Tripoli Gallery Offers Respite from January Slump

     If you find yourself in Southampton for an errand or an escape, it would be worthwhile to duck into Tripoli Gallery on Jobs Lane for a mid-winter art break. 

   One of the few galleries west of here to be maintaining winter hours, it will keep its current show "The Worlds We Create," which opened on Thanksgiving, up through Martin Luther King Day.

   The exhibition features Jonathan Beer, Melanie J. Moczarski, Aakash Nihalani, and Nick Weber in what are practically separate showings except for Mr. Beer and Mr. Nihalani. Ms. Moczarski's moody, not quite real and not quite abstract, landscapes occupy the space's first bay and may be separated by a curtain at times from Mr. Beer and Mr. Nahalani's more abstract and geometric approaches to two-dimensional representation.

   Separated by a wall in the back, Mr. Weber's works function as their own show, academic in approach, but suitably post-modern in their execution and subject matter. His landscapes, figure studies, and paintings culled from pornography stills feel like a mini-retrospective, yet all were completed in the past two years.

   It's a bit of a hodge-podge, but rather than present a cohesive vision, Tripoli Patterson, the owner of the gallery and the show's curator, has given us four artists whose work creates worlds powerful enough that having left one space, a new one completely reorders the viewer's sense of experiencing it.