Hepler’s fascination with swarms drives “Intricate Universe,’’ and for good reason: The movement of particles (or insects, or birds) in relationship to one another, indeed almost as one, captures the tension between coherence and dissolution. And there’s a visceral reason: Swarms are creepy. Think of Tippi Hedren under attack in Hitchcock’s “The Birds.’’
The small figures in Hepler’s “Projection Rooms’’ don’t behave like Hedren; mostly, they stand and watch, as if in awe. This sets the viewer up for “ARREST, ARRAY,’’ a 24-foot-long installation made of black disks joined by metal rods, suspended like a three-dimensional spider web from the ceiling. The disks concentrate near the front of the piece; elsewhere they are more dispersed. Circle the installation, and the clustering shifts with your perspective, creating the unsettling sense that the thing is in motion or alive.
The metal rods add up to a giant network that balloons through the space. While they add coherence, I wondered what the piece would look like strung together on something translucent, such as fishing line; the skeleton of the installation would be gone, and the suspended bits would be even more startling. Still, “ARREST, ARRAY’’ does its eerie, fascinating work.
Hepler’s woodblock prints, at the other end of the gallery, are absorbing. A few take on the buzzing energy of a swarm, but many seem unrelated to the show’s central theme. One wall of untitled prints, the “Wolfecut’’ series, features simple forms and layering to create compelling, elemental images, often in bright colors. They’re simple and grounding to look at after having traveled, like Gulliver, from the tiny land of the “Projection Rooms’’ to the oversize, gorgeous, and disorienting “ARREST, ARRAY.’’
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