Ornament & Crime

The provocative title of this group exhibition is borrowed from a 1908 essay by Adolf Loos, an Austrian architect and fierce advocate of a Modernist aesthetic shorn of ornamentation. The artists represented here – including Charmaine Babiak, Phillip Bandura, Tara Owen, Mel Smit and Elise Truong – respond to or push back against Loos’ extreme position, through works as varied as blown glass jars, a silk corset, an elegant cameo, embroidered “perogies” and unusual vessels created out of salvaged materials.