Susan Krause, Global Economy, 2010, wood, glass, cloth, shredded money. Photo courtesy Twin Kittens.

The playful simplicity of Susan Krause’s solo titled ICONIDOKU — an interactive exhibition based on Sudoku, the popular math-puzzle game — only thinly conceals the activist mentality stealthily boiling beneath its glossy, seemingly apolitical exterior. It’s the kind of skillfully crafted pop-culture-meets-fine-art work that makes you feel good about liking the surface, and liking the ideas underneath, too. The show closes with an artist talk at Twin Kittens this Saturday, January 8, 2011, from 2-4PM.

The sculptor says that this series was the first time she’s worked seriously in two-dimensional design since her days as a student. Krause, now a professor and sculpture department chair at the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta (SCAD), is a native of Canada who received her MFA from Yale University and, though she lives in Atlanta, also spends part of the year living in an adobe house in an eco-community in Alamo, Mexico. Her pet project last summer involved gutting and rehabilitating a foreclosed home near Lakewood Stadium and fitting it with solar panels; during our phone conversation late last month, she explained that this, too, is an integral part of her artistic practice. Krause and her life partner, fellow SCAD professor Steve Jarvis, hope to transform the site into an artist residency codenamed Project 181.

Susan Krause, ICONIDOKU, 2010, installation view. Photo courtesy Twin Kittens.

Susan Krause, ICONIDOKU, 2010, installation view. Photo courtesy Twin Kittens.

Krause’s aesthetic in ICONIDOKU begins with child-like discovery. At first, viewed from outside the gallery’s front window, the exhibition doesn’t look like it contains any art: All you see are nine white rectangular pillars, oriented vertically so they resemble the boxy pedestals that museums use to support sculptures on top. After entering and walking between these pillars, however, you realize that the art is inside, set down within each tower in a diorama-style presentation. It’s like looking out the window of a landing passenger jet and noting the swimming pools on top of buildings, realizing there’s a whole private world hidden aloft an otherwise nondescript, modern edifice.

One small work requires would-be Sudoku players to kneel down close enough to see a group of dead honey bees on a petry dish. Photo courtesy Twin Kittens.

On top, there’s a pane of glass decorated with a Sudoku grid in one of nine florescent color schemes, from magenta to robin-egg blue. Beneath, there’s a found-object selected according to theme: a folded American flag inside the piece titled Warfare, a ball of shredded money inside another called Global Economy, and so on. Krause’s sculptures are conversation pieces waiting to be activated by viewers-turned-participants brave enough to, respectfully, break the first rule of gallery-going: Don’t touch the artwork.

Each Sudoku station comes equipped with a dry-erase marker, adorably color-coded to match its parent game, and a white cloth for erasing. I absolutely advise visitors to play the game—try your hand, just once—before leaving Twin Kittens. Here, the graphic design aspect of ICONIDOKU comes forward: Instead of numerals 1 through 9, the artist substitutes stylized icons including tractors (in 10 Calories of Energy = 1 Calorie of Food, a piece themed after the local food movement) and cutesy fish (floating upside down to indicate that they didn’t survive the dilemma suggested by Oil Spills).

Relational aesthetics aside, Krause’s version of Sudoku requires players to draw in the icons to complete the puzzle, an operation that’s less mathematical and, surprisingly, more meditative than the original. The variations in design follow the logic of permutation: alternating high, medium, and low height and changing colors, icons, and found-objects framed by the same square grid. The high tower with white grid containing a full glass of water contrasts with the low tower with yellow grid containing dead honey bees. While the former rises above waist height, the latter requires players to kneel in a pose that’s at once reminiscent of a preschool sandbox and a Catholic sermon.

Meanwhile, sunlight pours through the gallery window, filtering through the glass of each piece onto the objects within. The pillars cast long silhouettes across the floor and onto each other. Standing in the presence of all nine towers allows their spatial relationships to slowly sink in; spending time tracing the icons lets you appreciate the pure physicality of ICONIDOKU. Susan Krause is a sculptor, after all, and that’s where the show is the most subliminal and sweet.

After Susan Krause’s artist talk and closing reception this Saturday, January 8, 2011, from 2-4PM, Dale Inglett’s exhibition opens on Saturday, January 15, at Twin Kittens.