The current two-person show at CTRL Gallery, “Jackie Gendel and Valerie Hegarty,” features two painter’s painters whose work seems to comment on the art form itself. At the foreground of Houston-born, now New York-based artist Jackie Gendel’s work are simple faces or groups of stick figure-like people. The Stylist features a simply drawn woman up front, with layer upon layer of oil paint in the background; it’s as if Gendel used the material itself to build up emotional or spiritual complexity.

Valerie Hegarty, also a New Yorker, is less abstract but no less thought–provoking. Hegarty re-creates famous works of art and shows them literally destroyed. Homer Was Swept Away shows a classical Greek painting with heavy water damage in a bent frame, as if it had been swept away in a flood, while George Washington Eroded is a portrait of the first president, flaked, peeling and crumbling; it looks like the sort of thing archeologists from the year 3500 would extract from the ruins of what was the United States of America.

Creepy and contemplative in their subtleties, Gendel and Hegarty should please art hounds and thinking people alike. (Don’t miss the chance to catch this exhibit; the show closes January 12.) 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. 3907 Main. For information, call 713-523–2875 or visit www.ctrlgallery.com. Free.

Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Starts: Dec. 1. Continues through Jan. 12, 2007

This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2008.