For The Birds

Leave it for the birds, the saying goes. At Harper's East Hampton, the various birds on view are of a more redeemable variety—if also a stranger one. Here, for instance, is Alix Pearlstein's fluffy little owl, suspended upside down from a string and revolving slowly in the summer breeze—a pun, perhaps, on a badminton birdie. ('It's summer in the Hamptons,' it seems to say—perhaps time to slow down a bit?)

Curated by the artist Eddie Martinez, "For the Birds" is a breezy, thirteen-artist group show wherein each work has but one thing in common: birds. Joe Light presents a taciturn three-toned depiction of man and bird, one glaring eye visible on either creature. Elsewhere, Bill Adams presents a Terracotta Dodo coupled with two porcelain ducks. Peter Williams imagines a flight to a new world in As the Birds Fly, Another Planet (2019). In fairness, though, the birds might be the least curious part of the composition, which includes, among other items, an orange sky, patchwork Martians, and, flying from above, a basketball player wearing a Duke jersey who may or may not be palming the sun.