Museums •  Rick Araluce With a day job designing sets and scenery

Museums

• 

Rick Araluce With a day job designing sets and scenery for Seattle Opera, artist Rick Araluce is a specialist in illusion—making castles and palaces out of plywood and paint. In his first solo museum show, The Minutes, the Hours, the Days, he builds immersive sculptural environments with doors, keyholes, thresholds, and other means of guiding the eye. Notions of viewing and voyeurism are strongly felt throughout. His creations are often miniature and frequently incorporate trompe l’oeil painting tricks. BRIAN MILLER Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way N.E., 425-519-0770, bellevuearts.org, $7-$10, Tues.-Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Through Jan. 31.

Creating the New Northwest: Selections from the Herb and Lucy Pruzan Collection The Seattle couple recently promised nine works to TAM, which is in turn displaying a large slice of their art collection. Over 100 pieces are on view, which doesn’t even represent the Pruzans’ entire holdings. The Pruzans were on a budget as a young couple in the late ’50s, but they were determined to shop local. That means their collection lacks premium names like Tobey, Callahan, or Graves, which makes this show a Northwest survey of a different sort. Not second-rate—it’s more a reminder of depth over time. BRIAN MILLER Tacoma Art Museum, through Oct. 6.

Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion Given the subject, apart from a few videos (among 100 costumes), Future Beauty is a surprisingly static show. There are no models or catwalks, though all dresses look better on actual, moving women than on mannequins arrayed on pedestals. Turns out it’s not a relaxed, summery show at all. You have to set your sights accordingly and accept that it won’t be like flipping through old issues of Vogue at the hair salon. Instead, the frocks in four themed galleries demand to be studied and admired. Most don’t look like they’d be comfortable or practical to wear. The most novel works—like the paper dresses by OhYa, which fold and expand from books!—look like they’d be destroyed by actual use. (And laundering? Forget about it.) Truly, they do belong in a museum, not at a party. Knowledgeable visitors may be able to follow the evolution of the silhouette from Issey Miyake to Rei Kawakubo to Yohji Yamamoto. Some may come to SAM already knowing those names and the European codes they were working against. What was this old Continental tyranny of waists and decolletage and showing some leg? Must the female hourglass always refer back to classical statuary? Japanese designers shook up such assumptions, draping and pleating and obscuring the “natural” female form (or received notions of such). Mounted on SAM’s gallery walls, a few flattened dresses read like collapsed tents or pressed flowers. The female form has been crushed out of them. All you’re left with is color and texture, not depth. At that point, they’re more like tapestries—something meant to be hung on a wall, not worn. BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $11-$17, Thurs., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Weds., Fri.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Through Sept. 8.