I stumbled on muralist David Guinn’s piece in the Window on Broad at the University of the Arts while on my way to the fabulous “A Happening Place” show of top-of-the-line ’60s pop art–which, by the way, is still funny, still fresh–at the Borowsky Gallery. Guinn’s curved backdrop (detail right) with its receding image, the close-up 3-D animal peering into the painting, threw me back to times in my childhood that I spent in front of museum dioramas. The awful reflections in that window, always an impediment to viewing the art inside, forced me to put my nose right up to the glass to see. I stood there absorbed by the stand-off between 2-D and 3-D creatures. The situation was rendered even more mysterious by the raging campfire in the midst of undisturbed snow in a clearing. And the silhouetted trees, flat up on the window, raised the 2-D versus 3-D stakes while helping to draw me in past the glare. To view that wintery, forest scene from outside, on a hot city street, is worth a few moments’ pause.
