"...This swan song, delivered to us in a salon-style installation, is a Pitti Palace knockoff that works. Floor to ceiling, the walls are covered in art — so here's a shout-out to the crack installation staff at the Dolphin. Hanging work this way isn't as easy as it looks.

Salon-style installations naturally raise questions about what the mode of display is supposed to suggest. In the wrong curatorial hands, an art installation's intent can be aggressively, clumsily or misguidedly expressed. Historically speaking, salon style has been a display of wealth. Anyone who had the most art and the most walls to display it — the Medici or the British country estate owner — obviously had the most money. And though money and real estate are inextricably tied to the politics of art and its display, here at the Dolphin it's more of a theatrical experience.

The gallery is transformed by the art. Here the walls seemingly disappear, thus destabilizing the architectural authority of the space and even the authority of the gallery itself. That's not a bad thing. The installation seems to suggest that the artists and their work come before the triumvirate of the economies of art display: money, power, real estate. As for sp

 

atial hierarchy, there is none. Each vantage point offers its own unique pleasures; this time, no one place on the gallery wall is better than another.