Detroit’s Museum of New Art (MONA) started out as an art protest: in 1997 Jef Bourgeau opened a storefront space and “curated” some clippings he took from magazines. This bit of art-world satire did not go unnoticed by the Detroit Institute of Art, which invited Bourgeau to curate his own special survey of 1990's art. But that 1999 show was quickly padlocked by the DIA itself and shut down when the museum realized it had gotten what it had asked for: a scathing recreation of current art trends.

Since then, the adversarial and combative spirit has not abated, but Bourgeau’s MONA has still become an important venue for Michigan artists. The current show at ThreeWalls is part of an artist exchange brokered between Detroit MONA and Chicago. Cyrus Karimipour’s exquisitely miniaturized photographic studies of inner city space deserve a show in their own right. Technical mastery is also displayed in the strange kitschy confections of Alison Wong. Hartmut Austen’s painterly abstraction is both academic and thought-provoking. The strange leather chimeras hanging from the ceiling are hand-sewn dolls by Mary Fortuna, and are beautiful and creepy, the fetishes of a private religion. And in the “Project Room” is Jef Bourgeau’s own work.

Some time ago, these pictures were exhibited under the pseudonym Stig Eklund, a young “undiagnosed dyslexic” from Norway who dropped out of school to produce brooding, atmospheric photos redolent of Alvin Langdon Coburn. It was another one of Bourgeau’s aliases to avoid the blacklisting his DIA show had cost him — but he sold a lot more of them when they were signed by Stig Eklund – which may say something about the art market. (David Mark Wise)