A dazzling conceptual study, Asher Liftin’s “Cat’s Cradle” exhibition features 20 new works on paper—each pairing the fine artist’s mesmeric illustration style (applied to what appears to be scenes knitted into swatches of fabric) pulled by photographic imagery—installed as a grid on one wall of Tribeca’s Nino Mier Gallery. Mirroring this grid is another composed entirely of prints of the new pieces. This is due to the fact that the acquisition of one new colored pencil still life is coupled with 19 replica prints of the remaining works in the series. In attending the exhibit, Liftin asks viewers both to ponder which wall is which and to step closer and lose themselves in the scenes he so meticulously manipulates.

“This work is a way of making the act of looking the subject of an exhibition,” Liftin tells Surface. “The still life genre is the starting point for that, and the artworks reference still life paintings I love, but the drawn images are being pulled apart by photographic images. Visitors to the show are challenged to work out the puzzle of the mirrored representations themselves, which makes observation into an active process, just as it is when an artist sits down to draw a still life. So the viewer is pulled into the making (and unraveling) of the artwork.”