"Who Died"

An 8-year-old boy's book on optical illusions helped inspire Nick Cassway's latest project, a series of white-on-black portraits meant to cause retinal afterimages. Those are the ephemeral images one sees after staring at say, a checkerboard shape, for a while and then quickly shifting one's gaze to a blank wall. The subjects of Cassway's portraits are recently deceased celebrities and figures in the news, a recurring theme in his work.

This time around, he's particularly fascinated with the way people react when a celebrity passes away. "Like Johnny Cash, everyone felt bad about it," says Cassway. "People were saying things like, "Johnny Cash died, I'm so sad,' but they didn't really know him." It's not that Cassway thinks this type of mourning phony; it's more about the shared experience surrounding the death of a person whom they likely never spoke to or had any interaction with.

The portraits -- of Bob Hope, Idi Amin, Iranian conjoined twins, "father of the H- bomb" Edward Teller (pictured) -- originate as brush-and-ink drawings, then are scanned and mounted on 6-inch handheld fans, meant to evoke the Southern funerary tradition. Each fan has instructions on the back for the best way to view in order to see the afterimage on any of the gallery's white walls.

Running simultaneously will be "Nano Show," a juried exhibition of the work of approximately 30 artists who could use any process, any medium -- with just one restriction: The piece had to be 1 inch by 1 inch.

Reception Fri., May 6, 5-9 p.m., through May 30, Nexus/Foundation for Today’s Art, 137 N. Second St., 215-629-1103.

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