Galleries & Museums

Browse listings of Openings, Galleries, Museums, and Special Events. Plus: See our coverage of Columbia's Manifest Urban Art Festival.

Critic's Choice
Dirty

Land of Forty Lungs (detail) by Paul Nudd

A tireless curator, Paul Nudd has worked with small galleries to organize one kick-ass show after another. He's also a prolific artist, specializing in video montages of abstract, pulpy forms slimily engaged in suggestive pseudo-congress. The giant black-and-white paintings by Nudd currently on display at the Hyde Park Art Center are less visceral than the videos—but, in their more contemplative way, they show the same fascination with messy and ambiguous imagery. Covered with isolated, dripping, blobby forms that threaten to cohere into mazelike patterns but never quite do, these canvases suggest a cross between a D & D adventure map and a schematic of your innards. Casey Ann Wasniewski isn't as well established as Nudd, but her fabric sculptures are even more impressive. Bloated yet delicate, they look like the nauseatingly adorable, almost sentient turds of one of H.P. Lovecraft's monstrous shoggoths, done in plush. Close up, the textures are amazingly varied; Wasniewski uses numerous fabrics, including horsehair, and I really regretted the standard look-but-don't-touch gallery dictum. This is a show you want to crawl inside and rub all over yourself. Through 7/20, Mon-Thu 9-8, Fri-Sat 9-5, Sun 12-5, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520. --Noah Berlatsky

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