Visual Arts

RICHARDSON – A steady stream of talented young formalists has emerged from the art programs at the University of Texas at Dallas. Here, artists stretch and pull the mulish medium of painting into the 21st century. With more nurturing – a new building and more faculty members in line with the current talent – the stream could become a gusher.

UTD Gallery

Greg Kachikis' Alex is a disintegrated screen of information - the face of his latest girlfriend and her vital statistics.

Consistent with the pop and zing of work by Paul Slocum and Raychael Stine, two recent graduates from UTD, the work in the student show "Isn't Anything" is bright, whimsical and bears an elective affinity with Andy Warhol's serial silk-screens.

Warhol loved Polaroids and so does Lauren Gray. Ms. Gray's Untitled is 19 Polaroids of brightly colored dishes stacked in a kitchen sink. Hung directly on the wall in grid formation, the photos have an air of accidental composition.

Greg Kachikis integrates MySpace and architecture into painting. In Alex, black circular bubbles tumble from the pink aluminum surface of the painting directly onto the wall. The painting is a disintegrated screen of information – the face of his latest girlfriend and her vital statistics.

Katy Thompson translates the influences of Sigmar Polke and David Salle in the pink and pretty Playthings, in which female iconography collide: The traditional women's work of sewing and baby care clash with man's fetish of the female pornographic nude.

A recent winner of the Dallas Museum of Art young artist's grant, Brent Ozaeta creates inkjet prints on canvas that look like paintings. Wooden Panel Sportscoat is a striated and blurry photo of two Japanese schoolgirls pilfered from the Internet with a graphic rendering of a woman doing kitchen work on top.

Ellen Ellzey plays out repetition in Puppy Love, an installation of stuffed animals and photos. Twenty-two small photo-portraits of stuffed animals line the wall. On opposite ends of the portraits, paws of a purple monkey dangle overhead and a menagerie of animals pile up on the floor.

Saunter up to the mezzanine gallery to find the weirder though less painterly installations by Tim Stokes. A cross between the work of Robert Gober and Fred Sandback, Backdoor Man finds the white torso of a Martian male facing the wall prostrate next to cubic white fragments of bathroom cabinets and floors shot through with colored fluorescent bulbs. Macabre meets hygiene in the quiet mayhem of Mr. Stokes' surreal imagination.

Charissa N. Terranova is a Dallas freelance writer.

"Isn't Anything" continues through June 30 in the main gallery of the University of Texas at Dallas Visual Arts Building, 2601 N. Floyd Road, Richardson. Hours: 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 972-883- 2787, www.ah.utdallas.edu.