Do photos tell us anything about history?

New ideas of the city in Tjaden Gallery.

The New York City art culture was alive at Cornell University on Tuesday night. New Works on Paper is an art exhibit of Mollie Miller ’10 and Sarah Carpenter ’10, students in the College of Art, Architecture and Planning (Carpenter writes for The Sun). The exhibit opened Tuesday night and will remain so until this Friday at the Olive Tjaden Gallery.

So. You’re in Ithaca. You’re in college. What to do now?

Yes; I’m Serious, and Don’t Call Me Surely, the thesis show of M.F.A. student Allen Camp ’09, is as funny as its title promises. However, it is equally serious. A selection of three-dimensional works in a limited palette, the show investigates the often-paradoxical relationship between objects and their “idiographic symbols.”

The fulcrum is a handshake. It’s an exchange of power, a link between bodies, the passing of traditions and a tight squeeze for love.

“It all rests in the hands,” Noah Robbins ’10 said about the two statues he has constructed for his untitled exhibit that explores these themes and is currently open in Tjaden gallery.

Two heavy, white-plaster casts of individual male torsos perch atop wood crate-like pedestals. The two bodies unite by extended arms — they hold hands out between the two wooden columns on which they rest. One body is from a smaller man, presumably a younger man, and both bodies seem immensely unyielding and weighty. The two arms that extend over the gap between the pedestals seem uncommonly fragile.

Snowscape: A Series of Portraits, an installation by Mollie Miller ’10, currently in Tjaden Gallery, is not for the faint of heart. The works, which include photography, lithography, drawing, painting and video, will require your full attention and some serious study. The installation follows the stanzas of Miller's poem, titled “Snowscape,” giving equal weight to written text, large black-and-white photos and small, fast drawings. The installation culminates in two projections at the far end of the gallery.

Art Made Money Made Art is a flashy exhibition in the best possible sense of the word. Installed in Tjaden Gallery from Feb. 16-20, it consists of two opposite walls of beautiful, labor-intensive lithography prints and slick painted-over-printed canvasses. The show is immediately eye-catching and ultimately visually and conceptually complex. But unlike some flashy contemporary art, these works can hold an audience long after their first dazzling impression.

Upon entering the Tjaden Experimental Gallery last week, one was greeted with an overwhelming sight: the formerly bare white walls were covered in lines upon unevenly spaced lines of blue tape, to a somewhat dizzying effect. Attempting to focus on a wall would be like viewing a Magic-Eye, while everything in the room appeared to be in constant movement. There were several disruptions to help one catch her bearings, however — a bare space on the wall where the tape diminishes around a corner, a clustered shape in an alcove or a gathering around an electrical socket. Remnants of the artist at work were left for the visitor to ponder, as well — a ladder, empty rolls of tape.