
Fragrant art is big in 2015, and “Unmanned Lander,” Hayley Silverman’s show at Bodega, is on trend with a warm and pungent scent wafting through the gallery. Where does it come from? The trails of colored powder that line the bottom of a mirrored octagonal box. They could be spices, but the checklist says they’re dyed sand. There are foodstuffs, including turmeric and bee pollen, in CRUDE CURRENCY (2015), the centerpiece installation, but they seem to be sealed—along with lumps of metals and foreign coins—in synthetic sand dollars that are heaped in a wheelbarrow. On the walls, images of women in urban ruins—laser-printed onto canvas—fake an organic decay, as if the fabric itself is beautifully rotting or fostering a violet mold-another mystery of borders and sources in Silverman’s beguiling New York solo debut.