Various evidence of enigma

Looking into worlds of details and subtleties

July 22, 2009|Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

Catelin Mathers-Suter is one of those artists who captivate with a mind-boggling attention to detail. For her show at Kingston Gallery, she draws landscapes in ink, delineating even blades of grass. But there’s more going on in her work than obsessive detail; in fact, she often leaves areas completely blank, and her scenes sometimes diminish to the sparest of lines in the distance.

Mathers-Suter layers landscapes. Using grid stencils, she superimposes renderings of man-made spaces over more natural ones. But the geometry of the man-made structures is merely suggested because she draws them only in negative space, often making solid structures into voids. Leaves, grass, and blossoms flourish over pale hints of the built environment. Our habit is to see a building and ignore the land around it; it’s a simple figure-ground equation. Mathers-Suter compellingly inverts that formula, creating satisfyingly enigmatic works of art.

In “Poles,’’ foliage creeps up and lolls across empty white verticals. They might be utility poles lining a road, receding into the background. They bring a sense of order to the scene, but it’s a frail, ghostly order. “Overgrown I’’ shows the square outlines of buildings beneath a carpet of greenery. There’s a clear block pattern; in places, the verdure gives way to sheer, empty squares.

Mathers-Suter draws the viewer in with her minutely attentive hand. It’s not until we’re in deep that we notice that she’s pulled us into a dissonant, otherworldly environment.

Also at Kingston, Karen Meninno’s installation “Confections of a Baroque Mind’’ is a table covered with bright, tiny clay sculptures in a hot rainbow of tones, from fuchsia to purple to orange. It’s giddily over the top - she mentions Marie Antoinette in her discursive artist’s statement - but strangely, it left me wanting more. A tabletop of visual pastries is not enough for an art installation. Fill a room with them.

Out of the darkness

Keita Sugiura’s dark, luscious photographs at Keiko Gallery take time to appreciate. At first, they appear simply black. Let your eye adjust, and you will see a forest landscape.

The young Japanese photographer takes a large-format camera into a forest at sundown. He shoots in the shadows at dusk. Instead of printing on photographic paper, Sugiura scans his film and makes prints using a mineral ink with an alluring velvety finish that seems to absorb light, making the shadows even blacker. The forest pops dimly out of this blackness in cool, watery green, but pop it does, thanks to the high-focus detail the large-format camera captures.