In this case, the triptychs are set up as altarpieces. With their bright tones and peaked frames, they make the gallery’s windows look almost like stained glass. Each piece is titled with the name of an apple. “McIntosh’’ marries the tree of knowledge motif with the digital age reference: The women, wrapped in computer cables, form an apple tree. Most of the pieces here hold a tension between the dream of a utopia and its disappointing achievement — such as ensnaring people in the very wires they use to connect with each other.
“Royal Gala’’ reprises van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters,’’ with the Casilios in rough work clothes gathered around a table, eating fries out of fast food containers. Some of these works stretch the apple motif too thin, but the images are so dramatic and weird, and often rife with other references, it doesn’t matter.
I visited the gallery on a day when the second component was not up and running: Triiibe is attempting to create a public living room. The floor is scattered with low wooden tables and places to sit. Visitors can lounge, chat, and munch on apples as the triplets paint the interior of a room constructed within the gallery. Ultimately, through painterly optical illusion, the squarish room will look like a dome from within. The trompe l’oeil project seems disconnected thematically from the exhibit, just a project to entertain the artists while they entertain visitors. But the living room is in keeping with the spirit of community with which the Casilios and Wolinsky foster their collective. That can be seen as their own search for Eden — still, indeed, a work in progress.
Form and patina Judy Kensley McKie is one of the foremost studio furniture-makers in New England. Her latest exhibit at Gallery NAGA is a knockout, a trove of styles, materials, dancing patterns, and long, vital, sinuous lines.
