Mark my concepts

In Mark, which opened last weekend at Block Gallery, 1020 10th Street, five formally engaging artists bring together drawings and sculptures to declare their mutual, well-honed alertness to conceptual aesthetics. The show’s rightful star is UC Davis art department chair Lucy Puls, whose  work radiates rigor, ambition and aggressive spatial intimacy, but it also does right by three of Puls’ UCD protégés: Nelleke Beltjens, a proponent of cleanly gorgeous sculptural floor installations; Hedwig Brouckaert, whose recent drawings use magazine and newspaper material to rightly accuse us of sometimes extracting more meaning from media than from our direct experiences; and Richard Haley, who once undertook a single-handed effort to dismantle the state of California. Also on view is work by the adventurous local ceramicist Casey O’Connor, who enjoys leaving art lying around for people to find and be beguiled by and variously misinterpret. For more information about the exhibit, visit www.blockdowntown.com or call (530) 409-3304. Puls will give a free talk about her work on Wednesday, April 23, at 7 p.m. in Mariposa Hall at CSUS. For more information about that, call (916) 278-6166.