Casas exhibit too big for one gallery

The show of 21 paintings at the Museo Guadalupe includes two of Casas’ best-known pieces, “Humanscape 63 (Show of Hands)” and “Humanscape 68 (Kitchen Spanish).” Both were featured in “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,” a traveling exhibition of works largely drawn from the collection of actor Cheech Marin, which opened at the SanAntonio Museum of Art in 2001. In “Humanscape 63,” the near-touching hands of God and Adam from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco “The Creation ofAdam” float against the black background of a movie screen. The shadow of a third hand with a raised middle finger reaches up to meet them.“I think what this was for him was the interplay of the sacred and profane,” Cordova said. In the foreground, hands in a range of skin colors signal various ideologies and beliefs, including a multicultural quartet spelling out “love” in American Sign Language.