More Big Beautiful Things

Leonhard is the artist whose work spills into the adjacent spaces. In the back gallery is "Laughing Tongues," a totem built of chunks of rubber with malleable tongue-like protrusions on either end, while in the atrium is "Cartoon Clouds," made of rubber and wire constructions attached to the wall. On the opposite side is "Collected and Unsettled," a stack of house shapes cast in black industrial rubber leaning against the wall.

I can see why Leonhard's pieces weren't exhibited all together: they're too heterogeneous even given the shared use of rubber. But their placement denies both Justin Beard in the back space and Emmett Culligan in the atrium of having those areas to themselves, which would have been better.

Beard, of Denver, is represented by two pieces. "Hidden," a constructivist composition of PVC pipe with a small video monitor at one end, is installed in a niche and is hard to see — which I guess is the point. "Bike Messenger" is made up of a bicycle with a megaphone built out of found objects (including, apparently, a bicycle) that's been painted black. The bicycle is on a stand facing a projection of a film. In it, a man in disguise (most likely Beard) rides the novel conveyance down an alley while delivering incoherent messages by shouting them through the megaphone.

The last of the five artists is Emmett Culligan, also from Denver. Culligan is the odd man out, so to speak, in several ways. First, he's a sculptor rather than an installation artist. Second, he's decidedly not a postmodernist, as all the others are, but instead a neo-modernist, which could also be described as being post-postmodern. This is especially true of Culligan's interest in decorating his fairly simple forms with the mortar joints that cover two of them. And speaking of mortar joints, his materials are different from those of the other artists, who prefer the ephemeral and non-durable. Culligan works in stone and metal, the two most traditional materials in the history of sculpture.

The three wonderful sculptures here are all from his ongoing "Crew" series and are distinguished from one another by numbers. "Crew #1," in the center of the atrium, is a simple shape in white limestone blocks, reminiscent of the nude torso standing on a foot made of shiny galvanized steel. The shape of the galvanized foot is identical to that of the limestone and serves as a continuation of the piece. The sculpture rises from a roughly finished square steel base. "Crew #2" is similar in conception, but this time the form has been inverted, with the galvanized steel used to cap it off. "Crew #3" is very different and involves a shape that appears to be more mechanical than figural. Culligan has written in his artist's statement that these three pieces are the first of a larger group he began last year. It goes without saying that it would be interesting to see them all brought together when he's finished.

There are problems with More Big Beautiful Things, but there's also quite a bit to recommend, even if seeing the show requires a fairly long drive to the suburbs. But with a month to go before it closes, at least there's plenty of time left to get there.