“Last Call: Stephen Paul Day at Arthur Roger Gallery,” Pelican Bomb

Self-loving, self-reflexive, or perhaps self-deprecating, Stephen Paul Day’s “Blame It On Vegas: Collecting Meta-Modern” offers many opportunities for similarly complicated readings. As both curator and artist, Day forms the exhibition’s thesis by creating and gathering an odd variety of objects from historically and geographically distant places. These objects share a palette of white, bronze, and pastels but the harmony ends there. Wavering between humor and novelty, with a hint of disgust, the viewer is taxed with making sense of Day’s assemblage of the “metamodern.”

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“‘Optical jazz’ – Artist John T. Scott’s work on display at LASM,” The Advocate

His mother told him to pass it on. And he did. He passed it on to his students who became teachers, and they passed it on to their students. He passed it on to other artists, who passed it on to their colleagues. And they’ve gathered in the Louisiana Art & Science Museum on this particular night to share memories of John T. Scott, a friend and mentor who died in 2005 in Houston. Yet it seemed as if somehow he’s still in the world, even walking with them through the Louisiana Art & Science Museum’s main galleries as Mora Beauchamp-Byrd guided them through Rhythm & Improvisation: John T. Scott & His Enduring Legacy. That’s the title of the museum’s exhibit of Scott’s work shaped by African, Caribbean and New Orleans musical traditions. The work has been described as “optical jazz” or “visual blues.” The show runs through Sunday, July 14.

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“Review: Blame It on Vegas: Collecting Meta Modern,” Gambit

What do the rise and fall of empires have to do with Las Vegas? Probably not much except that both are marked by glamorous and grandiose symbolism. History is a roll of the dice, and somebody always loses. Empires were often fueled by visions of vast wealth, yet they eventually crumbled. Stephen Paul Day’s Blame It On Vegas exhibition actually focuses far more on European history than it does on Nevada’s Sin City, which is mostly represented here by his oversized paintings of tacky souvenir matchbooks. By contrast, his sculptures often feature mini-renditions of major figures in European history.

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