By Julia Morton
The industrial landscape of Bushwick is giving way to street art. As yet un-trampled, you can still find good examples of Swoon’s paste work sublimely weathering away. At Sugar Gallery, a small space run by installation artist Gwendolyn Skaggs, you’ll see Love and Freedom. The show features three works that explore big ideas through humble objects. In her series “Charted Breaths,” artist Jacqueline Lou Skaggs uses rhinestones to chart the periods in poems and letters. They drift in tight formations across gouache-painted wooden panels on which the first line painted determines all the rest. It doesn’t matter that it’s all very private and hard to decipher, because they’re refreshingly quiet and beautiful—and they sparkle, too. Doug Young’s giant hook rug features an action adventure war scene, and is deliberately humble to bring home the unbalancing nature of power. Young suggested the rug be hung in a boy’s room for greatest effect. In her second piece, Jacqueline Lou Skaggs has painted significant images on lost pennies, or found ones in this case. The tiny penny paintings are hung in a random pattern that the curator discovered by tossing coins on the ground. The blending of folk aesthetics and conceptualism is an interesting idea; however, a magnifying glass would help to fully appreciate the piece. Skaggs evolved into a curator when she began inviting artists to show in her studio-turned-gallery. Her development has been aided by others also drawn to the art world’s outskirts, perhaps for the love of space and the freedom to show their own way.
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Through Aug. 21, Sugar Gallery, 449 Troutman St., Brooklyn, 718-417-1180.
