The Miami New Times - originally published: September 25, 2003

" All in a Show"
If it's art you want, it just opened everywhere.

BY ALFREDO TRIFF

…Peter Barrett's "Permutation" at Ingalls & Associates (through October 31), curated by Jennifer Gray, is a cool show. Barrett presents canvases and a series of sculptures, the latter built with MDF, a wood fiber bonded with synthetic resin adhesive, which anyone would mistake for light plywood.

I like Barrett's optimism, his brightly colored soft sculptures with empty spaces, kind of like weird puzzles, or maps with a tactile and visual texture. The paintings are actually better pieces, but it all looks so colorful and busy with circles, stars, ovals, cells, pores, stigmas, and cones -- I didn't mind any of it. In the project room Gean Moreno, Cindy Bernard, and Jesse Bransford formed an interactive exhibit (with a title too long to mention) intersecting music, the visual arts, and the public space itself. Good idea but this cluttered room filled with CDs, e-mails projected on the wall, and a small TV with poor sound feels a little more like a student's dorm room before final exams. To convey the complexity of all these entwined networks of information from composers, architects, and artists, the team needs a bigger space, PC stations, and walls of sound blasting the audience. Do check out Bernard's Website at www.sassas.org; it's really nice.