Opening today: The Twin Cities studio of painter Michael Kareken overlooks a junkyard at which mountains of scrap are sorted for recycling -- clear and colored glass, cans, automotive parts, paper, cardboard, bottles, engine parts, oil drums, All the detritus of prepackaged industrial society is junk to us, but inspiration to him. For the past several years Kareken, who teaches at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, has transformed these unlikely vistas into monumental paintings that capture the material's glint and gleam, the mud and dust of the junkyard, the muscular brawn of the monstrous claws and magnets that lift and swing the trash from heap to pile. The profusion and sprawl of detail lend an almost abstract quality to Kareken's meditations on automotive parts, as seen here. Kareken's show is organized by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, which is opening simultaneously a digital video projection, "Commuter," by Tetsuya Yamada. (Through Jan. 24, free. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Av. S., 612-870-3131 or www.artsmia.org)
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Mary Abbe, Star Tribune
Family members and a lawyer say they have been blocked from access to the bedside of Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez, while her husband was detained and shipped to Texas within 24 hours.
