
Compared to that, Brock Enwright’s weird graphite on woven paper piece, HAUNT, seems tame, or at least it did until I found out he was the guy who ran the "designer kidnapping" service in New York that staged false abductions for a fee. (He gave it up after it became popular with S&M freaks, who loved being kidnapped but had all sorts of other demands.) Clearly, these are not your usual art school graduates. Take Lillian Butter, a creator of charmingly repulsive ink drawings who was underground for so long that she wasn’t allowed back into the U.S. after visiting family in Canada. Others have stories too convoluted for casual conversation. In this context, Nikki Crook’s painting, CORSETED GIRL, top, a portrait of a Victorian woman attended by a maid with a bird skull head, seems only mildly disconcerting. The same might be said for Marcel Flisiuk's IN THE COLD ROOM, below. In art as in life, everything is relative. ~Bookhardt
I WISH I WAS DEAD BIENNIAL: Works by Unsettled and Unsettling Natures
Through Feb. 27
Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave., 710-4506; www.barristersgallery.com