Virginia Overton does have a nice, big studio but most of the planning and thinking takes place in her head. A lot of her deliberation revolves around her personal relationship to a particular space and the rapport between space and material. Her installations often veer towards the industrial. Junkyards, old tractors, pick-up trucks, and industrial building materials like cross-beams and sheet rock, hold a particular fascination for the artist. Her quest for the essence of a particular object often lead her towards the meticulous physical deconstruction and re-assembly of her objects. To that end, the reconfiguration of a gigantic cement mixer into a fully functioning water fountain seems preposterous at first but is in fact the distillation of the apparatus into its core elements of gravity and weight. Overton’s queries into the essence of things are often rooted in art history, albeit with a light touch. Thus a simple projection of a house plant onto an empty canvas may be an attempt to  reconcile retinal painting and conceptual art with a tender nod towards the botanical symbolism that inspired Henri Matisse’s cutouts. At Bortolami through June 15.