Multiple works by Jessic Stockholder and Darryl Montana installed

[Left to right] Jessica Stockholder, Bird Watching, 2001; Darryl Montana, Judy's Garden, 2000
"Designed to be walked through, Jessica Stockholder's installations affectionately deconstructs the field of low-temperature abstraction. Cosmopolitan art, I quickly realized, is, almost of necessity, either simpler or more complex than monocultural production. This, I think, accounts for the unusual division of works in the exhibition between abstract simplicity and ebullient complexity-between, for example, the elegant rigor of Ellsworth Kelly's New England "Frenchness" and the gorgeous profusion of Darryl Montana's Caribbean "Frenchness," with precedents in the French ancient régime and roots in Caribbean and Native American. Testing the broad interface of fine art, décor, and design, Montana’s Creole Mardi Gras costumes form a constellation with works by Jim Isermann, Alexis Smith, and Takashi Murakami. Their penchant for cosmopolitan sociability and historical stylistic development mirrors high art practice. The aspect of cosmopolitan art that I probably understood beforehand, but had never successfully articulated, is that, in its radical simplicity and ebullient complexity, it tends to privilege the interpretive instincts of the beholder over any internalized cultural presumptions. This, in turn, tends to privilege the radical sociability of the work in congress and in situ." - Text by Curator Dave Hickey for the exhibition catalog