Carolyn Swiszcz & Jonathan Kaiser
Ongoing: What Minnesota artists Swiszcz and Kaiser have in common, if anything, is their curiosity about mundane artifacts and how they might be provocatively reanimated. In her show "Inventory," Swiszcz re-creates a cozy stage-set living room complete with faux knickknacks, furniture upholstered in hand-printed Matisse-inspired designs, and a fake television on which she runs her witty animated videos about her Massachusetts hometown. In them she sketches her family tree, takes a road trip, and revisits an early job taking inventory in a huge market where products range from frosting and chips to communion wafers and prayer cards. It's all charmingly sophisticated and endlessly engaging. Kaiser's "Inverse Echo" is a more grating project whose centerpiece is a quartet of audio speakers that broadcast the sound of custom-made vinyl records running continuously and wearing down. Several concrete and mirrored sculptures fill in gaps in the gallery. The connection between the irritating sounds and the rustic sculptures is unclear, but it's all about time, symmetry and repetition. (Through March 29 at 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Wed. & Sat.; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu.-Fri.; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. Free. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Av. S., 612-870-3000 or www.artsmia.org)
