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Joseph Hasenauer

OCTOMOM: Barbara, by Joseph Hasenauer, from the exhibit "Lil' Pus ... a girl's best friend" at Bambi Gallery.

Bridgette Mayer Gallery

If you only ever saw the world from an airplane, you might think there was some sense to it. Thousands of miles up, a seemingly unstructured housing development transforms into an elaborate, premeditated set of circular patterns. A graveyard full of minimalist crosses becomes an example of breathtaking symmetry. Streets have order. Cities, for once, look planned.

In her exhibit "Inhabit," Dana Hargrove makes this all too clear, with her acrylic paintings of highways, airports, offices, apartment complexes and roads looking like mere geometric abstraction until you take a step closer. But the implications are more unsettling: A dozen or so paintings dubbed "Interstates," which are identical except for color palette, force you to reckon with the absence of variety in our transportation systems. Her "Facade" series, depicting offices and hotels, makes you think the same thing about shelter. Are we woefully uncreative and utilitarian for not thinking up new ways to rest, work and schlep to and fro? More importantly, what is viewing the same man-made landscapes, in city after city, country after country, doing to us?

"I aim to highlight the beautiful unification of space," says Hargrove in her artist statement, making it sound as if she somehow advocates such monotony. Everything does look lovely from Google Earth, after all. But, says Hargrove, the point of her work is to remind people that what looks like "controlled seamlessness that belies any difficulties" is, once you inch closer, just "a façade." Ends Sept. 25, 709 Walnut St., first floor, 215-413-8893, bridgettemayergallery.com.

Bambi Gallery

Locks Gallery

In Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suibs video diptych White Sands, a soundtrack of bewitching strings and electronics performed by members of Espers and Bardo Pond as well as audio clips sourced from a feral military control room complements a rapid-fire array of black-and-white images of 1-foot-tall ants, blighted homes, abstract war paraphernalia, a glistening sun, a retching volcano, drifting sand dunes (or are those snow-capped mountains?) and one lone person in the desert armed with a metal detector. Phew. Oddly, despite this over-stimulation, the viewers senses never fry. In fact, watching White Sands is gently intoxicating, like going under with a doctors knowing hand in yours.

The fairly obvious subtext in the video are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Brilliantly, Hironaka and Suib filmed it at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, the site of the first atomic-bomb explosion and still an active military grounds.) The woman (or man, its hard to tell) traversing the sand dunes is an especially effective conceit: What is she doing with a metal detector? Is she trying to make sense of the desert with it, to hear its thoughts? Or perhaps the symbolism is more straightforward: A person doggedly looks for resources, for hours and hours, in a hostile terrain with an ineffective instrument.

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Inside Locks Gallery, White Sands is situated opposite The Fall (pictured), a shorter, more mystical piece by Hironaka and Suib. The same soundtrack follows a white horse in the woods of northwestern Pennsylvania, as it rocks back and forth in ecstasy. Like White Sands, The Fall will politely put you in a trance, but it lacks the substance of the former video, so the daze can feel like a cheap high.

Whiteout is Hironaka and ...

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Bus Stop Boutique

When Alden Blyth speaks about his recent two-week trip to Ethiopia, he does so very precisely, as if to say that he's fully aware that it may look like nothing more than spring break for the Harper's set.

"I've been interested in traveling to countries that haven't been influenced by McDonald's or Starbucks. Places that are more culturally pure than here," he says. "No, not pure. Isolated."

Blyth, a local architect who specializes in low-income, inner-city design, shot photographs of the Ethiopians he met in towns, atop mountains and at religious ceremonies for "People of Ethiopia." Being an infrequent photographer, Blyth doesn't dazzle with composition, but with what he brings to the darkroom as a design connoisseur. His eye is drawn to expressive shelter, patterns, stripes and color. Children painted head-to-toe like zebras, headdresses that would give Lady Gaga culture shock, and eclectic holy places situated within deep valleys.

Ethiopia, it turns out, was just the type of culturally heterogeneous muse he was looking for. "The way they build houses and dress and arrange villages there is so specific to their tribes," he says. "Villages just 50 miles apart look completely different from one another."

Because Blyth was so fixated on aesthetics, though, the people in his photographs often look unconnected to the man on the other end of the camera a fact that gives the show an unreal, twice-removed tenor. This might also have to do with Blyth's abbreviated stay, which prevented him from truly befriending anyone, at least in the traditional sense.

"You get to interact with people only by taking their photographs," he says. Closing r...

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StrataSphere
Colleen McCubbin Stepanic stood over a tree trunk that had been sawed in half. When it was whole, it looked like every other tree in the world. But its insides told a different story: The trunk contained two sets of concentric circles, meaning that it was likely two separate trees, which, over time, had become one. "You'll see two trees that grow together into one sometimes," says Stepanic, "but this tree was different, because nobody knew it was actually two different trees till they cut it down." This unlikely specimen became the inspiration for Stepanic's Bound, showing in StrataSphere's group exhibit "Spontaneous Repetition."

For the labor-intensive work, Stepanic painted pieces of fabric, cut them into long strips, sewed them together into two spiral shapes, and then repeated this whole process over again several times. At best, though, Bound looks marginally like a tree trunk. But who cares? The work's respectable method, along with its hints of domesticity and the natural world, give the viewer more than enough to admire. Stepanic's Abundant, made using a similar technique, brings a clearer, libidinous force to the show. The work is composed of dozens of tiny, circular slabs of fabric sewn together, which, whether you're a teenage boy or not, look exactly like round, pink breasts. "Everyone sees that," Stepanic says with a giggle.

