tom moody
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Matt Harle's new work, seen and photographed in his Navy Yard work space. This is great stuff, roughly made but sophisticated sculptures in which a mylar scrim hides some mysterious inner structure made of paint and cut wood. Mysterious, but as Harle says, not obfuscating, since it is possible to puzzle out exactly what's inside the scrim by looking through angular holes and vertical slits on the sides.
Harle describes these screens, which slow down and confound vision, as creating a twilight-like condition of uncertainty, even under the bright lights of the gallery. Multiple associations are not just possible but inevitable--ship sails, tree branches, cellular organisms, totemic objects. Yet everything about them is considered, from a materials standpoint. This is better work than so much of what was on view in PS1's "Greater New York 2005." What's wrong with the gatekeepers? Where are they?