Kader Attia is currently receiving a lot of attention in the art world, which has led to Charles Saatchi acquiring his work, "Ghost", for his collection in London. "Ghost", two hundred kneeling aluminum foil figures, shrouded in cowls, represents praying Muslim women. I have only seen this work in reproduction.

Taken alone, each individual figure, empty under the cowl, a garment without a person, is ambiguous, if not devoid of meaning. It gets whatever power it may have from the sheer fact of numbers. But somehow next to Emperor Qin's Terracotta Army (over a thousand so far retrieved), and let's say, Magdalena Abakanowicz' "Crowds" of burlap figures, these seem slightly trivial. Having seen "Ghost" and other images of some of his works, I was not prepared to be so impressed by this exhibition.

"Signs of Reappropriation" consists of three separate installations: "Normal City 1, 2 and 3" (2003-08) is a video loop which is made up of three short films, each of which focuses on a high rise building, at first at such a close up that the image is blurry to the point of abstraction. As the camera retreats, we begin to see the details of the building; as it retreats even more, we can see the skyline of the neighborhood.

In the series of nine large digital ink-jet prints on the walls: "Rochers Carrés Algiers Bay" (2008), a huge pile of concrete building blocks has been deposited on the beach; in some of the photographs, a few young men are seen standing on the blocks, looking out to sea. In the distance, and on the horizon, we see tankers or container ships en route.

The dominant installation, which is in the largest section of the gallery, the first area you come to, is "Skyline" (2008), and consists of 80 refrigerators (apparently this is only a portion of his total of 200) which have been covered in mirror tiles, each tile about 1" high and ¾" wide. These "refrigerators" are of varying heights created by either stacking or placing some on risers.

The gallery lighting is very dim and long before we realize they are refrigerators, we see the installation as a city skyline, modernist skyscrapers with reflecting glass windows. Perhaps the transformation of these ordinary refrigerators into the appearance of city buildings explains why this works where "Ghost" fails.

There are two low benches under the large plate glass windows that face Broughton Street, and if you sit there, you will see a horizon line that is created by the lower window ledge. Above that, the passing traffic and the movements of daylight on the mirrors create the illusion of buildings being inhabited: some rooms with their lights brightly lit and some darkening.

Kader Attia is a French artist, born to Algerian immigrants and brought up in an area of high rise projects on the outskirts of Paris. The videos perhaps reference the kinds of buildings in which he grew up. As the first video comes into focus, we see that one of the apartments has been completely burnt out.

In the second video, the camera comes into focus to show that an apartment is completely covered by a tarpaulin hanging above the balcony. These can be seen as the marks of stress in the occupants' daily life. In the third video, a strange shaped light (is it possibly a symbol in Arabic script?) flickers from a window.

What affects me most strongly here is the recurrence of references to the horizon within these works. It is only on very flat land, or on the ocean that man can see the uninterrupted line where the sky meets the land. In the photographs, it is at Algiers Bay that the Algerian youths look toward a dream that lies beyond the horizon.

In "Skyline", paradoxically, the line of the window frame in the gallery creates a horizon above the viewer who sits on the bench. It is a necessarily broken and jagged line in this case. And similarly in the slight gaps we can see between the buildings in the videos. This is the fragmented image of the horizon we see in cities.

Throughout man's history, it is perhaps the earth's horizon that most deeply touches his senses. Every day the sun comes alive and dies on the horizon. It is on the horizon that the natives spot the colonial invaders approaching in ships. It is on the horizon that the mother watches her son, who emigrates or goes into exile, disappearing. It is the location of vanishing points.

But then we can wonder if life might be seduced to imitate the tricks of a convex mirror, in which a reappearance is charmed into being as the point of infinite disappearance is reached.

Kader Attia: Signs of Reappropriation

Where: Red Gallery, 201 E. Broughton St.

When: Through March 22