American Dream

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rich, full lives. For example, there's Bloomington, Indiana, artist David Katz's small sculpture of a vertical slice of a house which contains a red vermiform organism pushing against its ceiling. The work is tellingly titled Structural Confinement, which led me to think it referred to uniquely American systems that maintain inequalities across race and class. Other works made me wonder if, likewise, America has outgrown its dream.

One aim of the exhibit is to investigate the reality obscured by the dream's glimmer. I was reminded of one reality, heedless materialism, while looking at the installation Manufactured Longing: Cookie Cutter Dreams, an elaborate, silvery pile of house-shaped cookie cutters created by Gallery Project co-director Gloria Pritschet. Like Pritschet, Jesse Howell of Marshall also explores the substance of the dream, but to its plain and frugal end, in a collection of life-size furniture made of embossed paper. There are only the essentials: a dresser, a rug, a bed topped by a rumpled cover, a door, and a wall with a window, which appear to be pressings of Art Van or IKEA counterparts.