`4-Squared'
Eyewash at Fishtank Gallery
93 North Sixth Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Through Feb. 23

This show exemplifies a current taste in New York art for incremental composition and delicate effects. The abstract forms in Mark Masyga's paintings are pieced together from small bars of color, clustered as if magnetized on a dark ground: they look like bright fences set against an oncoming storm. The beautiful nebulalike clouds in Amy Kao's drawings are accumulations of tiny radiating forms. Both of the show's sculptors do riffs on images of jewels. Shari Mendelson makes airy, faceted planar structures from translucent materials; one piece, entirely in white, seems to rise like a puff of smoke from the gallery floor. Linda Ganjian joins together minute ornamental objects to create tabletop ensembles that look like crosses between miniature cities and Byzantine treasuries. The show has been organized by Annie Herron and Larry Walczak, directors of Eyewash, a gallery that lost its home in a Williamsburg apartment a few years ago and has floated through borrowed spaces ever since. Wherever it lands, it carries the personality of Ms. Herron, who was a pioneer in the East Village of the 1980's and who has played a crucial role in establishing the Williamsburg gallery scene. It's a delight to see her sweet, keen eye for new art at work here.

HOLLAND COTTER