6. Jesse Amado (Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston): Those who despair for the future of installation art can take heart from Amado’s exquisite intervention in this room at CAM. He has cut sections into the gray wool carpet and rolled it back, cut rectangles into the dead white walls to expose the aluminum studs, installed handsome steel frames around graphite drawings pinned to the wall, and adorned the floor with lead and lilies. In effect, he has turned the room into a poem. Everything is crisp, clear, and infinitely allusive. Amado is a Mallarmé in a field of Wagnerian furniture-movers. It only takes a few.
