You know that friend of yours who still thinks modern art is boring? Bring her to an Andréa Stanislav show.

A creator of “interactive media environments,” this University of Minnesota instructor knows how to take the stuffiness out of an art opening and turn it into an unforgettable event. Take 1,000 Kisses, an installation Stanislav created in 2001: At its opening, she gave visitors red lipstick and told them to kiss one of the 21 mirrored obelisks in the room, while playing motion-triggered audio of pop songs and interviews about romantic encounters. “It’s really important that I bring the viewer into the piece as a participant,” Stanislav says. “I’m empowering them to shape their own narrative of the work.” Several attendees at this sultry show felt empowered enough to leave the exhibit together and (ahem) shape their own private narrative. “The next morning people were writing me emails saying, ‘I got lucky last night,” she recalls. Now that’s a memorable art opening.

A Chicago native who spends time in New York, Stanislav has made her biggest splash in Minneapolis, where she arrived in 2004 to take a job at the U of M. Last winter she opened River to Infinity—The Vanishing Points at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; it was full of Stanislav’s signature tropes: exploding obelisks, decapitated animals encrusted in rhinestones, astrological charts and mirrors, mirrors everywhere. But if it sounds like pop fluff intended to distract rather than attract, River to Infinity also had depth. Stanislav’s obelisks? They represent Western empire. Those pretty sky charts? They depict important dates in American history. The mirrors? Stanislav is obsessed with the infinite vortex created between them, and how that imaginary space relates to perceived realities. It’s the stuff of an academic, but one who’s prone to using Sex Pistols lyrics as inspiration. For all her smoke and mirrors, Stanislav’s knack for luring in the masses with beautiful objects and then walloping them on the head with substance is perhaps her deftest trick of all.

VIEW: Slideshow of some of Andréa Stanislav's work.