Tom Meacham Untitled 2007 tape and acrylic on canvas 90" x 60" [installation view]

Tom Meacham Untitled, Diptych 2007 tape on canvas 60" x 72" [installation view]

Tom Meacham's work is always about much more than what first meets the eye, and his current show at 5BE is only the latest demonstration of his subtlety and intelligence.

The patterns on the canvases are sometimes ink jet and sometimes tape, and only two of them are actually painted. That stack of stretched canvases isn't just a stack of stretched canvases, and the seemingly-unrelated sculpture in the center of the gallery does not reveal much of its story to the casual visitor.

Sometimes an installation's instruction sheet really is a welcome collaborator, and its necessity not an indictment of the strength of the work itself. Of course it helps if the stuff is beautiful to begin with.