The beautiful and the ugly seemed to be the recurring motif running throughout my favorite films at Sundance. Having just returned, and still dizzy with the conflicting images of beautiful innocent-looking youths living out a prison sentence in a desolate Russian prison (ALONE IN FOUR WALLS), of ladykillers vying for the crown in the yearly beauty contest held in a women’s jail in Colombia (LA CORONA), of the beastly spending habits of a group of spoiled, manicured Los Angeles brats (KIDS + MONEY), and of lovely blue-eyed blue-blooded boy murderers (FUNNY GAMES), I suddenly found one image to encapsulate it all: Julie Heffernan’s “Self Portrait as Post Script”, from her 2007 show last year at PPOW gallery. A picture is worth how many words? So this ethereal nymph, all icy poise and regal ceremony, delicate and wretched, and seemingly giving birth to an avalanche of dead squid, says a deluge. Indeed, out of the artist’s own mouth: “It’s that idea of the gorgeous and the hideous mixed together, gamboling in a space that’s both paradisiacal and also terrifying, that I’m interested in.” Perfect.