Laura Grisi

A constantly changing artist, Greek-born Grisi, who divides her time between Rome and New York, revitalizes every medium she touches. Her controlled environments, using water, wind, rainbows and fog, often pierced by the cool blue or white light of neon spirals, create eerie effects as they redefine a physical space. In the 1970s Grisi tackled such concepts as perception and mutability in bold conceptual pieces. Drawing on her travels from Polynesia to Africa to Peru, her meditative Distillations series employs symbols and rituals of many cultures to explore human diversity in unity. Her latest Wall Sculptures , elegant and baroque, making visual references to Dante, Bach, Newton and Greek philosophers with a multitude of materials, stretch our notions of time and eternity, space and infinity. Celant, curator of contemporary art at New York's Guggenheim Museum, draws out Grisi on her protean career in an extended interview that prefaces the 255 plates (170 in color). (Mar.)