Broken Windows

Olympia Project

87 Grand Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

through July 12

A window operating in a metaphorical capacity lets me into all sorts of imaginative viewpoints. A window equals a kind of perspective, but can act as an entranceway, or an escape hatch. It constitutes a way to let light in while inhibiting most of what else exists outside of the constructed space from coming inside. In tandem with walls, a window — in the most fundamental aspect of its construction — defines an interior space. But windows are designed to make the sealed-off nature of a room, a building, or any other enclosure feel less enclosed, and in some way, permeable. Viewing Justin Sterling’s exhibition Broken Windows, at the Olympia Project, brings all these thoughts to mind and makes me wonder why windows — given their semantic and allegoric richness — don’t appear more often in the art I see.