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New Yorker

David Gilbert

By Vince Aletti

November 16, 2015

In one large photograph here, a swag of curtain, painted on a panel of flowery fabric, hangs next to a piece of chiffon that floats above a slapdash cardboard model, whose windows are lit from within. The interplay of materials in Gilbert’s photographs suggests a grownup game of make-believe, and the artist subverts his work’s formal sophistication with childlike cutouts of butterflies and stars and plenty of unruly debris. In their interplay of decor and deconstruction, the pictures echo staged photographs by predecessors from John Divola to Saul Fletcher, but Gilbert’s tattered theatrics have an irresistible nuttiness that is theirs alone. Through Dec. 6.