Dozier Bell's work evokes the awesome silence one feels when confronted with something of grave importance. More than the silence of an uninhabited space, this is the quiet of something taking your breath away, an encounter with the overwhelming enormity of outer space or an inspired reverie in the majesty of a higher power.

Bell has been widely acclaimed for her darkly hued and moody landscapes that often come to focus in a network of crosshairs and telescopic viewfinders. For this exhibition of new work, Bell produced both large- and small-scale works including a series of extremely tiny charcoal works on acetate. From this grouping, "Incident" is a romantically morbid cityscape depicting an explosion or fire as seen from a distance. The diminutive size of the work powerfully deemphasizes the destruction. This is a horror made small, whose devastating voice is silenced by distance. Here, the real tragedies of human experience are compressed into an invisible scale and yet hauntingly felt. Are we looking from the control room of a faraway military base? The cockpit of a fighter plane having just hatched a destructive bomb? Or at home casually watching the evening news?

Veering away from the cityscapes for which she has become known, Bell sets her sites on more ambiguous terrain in her new works on canvas. "Cloud Cover, 4" is a field of clouds marked with multiple crosshairs. It is impossible to discern whether we are looking up at the clouds or looking down from above them. The image has the sweeping feel of an inspired search into oblivion. Or perhaps there is an enemy base just behind the clouds, only momentarily obscured from view.

The vertical diptych "Ring" is composed of two views of a darkened starlit sky. The lower panel presents an endless perspective of stars. One constellation appears in the foreground, closer than the others, framing a relativity of vastness where there will always be something farther. The upper panel depicts another patch of sky encircled by a ring of clouds. At its center appears one of Bell's site lines. The huge scale of this work powerfully translates a sense of celestial majesty, and yet the darkness of the piece, and the suggested notion of viewing, poetically colors that majesty with the oppressive sense of an all-seeing higher power.

When viewing Bell's work, one cannot help but question its divine implications. "Ring" and other works mimic a godly view looking down on mankind and the world. It is impossible to discern the nature of that removed gaze as benevolent, indifferent, or destructive. Is this the biblical God who is able to topple cities from a removed presence?

Bell's varied vantage points create a dialogue of vision and searching. By overlapping what could be interpreted as military, scientific, or divine, she creates imagery open for interpretation and ripe for a suggestive comparison where perhaps the military, man, and God have played each other's roles.