ART DAYBOOK
What does a beast with a thousand eyes look like? Pretty cool art, actually.
The piece: “Argus” The artist: Matt Messinger Where: Devin Borden Gallery, 3909 Main, through Dec. 23 Why: Blame it on the holidays: A first glimpse of “Argus” made me wonder, “What wicked reindeer is this?” Actually, the creature featured in one of the paintings of Matt Messinger’s show represents a many-eyed giant of Greek mythology.
The all-seeing Argus Panoptes had so many eyes he could afford to close a few without falling asleep. He unfortunately got mixed up in a love triangle that got him killed: Hera, Zeus’ jealous wife, charged Argus with guarding a white heifer in her stable whom she knew was really the nymph Io, Zeus’ lover. Not to be outdone, Zeus dispatched Hermes to kill Argus — whose ultimate reward was to be immortalized by Hera as the eyes on the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock.
A number of smaller works in the show shift the focus closer to the present, riffing in a clean, graphic style on an image of a shifty pair of eyes that could belong to some sneaky, mid-20th-century cartoon character. This motif also appears on a couple of vintage Argus-brand film camera cases, with the cameras still inside. Large canvases in the front room of the gallery are sophisticated in a different way, inspired by the almost floral shape of a camera aperture (or perhaps the iris of a human eye).
During an era when so many of us moderate every experience through the lens of a cellphone camera, this smart little show is a reminder that there’s pleasure to be found when we just open our eyes.