Diana Puntar at Oliver Kamm/5BE

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Forty million people in the world today are said to live in caves, so the stalagmitic and stalactitic sculptural works in Diana Puntar's exhibition "Lived Live Evil Devil" could function as highly innovative decor for any number of such dwellings. They could also simply be practically embellished, perhaps lathe-modified found interiors, ones which effectively nullify an "up" or "down" orientation.

Smooth, curvaceous, solid-looking forms of layered plywood, interrupted by segments of pocketed phosphorescent foam, sport peaks and bevels and flat, concave, bubble-dome or globular mirrors. Some toss back anamorphic reflections, others are wells lined with polished aluminum and reveal the spectator's image through depths of illusionary water. During the run of the show, when night fell, the gallery enthusiastically turned off the lights upon request, revealing rings suspended in midair along with tubular, horned and oblong shapes that glowed in the dark.

Puntar makes merry with the monstrosity of mirrors. In Tion, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Borges has Bioy Casares cite "one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar" who "had declared that mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men." A separate work by Puntar at P.S.1, titled Less Than Day or Night (2007), further emphasized the hell-realm of mirrored images. The artist makes reference to the Inferno, where what is performed "above" echoes in the underworld as its "correction"--the term applied to adjusted vision. In the goatish bifurcation of several of Puntar's works, the Adversary envisioned by Goya is alive and well and performing his seductive work, with that ever-effective means: Vanitas.

In Puntar's streamlined mimicry of the gnarly organic world, the Devil has set his trap: however beautiful and passing strange that world might be, we're inevitably drawn to our own reflection, which, however it may be distended, distorted or embedded in a bottomless well, we seek as if we were still, ever and always, the fairest in the land.

COPYRIGHT 2008 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning