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Critic's Choice Matthew Steinke is an alchemist. In an era of multimedia works created by collectives and art stars with workshops of hirelings, Steinke has the ideas, the skills, and the work ethic to operate as a scrappy, no-budget demiurge. His dense, funny, haunting installations and performances feature everything from animatronic puppetry and meticulous animation to interactive homemade kinetic and sound apparatuses. Each piece offers an incomplete glimpse into an evocative, elegant, claustrophobic cosmos. The installation Haruspex, inspired by the Etruscan priests who divined using sheep livers, addresses the mystical process by which cultural institutions derive meaning from ancient documents and artifacts. It features a screening of Steinke’s stop-motion and special-effects animation “Sky of Breaths,” an unearthly vignette about the experimental incantations of a wizard-curator. The video will be accompanied by animatronics and performance as well as delicate paintings of surreal scenes suggested by the plaques in natural history museums. Steinke also has work in “KlusterCRUSTS,” opening Saturday at Butcher Shop Dogmatic (for which I contributed a catalog essay). Steinke performs Fri 5/11, 8-11 PM, at Deadtech. Haruspex up through 6/12: Tue 8 PM-midnight, Sat noon-5 PM, Deadtech, 3321 W. Fullerton, 773-426-2828. —Bert Stabler

As I Became Invisible, I Began to See Things That Had Once Been Invisible to Me, graphite and iridescent ink on gray paper by Jenny Kendler, whose show opens Fri 5/11, 6-9 PM, at Nova | 840 W. Washington | 804-519-9806

Poison in Your Mouth, painting by William Goodman, whose show of “unquestionably grim” themed work opens Fri 5/11, 6-10 PM, at Cyt O. | 1932 S. Halsted #405 | 773-405-0693. The gallery is one of the stops on this month’s “2nd Fridays” art walk in the Chicago Arts District around 18th and Halsted.

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