Karen Bennicke’s richly colored ceramic sculptures are a puzzle, their cubist forms appearing at first to represent street art, alien bodies, signage, or toys. Once visitors to her exhibition at HB381 spot the maps of Manhattan on the gallery’s back wall, however, each tangle of lines and shapes materializes into a segment of the island’s street map. We can’t see but we can imagine that work, leisure, recreation and every aspect of city life takes place in the locations pictured, a representation of possibility more than experience. At the same time, Bennicke’s sculptures speak to histories of settlement and the myriad decisions that went into what our urban environment looks like today. (On view in Tribeca through Oct 19th).
