Review: Ginger Wolfe-Suarez engages the sense of smell

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez’s exhibition at Diane Rosenstein is the best-smelling show I have experienced, well, maybe ever. The scents are subtle and somewhat herbal, like the fading remnants of someone’s perfume after they’ve been gone for a while.

The smells emanate from lovely “walls” of tautly stretched, hand-dyed yarn that has been soaked in essential oils. Strung at angles across corners or between wall and floor, these works, each in a different color, are breathing, architectural monochromes. They engage in poetic dialogues with angular bits of mirror and rock placed on the floor.

As the viewer moves through these arrangements, light, shadow, volume and reflection play off one another, dissolving expected notions of space and carving out new ones. The effect is similar to the way a sunbeam can thoroughly alter a room for a few moments only to disappear.

Compared to these delicate, evocative works, the rest of the show falls a bit flat. Wolfe-Suarez is clearly interested in the passage of time, decay and the sublime, as seen in works that involve photocopied flowers and various manipulations of a photograph of a golden sky.

Unlike the yarn works, these pieces feel like illustrations of ideas that are perhaps better understood when simply inhaled.

Diane Rosenstein, 831 N. Highland Ave., (323) 462-2790, through May 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.dianerosenstein.com