A certain breeziness is expected of artist-curated group shows; “Old Truths and New Lies” literalizes the proposition in its opening gesture, a set of “flags” designed by the featured artists. The hanging panels’ motifs, like a cotton print of a fertility figure against sweater fabric (by Ana Cardoso) and a nylon quilt of both geometric and Pac-Man-like ovoid forms (by Wilder Alison), suggest the show’s feminist strategies of material play and art historical deconstruction. Curator Mae Fatto displays her own small collages, mocking modernist heavyweights and fashion ads alike, behind the gallery’s desk. Elsewhere, works climb and unfurl across in more inventive configurations. Cardoso’s triangular canvases snake up the wall near Lucas Knipscher’s multimedia work on Dutch African print fabric, a rug by Emi Winter bearing a fragmented pattern, and Yoni Zonszein’s installation combining domestic appliances and museology. Upstairs, the artists attack the totemic with humor and pathos, from Knipscher’s cement-coated issues of the New York Times and Fatto’s ceramic-footed broken monument to a stack of stuffed canvases suspended from the ceiling.
Pictured: Second-floor installation view of “Old Truths and New Lies”; at Rachel Uffner, New York.