The premise of The Common Object, a traveling exhibition now visiting Maryland Institute College of Art’s Meyerhoff Gallery, may seem a tad gimmicky. For the show, Zeuxis, an association of still-life painters founded in New York, asked 37 artists to incorporate a dish towel into a still life. (One of those towels, a blue-and-white-checked version, lies crumpled in a glass case in the gallery.) An introduction in the exhibition catalogue by Imogen Sara Smith describes its function thus: “Wet or dry, smooth or wrinkled, clean or stained, it symbolizes the blank canvas, the eternal challenge to make something out of nothing.”

The towel concept turns out to be fodder for a surprisingly interesting and diverse exhibition. Some artists chose to forefront the towel, while it is only incidental—or so abstract as to be unrecognizable—in others. The show consequently has a Where’s Waldo? aspect, but with the profusion of styles and approaches, one tends to forget to look for the object in question.

A number of the paintings have a wry, self-referential tone. Lucy Barber’s “Still Life With Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” for instance, is a beautifully rendered painting of glass bottles sitting on a shelf in front of a towel, which is pinned to a yellow wall and gracefully drapes. But in a sly wink at the form, a pink DVD case, adorned with the blurry figure of a woman, presumably Audrey Hepburn, also inhabits the shelf. Though the still life tends to celebrate the mundane, the form often elevates certain mundane objects—the timeless, iconic ones, like vases of flowers and bowls of fruit—over others, like artifacts of popular culture (though, it must be said, Barber chose a classic film).

MICA professor Mark Karnes’ paintings also depict contemporary objects. And if still life is the art of looking at familiar objects anew, he has fulfilled his mandate. His small, luminous oil paintings imbue familiar objects with mysterious resonance. A set of salt and pepper shakers and a CFL light bulb lying on a towel seem to glow with inner meaning, and no, the light bulb is not screwed in. (Karnes also assigned the dish-towel exercise to his students at MICA; about a dozen of their paintings hang on a wall adjoining the exhibition.)

What is perhaps most refreshing about the show is the breadth of style. Some of the still lifes take a classic approach, like that of William D. Barnes. His “Still Life With Turkish Pitcher” is a depiction of a crowded table in an artist’s studio, in soft pastel hues. A mask, a pitcher, a sculpted head, and a half-finished painting all reflect a warm rosy light coming from outside the frame, as if the sun were setting through a window. In contrast, Richard Baker’s “Wonder Towel” is, if a still life at all, one that strongly references Pop Art. His towel, the only object in the painting, remains folded and new, with the tag still attached. In fact, the tag and even the little plastic tab that attaches it to the towel are three-dimensional, daring you to touch.

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