There’s just one more week of a weird and wonderful exhibition at Gallery 263 that’s all about the inexplicable.
In “Beyond the Veil,” a show ranging from the supernatural to the surreal, the selected works are a constellation of painting, photo, video and even hair-based sculpture. The national call for submissions was selected by Kate McNamara, a Providence curator who this year assumed the role of interim director at Harvard’s Carpenter Center.
Every piece in this show has an element of the fantastical – whether it’s flying trees by CJ Lori, Ashley Jin’s dreamy colored pencil landscapes or Dominick Cocozza’s references to Guatemalan dolls.
A highlight is a jewelry boxlike corner at the back of the room that’s full of small, intricate pieces – fitting, given its location on top of the flat files containing the gallery’s Small Works Project. Clare Kim has a charming, delicate painted frame there containing graphite drawings of a galaxy and a tree. That frame is as beautiful as what’s inside it, and the two tiny leaves on each side of the frame seem to vibrate with a mysterious force. Behnaz Monzavi paints on top of a copy of an Islamic miniature painting by Behzād. Her gouache and watercolor figure paintings sprout out of the book’s page in a stunning vision of cherry blossom and deep blue.
A striking sculpture by Steph Zimmerman, “All Hail the Skunk Oil Queen!,” looks like a scarab or an unusual floral arrangement. Pieces of painted felt are gently held together, supporting a wooden log and surrounded by tendrils, metal and clay. The piece’s curlicue shapes are mirrored in Michael Gunn’s fantastic oil painting, “What We Carry,” which features a glowing, disembodied leg surrounded by vines and fruit.
“Beyond the Veil” is quirky, yet endearing and full of gems. Ultimately, it has that special quality that all the best ghost stories do: a sense of mystery, a lack of specificity, an inability to verify or to fully pin down. The things that bubble up from those mysteries are surprising and delightful.
“Beyond the Veil” runs through Saturday at Gallery 263, 263 Pearl St., Cambridgeport.
Share your own 150-word appreciation for a piece of visual art or art happening with photo to editor@cambridgeday.com with the subject line “Behold.”
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