Richmond, Midtown

Renee Lotenero, A sculpture made from the bedroom floor tiles, 2007

Renee Lotenero at McClain is a very pretty show, her collage/pastiche/drawings have great compositions and jarring levels of blurred reality between physical and representational; ceramic tiles and plastic grass, photographs of ceramic tiles and plastic grass and drawings of varying trompe l'oeil and sketchiness that look like ceramic tires and plastic grass are also references to places- mostly defined by where around the world (like the Honolulu Airport) she picked up her materials for the piece. A little candy in the back gallery- two John Chamberlains that sold between the end of the last show and the opening yesterday...

Emily Joyce, Double Steal: J.P., 2007

This collage/pastiche/drawing thing is contagious apparently, as Inman Gallery has also caught the bug. Emily Joyce (not Emily Sloan, sorry Norby) at Inman stuffs collage textures and animals into her seemingly die-cut acrylic splatters and splashes. Robert Ruello sticks with the solid hard edge abstractions, a little more representational than his gallerymate. CTRL is also up on the collage/pastiche/drawing vibe with Heimir Bjorgulfsson's Icelandic take on LA, a disjointed view of lush utopia. Finesilver is going for the the gusto, bringing out the big guns, blah, blah blah... there is a really big gun made out of styrofoam by Jason Rogenes. Two more environments are by Rebecca Ward and DC kid Dan Steinhilber. Dan made a cool inflated environment and his everyday material sculptures are firmly tongue-in-cheek, but he also put a couple of uninspired swings together in the gallery- nearly the same as a high-schooler piece at the CAMH this spring- ouch.