Takashi Horisaki, “Social Dress: Buffalo,” cast latex sheets on PVC structure.

Detroit artist, teacher and curatorial champion Andrew “Andy T” Thompson continues his streak of outstanding feats of curating with “Place Names the Place,” a group show that “confronts locational identity vis-a-vis personal experience and memory of place.” The show opened at Eastern Michigan University’s University Gallery, directed by Greg Tom, and will run through April 2nd.

Detail from one of Luhzen Qui’s untitled dreamlike drawings.

Both Tom and Thompson were on hand for the March 11th opening reception, to offer supplemental insight to visitors navigating the wide array of media, which included sculpture, painting, video, installation, printmaking and drawing. Truly, though, the show requires a personal lens, as it deals in public and private spaces that, though potentially shared by many occupants, are each mapped against an individual range of associations and experiences.

Steve Panton’s “Railroad” piece, with text from Martin Hershock’s “The Paradox of Progress” and a fresh exhibition design.

“Place Names the Place” features national and regional artists, both emerging and mid-career, including book and printmaker Toby Millman, who had a beautiful print edition for the taking; Steve Panton, whose found object sculpture of discarded pieces found along the Hamtramck train tracks took on a new and impressively more formal installation since it showed at Alley Culture; a number of videos by Ypsilanti artist Trevor King; and an eclectic range of offerings from artists based in New York, Russia, Florida and New Jersey.

Audrey Hasen Taylor, “Brush Pile (Green Sheen),” a large felted sculpture.

Takashi Horisaki’s “Warehouse Door” perfectly embodied the show’s contrast between the real and the remembered, with what on first take appears to be a warped, found door hanging midair, reveals itself to be a facsimile in latex. Matt Bollinger’s “The Move (Years Later)” is a massive acrylic painting that captures a sense of the heavy nostalgia that sets in upon leaving one place for another. Audrey Hasen Taylor presents engaging diptychs, where realistically-rendered figures occupy abstract lands punctuated by bright, odd playscapes—one of which appears in three dimensions on the gallery floor nearby.

Matt Bollinger’s “The Move (Years Later).”

“Place Names the Place” is a playful and colorful world unto itself—one that I could describe in ever-greater detail, but would be truly incomplete without the filter of your own experience. As for Andy T’s next curatorial sideshow, it’s in the on-deck circle at Grosse Pointe Art Center, set to open March 27th.

EMU University Gallery: 900 Oakwood St., second floor; Ypsilanti; 734-487-0465; art.emich.edu