Artists curate: Impact and satori--instruments of comprehension.

"THEY'RE ABOUT AWARENESS and a will to comprehend the world in its entirety," says Gabriel Orozco, referring to the disparate artworks presented here. "It's a question of focus and perspective, of the totality of perception, but it has nothing to do with New Age spiritualism." On Kawara's super-reduced date paintings appear to represent the narrowest of perspectives, limiting themselves to a single point in time and space. Orozco experiences a similarly extreme concentration and focus in the grid paintings of Agnes Martin and the color variations of Josef Albers. In each case, the limitation of perspective turns into its opposite. Singularity carries totality within.

Lygia Clark's "Bichos," geometric instruments for manipulating perception, are reminiscent of tantric diagrams. The teaching of Tantrism describes a state of illumination brought about only by the rigorous application of rules. "For Tantra has no dealings with fantasy. What it describes and maps is a world of realities," writes Philip Rawson in his classic introduction to the subject. Kurt Schwitters's collages, which combine linguistic and visual elements and mix incompatible scales, also attempt such a total accommodation of the world--without any religious overtones, of course. Even closer to everyday experience: Andre Cadere's painted bars of wood. He would stroll through an exhibition or down the Street with one of these brightly colored walking sticks, occasionally leaving one behind, in a corner. Their lurid patterns recall the sequences of colored discs in tantric maps of the universe, and indeed these modest interventions intensify our perception of the reality around them. But are Cadere's striped s ticks abstract representations posing as canes, or vice versa?

DANIEL BIRNBAUM