The Chilean artist’s surrealistic, cannily crude wax-coated pencil drawings split differences between Goyaesque phantasmagoria and op-ed illustration. Themes of sexual abjection, political violence, and death are advanced with sardonic, ambiguous zeal—relishing as much as deploring the depicted horrors. The use of wax gives the drawings, which often incorporate titles or captions, arresting physical density, but Vásquez de la Horra’s imaginative project gains little in being displayed that it couldn’t achieve in reproduction or, for that matter, in poetic paraphrase. How she thinks intrigues more strongly than what she makes. Through Jan. 31. (Nolan, 527 W. 29th St. 212-925-6190.)
January 20, 2009
