If It Looks Real, It Must Be Fake

I see a trend. Let's call it "trick realism." The artist recreates an object with such precision that the viewer thinks it's the real thing. Robert Gober's rifle and step stool, Huang Yong Ping's taxidermic animals, Johannes VanDerBeek's bush, Karel Funk's hyperrealistic paintings, and now Mayumi Terada's miniature photography belong to this school I just invented. At first, Terada's black and white photos at Robert Miller Gallery look simply like spartan rooms, but, upon closer examination, you realize that these rooms are dollhouse-proportions. The extra large water droplets on the shower wall and the huge blowing curtain in two images hint that these rooms are miniature sets. Moody--and sometimes even eerie--photos of a world completely self-created.