Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1965, Ellen Gallagher first won international attention at the Whitney Biennial in 1995. Gallagher's second exhibition at the Anthony d'Offay gallery surpasses all the promise of her first show here in 1996. In these new works, this young American artist continues to develop her private vocabulary of pictographs and characteristic use of a penmanship paper grid with deeper use of color.

Gallagher manipulates spatial relationships. She constructs intricate layers of materials and then punctures the skin. The work from a distance presents a compositional whole, yet requires our close scrutiny to read the miniature code structure. Drawn in, nose to canvas, we can no longer see the pattern of the whole...