on view at Edward Thorp Gallery, 210 Eleventh Avenue, at 25th Street, 212 691 6565, closes Saturday.
In medium-sized, digital color C-prints, Meredith Allen exposes the overlooked beauty, right under our noses, of glossy wrappings and veilings. Close-ups of an opaque white garbage bag with stabs of red cinch ribbons, a shadowy stroller rain flap, and the teasing, plasticky camouflage around a flower arrangement seem to posit an equivalence between hiding, sheltering, and revealing. It is as if the true meaning of our world, and its only reliable pleasure, lay in the thin gimcrack with which we film things over.
This was an artcritical CAPSULE in November 2008.
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