Let's get metaphysical: for the latest Carnegie International, curator Laura Hoptman has sought a philosophical or spiritual dimension in the works selected

Art in America, March, 2005 by Gregory Volk

An excellent choice on Hoptman's part was to include a generous selection of American Kathy Butterly's porcelain, earthenware and glaze miniature sculptures. They suggest the sort of cheesy decorative figurines you might find on the shelves in your oldest auntie's house--except that here they have become eerie, freakish mutants (though visually lush and oddly lovely). Butterly's Mask (2003) is a yellow, somewhat ear-shaped form that rests upright on a circular blue base. A small purple "nose" protrudes outward from the yellow shape, yielding a vaguely clownish look; the whole work is ungainly, exuberant and curiously sad at the same time.

Corresponding nicely to Butterly's diminutive works are German Isa Genzkeu's small, willfully messy sculptural vignettes, placed atop pedestals. For some years now, Genzken has been making quixotic models of urban skyscrapers and other buildings, including a series based on New York City, out of found, everyday objects. Then came September 11, and Genzken's eccentric, always fragile and distressed works suddenly seemed eerily prescient. The sculptures here, from a series called "Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death," are a direct response to the terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and feature a dense array of found objects, including toy soldiers, kitchen tools, drinking glasses, wood, foil and plastic implements, along with occasional photographs. They conjure urban architecture buffeted by conflict, disruption, fear and yearning. Nearby are Ethiopian-born, New York-based Julie Mehretu's large "Stadia" paintings--vast panoramic fields filled with a welter of dots, tiny lines, directional indications, shreds of slogans and advertisements, banners and flags. Little lines resemble tiny spectators, and while Mehretu's paintings suggest arenas (for instance, those of ancient Rome) as battlegrounds for all sorts of competing ideologies and information systems, they are a real pleasure to look at, with their mix of sweeping gestures and intricate micro-touches.

Although the exhibition is not stridently political, a sharp recognition of how the world has changed in the past few years courses through several works. American Paul Chart's digital animation Happiness (finally) after 35,000 Years of Civilization--after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier (2000-03), inspired in part by the writings of the 19th-century socialist utopian Fourier and by the noted outsider artist Darger's "Vivian Girl" characters, evokes cartoons and computer games, and also has a sci-fi, otherworldly quality. An Edenic forest is home to the contemplative idylls and sensual frolics of young girls who seem like sprites or waifs. Gradually the scene evolves into trailer homes, where a banquet is held, and then everything is invaded by businessmen talking into cell phones, priests, judges and shooting soldiers who turn a once lovely setting into one of terror and militarism run amok. Speaking of which, Czechoslovakia-born, Berlin-based Harun Farocki's three-part video installation Eye/ Machine (2001-03) makes use of copious found footage to detail the development of ultra-technological weapons, many having their own sight systems. As one watches crosshairs lining up targets, smart bombs zeroing in, satellite imagery of the earth down below that will apparently likewise be blown up, and other harrowing marvels, it becomes clear that these deadly weapons amount, among other things, to a chilling and utterly impersonal new method of seeing.