Inside Out

When artist and gallery owner Timothy Leistner slips and characterizes his by-appointment-only display space as "tiny," he says his friends correct him and say "intimate." They're both right. Leistner's spot in a cozy Dania Beach complex called Canterbury Square is currently host to the small show "Inside Out," featuring the work of Greg Lindeblom, Lois Ostrov, and Leistner himself. Linde­blom is represented by a dozen or so appealingly low-key color photographs that include warmly glowing Palm Springs interiors shot from outdoors, Italian exteriors with a rustic Old World feel, and a couple of Key West architectural studies. Ostrov, normally a watercolorist, is here displaying her photography for the first time, and her knack is for making us rethink well-known New York subjects — the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, a lobby at the Museum of Modern Art — by imbuing them with big-city anonymity. Leistner, for his part, works all over the map but in a charming way that suggests not flightiness but artistic curiosity. Once you've pegged him as a naive painter, for instance, you may pick up on his straightforward photography. Or perhaps you'll notice the mixed-media works for which he prints color photos on watercolor paper, then paints over them to create ghostly layered effects that play tricks on the eye. Leistner opened his gallery in July 2007 and typically displays the work of no more than three to five artists, including his own, at one time, and he was recently named Artist of the Year for Community Impact by the ArtServe organization. He works extensively in the South Florida arts world by, among other things, curating exhibitions of art by people with disabilities, extending his influence far beyond the intimate little gallery that's his home base.