‘Looking In’ Brings Art to the Passerby By Geoffrey Jacques and Lizanne Merrill “Looking In,” the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s storefront exhibition, is streetscape, performance space and gallery in one. Anyone strolling by the otherwise drab 50 Murray Street, the former Internal Revenue Service building turned sprawling residential conversion, will be treated to an odd and sometimes entertaining and thought provoking assortment of installations in windows on Church, Murray and Park Place. One storefront is reserved for performance, and for most of November Jillian McDonald is there with Borrowed Clothes (seams), sewing messages into articles of clothing left for her by passersby. Each message is meant to calm a person’s particular fear. Aside from the intimate connection she makes with strangers, there is something reassuring in the quiet elegance of a person performing a focused task. A Cross-Section of the North American Continental Plate, 2000, by John Stoney, is an extraordinarily detailed miniature model of Manhattan atop a rock-like pedestal nearly six feet high. This meticulous and densely constructed piece gives the viewer a sense of scale—of Manhattan as an urban habitat and, perhaps, of ourselves in the scheme of it all. On the other hand, looking at this serene model, with the twin towers still standing there, it is heartbreaking in its evocation of our recent, pre-traumatic past. On Park Place, near the corner of Church, is Anna Kiraly’s Etcetera, a jittering patchwork of flickering cartoon figures. The six-inch-square drawings are held by metal rods that rapidly pick up the drawings to reveal the same figures, slightly repositioned, underneath. The effect is that of a cartoon flip book. A finger picks a nose, a hand grabs noodles, a foot steps on a dog’s tail. All this is accompanied by the vaguely humanoid sounds of grunts and groans in rapid succession. The hyperkinetic combination of sight and sound is enough to make you wonder if you are having a moment of mechanized hell or all-too-human embarrassment. On Murray Street is Karina Peisajovich’s untitled window installation, a surrealist-influenced display of spherical, teardrop and diamond shapes lit by a small set of lights on the floor. The lights cast shadows against a gray, white, green and black background. This mysterious, dream-like environment eschews the narrative and referential in favor of a purely sensuous experience. In Looking Out: Brooklyn, Laura Ten Eyck’s window is made to look like it belongs on a brownstone, with window guards and plants sitting just outside the bars. The plants, although a bit yellow and sad, overtake the window’s height in a way that only nature can. Even from across the street, this piece is strangely inviting. ErgonAmor is Libby Hartle and Tim Hailey’s display of accouterments for an ergonomically correct relationship: a single set of headphones for two heads, two swivel chairs turned into a love seat, computer keyboards for two. It is one of the few humorous pieces in the show, yet one gets the impression that this couple is only half joking. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council bills this exhibition as part of an ongoing attempt to use art to help revitalize Downtown. The idea of utilizing empty storefronts for public art is a laudatory one, and for anyone with a chance to pass by, the exhibit can’t help but delight. “Looking In,” at 50 Murray St., Church Street, Park Place and West Broadway, Sept. 3 - Jan. 31, 2003.