Bradd Skubinnas Gabe Liked Jazz is a pile of trash on the floor that looks like a wedding cake, a mandala, or a musical in heaven. Pen caps, juice caps, pill bottles, bread-bag clips, straws, and other discarded bits of plastic are arranged in a perfectly symmetrical starburst pattern, with fourteen radial arms around what looks like the cover for a Safeway veggie platter. Almost comically precise (the same amount of ripped-up blue plastic shreds have been deposited in each of the seven to-go cup lids near the outer edge of the circle), the pieces repeating patterns seem more like ragtime than jazz. But according to gallery owner Francine Seders, Gabe was in fact improvised by the artist over the course of five hours. Reclaimed materials may be an art world cliché, but the other pieces of this Quartet also somehow manage to make them seem like a cool trick the artist just invented on the spot. A hole-riddled curtain of plastic New York Times bags (Untitled) hanging near the gallery entrance filters the bright gallery lights as if for a woodland scene in a play, while the north wall seems to be covered by a glowing force field (White Noise) of clear plastic containers for salads, desserts, and (I think) doorknobs. DAVID STOESZ
Tuesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 1-5 p.m. Starts: July 28. Continues through Aug. 23, 2009
