Art Capsule Reviews

Jenn Deirdorf: Push The last resort for an artist before a caustic critic or a bored gallerygoer is “You just don’t get it.” For Jenn Dierdorf, this phrase actually comes first. According to her statement, her show is about exploring “what happens when we cannot apply our typical meaning system to structures that we recognize.” We do recognize the dozens of rice-filled bed sheets piled up all over the floor, but we cannot “apply” a “meaning” to them. Same goes for the installation Sojourn, a stacked wall of folded and pasted book pages tied together with thread on a wooden table. The meaning of the triptych “Stream of Consciousness” is given away by its title, but the pencil squiggles fail to impress. We just don’t get it. Absent anything else to latch onto, would it be too much to ask for a sign? A little beauty, perhaps? Through March 30 at the Mallin Gallery, 201 Wyandotte, 816-421-0656. (Santiago Ramos)

Jasper Johns Prints It’s easy to feel skeptical about a show exhibiting the minor works of a great artist. Painter Jasper Johns is a living master, but even fellow giant Robert Rauschenberg advised him not to waste his time making prints. Happily, Johns ignored his friend. His first print, “Target,” on display now at the Belger, proves that Johns wasn’t wasting his time. This exhibition contains more than 90 prints, spanning more than three decades, and shows how certain images — a Savarin coffee can, a target, a green-and-yellow American flag — reincarnated themselves over and over in Johns’ work. Also on display are a series of witty lead embossings that Johns worked on in the late 1960s featuring toothbrushes, a loaf of bread and a shoe. Through May 4 at the Belger Arts Center, 2100 Walnut, 816-474-3250. (Santiago Ramos)

Lyrical Legacy: the Prints of Karen Kunc This career survey includes many of Karen Kunc’s small wood veneer folios, screen-printed with matrices of color. These bold forms and vivid colors didn’t just happen, but they reveal so organically that it’s almost possible to overlook the mastery of her technique. “History Book” intrigues with its proliferation of media: screenprint, watercolor, etching, collage and beeswax on thin substrate of Brazil wood, arranged as a small book. “Braided Waters,” a layered image of a stylized river and a double-helical motif, presents as three separate woodcut prints on a single piece of shaped paper, connected in theme like conversational digressions. “Original Fission,” with a similar color palette, suggests a scientist’s monitor screen, its data radiating out into the matrix of delicate cuts that define the surrounding composition. Through April 28 at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, 2012 Baltimore, 816-474-1919. (Chris Packham)

Sissel Tolaas: The Fear of Smell, the Smell of Fear Norway-born “olfactivist” Sissel Tolaas collected sweat from nine men who had been put into fear-inducing situations. She then synthetically reproduced their sweat pheromones and embedded them into paint applied to Grand Arts’ walls in nine off-white, 5-foot-by-8-foot panels. Patrons scratch and sniff, and the smells recall people and places (such as the sour milk and dishwashing soap in a second-grade cafeteria). It’s an intimate and vulnerable experience. Plastic bottles on a shelf allow the fearful to take in the art cosmetics-counter style. Be advised: No. 7 is a little funky. Through March 10 at Grand Arts, 1819 Grand, 816-421-6887. (Ray T. Barker) Reviewed in our Feb. 1 issue.