Godforsaken curios - The Old, Weird America

When heads explode, you can almost hear the "ping" of points scored.

Strewn across the galleries are Allison Smith's Civil War mannequins. Exhausted or dead, all feature versions of the artist's face.

Kara Walker explores the metaphoric possibilities of shadow worlds. Since her debut in the 1990s, they have become omnipresent, and yet their internal rigor keeps their edges sharp.

Walker, Video still from 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture, 2005

Space is accordion in the acrylic paintings of Aaron Morse, who turns the known world inside out.

Morse, The Good Hunt (#2), 2006, acrylic, watercolor, pencil on paper, 90 x 22 inches

Deborah Grant's hieroglyphic storyboards are a homage to the austere imagery of former-slave Bill Traylor. He is her history, her tale to retell.

Grant, Where Good Darkies Go, 2006 acrylic/birch panel

When Americans look backward searching for light, many see Abe Lincoln. Dissatisfied with the historical remove, some want to be him, as if he were Elvis, forever coming back from the dead.

Greta Pratt, Nineteen Lincolns, 2005
Before they collectively took to their couches to watch Jerry Springer and Fox News, rural Americans went dancing. Even as those who wore them aged, dresses continued to flair over a frozen flourish of petticoats.

Cynthia Norton, Dancing Squared, 2004

McDermott & McGough honor the dandy, the pioneering gay emblem who defied a culture that considered homosexuality a crime by living well.

McDermott & McGough, Divine Fury, 1932, 2002, oil/linen, 60 x 48 inches

Charlie White, 1957, 2006, C-print, 44 x 56 inches

Appropriated from a myriad of sources, including Norman Rockwell's illustration of Ruby Bridges marching into a segregated New Orleans school (that's her on the far left), White's tapestry collage has a flat, unnaturally even light, as if history, at this turning point, were holding its breath.

Also terrific in this show are Jeremy Blake's cloudy mixtures of memory, guilt and loss; Matthew Day Jackson's post-Rauschenberg book of photographic imagery trailing across a wall like a diagrammed sentence, and Brad Kahlhamer's rush of signs and symbols hurtling across the paper like a river intent on a flood.

Dario Robleto continues to elude me. Much is made of his ability to forge objects out of a cacophony of sources. His Rosary for Rhythm derives from melted and carved vinyl records of Jerry Lee Lewis' and Little Richard's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On."

That's swell, but in the end what Robleto delivers are ....rosary beads. I've seen them before. Lots of times. They rattle through my dreams like the ghost of Christmas past. What has Robleto added? I'd say nothing.

Through fetishistic processes he arrives at the commonplace, and his dainty chests of drawers are not worth opening. (Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee disagrees, finding Robleto's contributions to this exhibit "eye-popping" and "brilliant.")

(Earlier post on Sam Durant's contribution to this show here.) The Old, Weird America runs through Jan. 3. Free admission.