Dan Curry in Person The American mind is a restless thing, never content with the world before it. Even the Western landscape with its sublime vistas, monumental peaks and wondrous clefts has struggled under the gaze of this restive imagination: dissatisfied with the natural grandeur, American myth furtively arrived to puff up the possibilities of the inadequate West. This mythopoeic presence has colored the landscape, creating a secondary landscape imbued with the values of an acquisitive culture. How we now "see" natural scenery preoccupies two expansive works by Dan Curry and fellow artists Pamela Falkenberg and Kimberly Loughlin. Southwestern Ballet and the more recent Open Territory deal with the American West and its representation in film and photography. At John Ford Point in Monument Valley, a scene from a western is keyed onto a ruddy mesa while a Navajo poses on horseback ("That'll be the day," John Wayne's swaggering voice intones). Later, Curry and Falkenberg carry a blue screen across a jumbled vista, reframing the mountains in the background. These cagey enclosures highlight the cultural and aesthetic context of natural settings. In Southwestern Ballet, Curry travels to Mesa Verde, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, pursuing those quintessential 19th century scenic sights that were captured with such finality by the early photographers. Dissolves from the extant sights to their aging photographic copies show how nature always lives up to our expectations. Curry's superb works bring us the new West: but is it real or Tri-X? --Steve Seid