Within walking distance of Saint Louis University’s campus is a hotbed of artistic activity: the Grand Center arts district. Beyond the art on display on SLU’s campus at the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, the Saint Louis University Museum of Art or even the posters that line the walls of the typical collegiate dorm room, there is significant and accessible art to see. The Bruno David Gallery is an example of one such artistic enclave that is a cultural haven for those seeking to find contemporary art in St. Louis.

Voted the best gallery in St. Louis in 2008 by St. Louis Magazine, the Bruno David is the brainchild of owner and director, Bruno L. David. The gallery exhibits chiefly local St. Louis artists, along with others who carry national and international recognition.

Four artists are typically displayed at a time in the gallery. The Front Room exhibition houses Mario Trejo’s “Catharsis.” Through hundreds of intricate etchings, the artist is endeavoring to explore the nature of the micro and macrocosm. Short, staccato scratch marks come together to form a collective whole. White scratches eat away at the black background and leave a stark visual contrast for the viewer. The individuality of the strokes lends the pieces visual interest and creates a tenuous dichotomy between positive and negative, black and white. This small exhibit provokes thoughts on existence, space and the nature of the universe. It is deceptively simple and swells with meaning upon closer inspection.

The Main Gallery exhibition houses Damon Freed’s collection “Calm, Cool, Coherent.” Freed is a landscape artist who, in this series, displays nature through the use of large planes of color. The artist abstracts nature to the point that it becomes voids of subtly striated color. The rigid lines that define these elemental shapes (and consequentially come to resemble puzzle pieces) counterbalance the muted colors.

Influenced by Asian landscape art as well as Chinese Taoist and Zen philosophy, Freed aims to provide more than a painting, but also an alternative way to look at and perceive nature. While the concept behind the works is admirable, the works themselves do little to provoke the thought that Freed was hoping for. The objects appear to be amorphous blobs of paints, that do little to inspire, let alone affect change in one’s thought.

The back Project room presents Larry Torno’s collection of photographs entitled “When is a Doll not a Doll?” Here, Torno photographed a vintage Barbie doll in various costumes and poses. Through titles that ascribe personalities and the use of the classic glamour shot, Torno breathes life into this intriguing, comic and, at times, unsettling display.

In the adjacent Media Room loops “The Tribe,” a film by Tiffany Schlain that explores the issues of Jewish identity and cultural assimilation. The film juxtaposes an unauthorized history of the Jews and the ancestry of the Barbie Doll. This somewhat unorthodox pairing is surprising, enlightening and worthy of the 18 minutes one must dedicate to watch it from beginning to end.

The exhibits at the gallery are constantly in flux. The rapidity of artistic turnover almost always guarantees that what one sees today is not what they will behold in a month. One always has the opportunity to see the good with the bad.

In contemporary art there is no constant, but there is always something new to see.

The Bruno David Gallery is free and open to the public. It is located at 3721 Washington Blvd.