Sara VanDerBeek's adventures in set-up photography and appropriation embrace transparency and disclosure. Her works have mysteries, but their effects seem constructed before our eyes and are easily disassembled; the elements remain discreet. Ms. VanDerBeek knocks together little sculptural armatures and then photographs them, creating modernist allegories. Ms. VanDerBeek's artistic DNA includes Max Ernst and Paul Outerbridge and contemporaries like Carol Bove, known for shelf sculptures that assemble meaning from carefully selected books and objects. Ms. VanDerBeek nails down her fragile ensembles with the camera, converting postmodern assemblage into an illusionistic fusion of collage and photomontage.In her first solo exhibition, Sara VanDerBeek will present a series of photographs of sculptural assemblages and two-dimensional collages. Compositions include both talismanic objects representative of a particular event or individual as well as more automatic responses to a singular moment or image.



While Mr. Robleto favors opacity, Sara VanDerBeek's adventures in set-up photography and appropriation embrace transparency and disclosure. Her works have mysteries, but their effects seem constructed before our eyes and are easily disassembled; the elements remain discreet.Ms. VanDerBeek knocks together little sculptural armatures and then photographs them, creating modernist allegories. She uses string, thin rods and cut-out bits of wood and festoons them with small objects and widely available images, often cut from books or magazines.The images used in the photographs here include a Warhol Elvis, a Stella black painting and a bit of Brancusi's ''Endless Column''; these dangle from thread, as do clusters of buttons or strands of glass beads. In ''A Different Kind of Idol'' this accumulation casts a shadow worthy of Synthetic Cubism. In ''Ziggurat'' the presentation of images takes the form of a Calder mobile. In ''Extravaganza'' the motifs of several black-and-white photographs are outlined with silver glitter -- a tree, a dancer, a Warhol car crash -- and piled up in a way that suggests a frozen bonfire or a surfeit of glowing, fading memories.