on the flat picture plane with a white stucco house on top and an asphalt road below. On the gradated black ground, the yellow foreshortened letters "XING" run vertically, drawing the viewer's eyes up into the mid-range of the picture and to the Chrysler's door. Combining the verisimilitude of the photograph with the painter's editing eye and hand, Bechtle renders our collective reality of automobiles, backyard grills and impromptu social gatherings as a balanced universe of formal analogy and association. In Bechtle's world, everyday life is a congruous dance of people, places and things. Through August 28 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth, 817-738-9215. Reviewed this week. (Charissa N.Terranova)
Ty Wilcox's Everything but the Kitchen Sink Ty Wilcox is obsessed with the semantics of symbolism. Transforming the stuff of everyday civic life into a game of jokes and mistakes, Wilcox foils the direct communication intended by street signs. Showing the silhouette of a little boy riding a bouncy toy bronco, "Lil Buckaroo" is a make-believe sign for an imaginary public sphere. "Slip" is a bright pink surface with the profile of a girl, dolly in hand, about to fall to the ground. Wilcox's pieces are too cuddly-cutesy for what the medium portends. These vinyl and aluminum sign-objects offer a keen transformation of icons, painting and rudimentary information. They could be much more forceful, however, if Wilcox directed his visual challenges into a more serious realm. What a shame it would be for Wilcox to waste his newfound voice on the treacly stuff of children at play when there are so many serious issues in the world. Through August 12 at El Centro College Art Gallery, 801 Main St., 214-860-2115. (C.T.)
Orbit The egg is such a loaded symbol. It is at once indeterminate and decided. It signifies the ambiguity of origins (which came first...?) and the certainty of gestational protection for all sorts of creatures, such as baby chicks, lizards and snakes. Talented artist and rising graduate student Aqsa Shakil knows the power of this incredible edible. With several eggs in different sizes and colors--one broken, one lit, some with writing in English and others in Urdu--dangling from the ceiling in the upstairs gallery at UTD, Shakil's installation "Orbit" plays on the form's simultaneous strength and preciousness. Overall it is a carefully crafted piece, with each egg meticulously painted and suspended from dripping string. Even more powerful for this artist--and certainly a greater challenge--would be to create such a mesmerizing hanging garden of form from not so loaded a symbol, since the egg can easily become an intellectual crutch. Through August 12 at the University of Texas at Dallas Visual Arts Building, Upstairs Gallery, 2601 N. Floyd Road, Richardson, 972-UTD-ARTS. (C.T.)
