Michael Weinstein

Rough, raw and infinitely complex disturbing beauty is what Brian Andrews is after when he records and imagines nature in dense and teeming color close-ups of flora and fauna. In rebellion against the magazine aesthetic, Andrews provides the visual translation of Herbert Spencer's dictum that "nature is red in tooth and claw." Andrews makes his point most forthrightly in a study of a prickly cactus resembling a human arm that he has spotted with drops of stage blood. Existentialist to the core, Andrews goes goth in a suite of five intimate takes of the eyes of luxuriantly feathered and multi-hued dead birds that appear as black holes ready to suck the life out of us--the nothingness permeating perceptual exuberance has never been so seductive and threatening.

Brian Andrews shows at 40000, 119 North Peoria, (312)738-0179. Through June 9. (2007-05-22)

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