Marie H. Elcin's embroidery, depicting homey Fishtown intersections, Penn Treaty Park and other local snapshots, fits in well with the exhibit's domestic tenor. But it isn't nearly as majestic or beautiful as Stepanic's body of work. Alongside Abundant and Bound, Elcin's needlework seem better suited for Etsy. But who cares? It'd make for pretty sweet home décor.
Ends May 1, 1854 Germantown Ave., 267-974-5060, thestratasphere.com.

bahdeebahdu
After Philagrafika ends on April 11, will the city's galleries, curators, artists and art allies ever again be as harmonious? For the past two months, the inaugural fête celebrating all things print has pervaded seemingly every venue and medium in town. It's as if we've all been part of one giant, heretical, ink-stained collective consciousness a nice change for a community that can feel disjointed and even, occasionally, at odds with itself.

Post-Philagrafika, Philly's arts scene should have more swagger: We know the city can host a print-themed triennial, so why can't it host something like the Whitney Biennial? Additionally, Philagrafika has given us a broader, more easygoing definition of print: Not only is digital photography "print," but so is video, confetti and performance art. It's these little things that should hold us over until the fest returns in three years ("unless it's back in two," says artistic director José Roca).
Of course, Philagrafika 2010's time of death hasn't been called just yet. Consider scurrying to the following shows exemplars of the festival's Apollonian vibes before it is.
Temple Gallery

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Speaking of prematurely called deaths: Barthélémy Toguo's Heart Beat and Francesc Ruiz's Newsstand (pictured) both cast an eye on print journalism. Copies of the Inquirer, which Toguo scribbled over with a Sharpie, line Temple Gallery's walls, giving viewers a visceral sense of being silenced. Meanwhile, Ruiz constructed a life-size, Philly-style newsstand, complete with original Philly-style newspapers, magazines and Lotto tickets things he believes are already relics. "Newsstands are the closest thing we had to Internet before it existed," he says. "They are places where you can access all k...

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Proximity Gallery
Justin Pekera is not dead. But walking through his morbid, sentimental exhibit "All That's Left," you might think he is. The walls are adorned with his most precious belongings a teddy bear, a Lethal Weapon VHS signed by Danny Glover, Polaroids of assorted girlfriends and friends as if his family hung them there as a makeshift memorial. Most convincingly, the exhibit includes a tongue-in-cheek will, in which he bequeaths things like "framed surgical pins" and a "framed broken pool stick" to his loved ones.

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If not death, what's the occasion? "I turned 30," says Pekera, the director of print services at the University of the Arts. In fact, since his birthday was on the day of the opening reception, he invited his family and friends to celebrate but didn't tell them anything about the exhibit until they arrived at Proximity.

"This is a show for the people involved with the items," says Pekera, recalling the memories exchanged among his guests on opening day. But take it from someone who had never met Pekera until last week: You don't need to know the man to appreciate the exhibit. Conversely, being a stranger may be a blessing. You get to guess why he took Polaroids of 17 different houses and hung them next to each other, or why a family portrait was deliberately broken into pieces. Perhaps the most intriguing object in the exhibit, though, is just a plain old J. Crew shirt, surrounded by a wooden frame that Pekera constructed. It's the simplicity that makes it so mysterious why, alongside things like casts and medals and teddy bears, would such a boring piece of clothing be important to him?

"Everyone asks about that shirt, even people who know me. Which is weird, because there's also a vest in the exhibit that's just as pl...

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Knapp Gallery
Though it depicts comely girls, families and birthdays, it's not easy to look at. Ashley Flynn's exhibit "Expelled from Eden," a collection of paintings, drawings, photographs and collages, deals with the unexposed, unsavory side of these subjects lovely girls getting raped, family dysfunction and birthday parties that scar.

Zoe Strauss, who Flynn's been interning for since 2007, unarguably inspires the young artist's portraits. In an untitled photograph at the front of Knapp Gallery, a chubby, pretty brunette stands naked and dignified next to her mother's transportable toilet, medical paraphernalia and framed picture of a golden-haired Jesus. The suggestion of salvation next to such vulnerability is unnerving. In another untitled photo, a woman watches her grandson watch Scooby-Doo, as two completely nondescript naked bodies cling to each other in a bed next to them. Something can't be right about this.

These subjects are Flynn's family. "Those two boys wrestling are my uncle's identical twins," says Flynn, a fifth-year Moore student who is exhibiting at Knapp for the second time. "I like that the picture is suggestive, but nothing's going on."

Other images are much more openly bleak, and seem to drip straight from Flynn's cluttered unconscious. On the back wall of the gallery (pictured), a mural vividly depicts clowns, Medusa, Hurricane Katrina, heroin needles, rape and an enormous amount of unbecoming nudity. See it now before it's painted over forever in a clean, drab white. Ends Jan. 31, Knapp Gallery, 162 N. Third St., 267-455-0279, knappgallery.com.

Lorenzo Homar Gallery
When I walk into the "La Plena Immortal" exhibit, a dozen o...

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Cerulean Arts

American men are so enchanted by their cars that, for a photo, they'll wiggle into their finest leather jackets, wax their mustaches, saddle up next to their rides and beam proudly all despite the fact that the 'ol beater can't sputter its way down a driveway. You've no doubt seen these pictures in your dad's albums.

Such is the loyalty of the subjects in Caddie, Honda (pictured) and Rocket Car, three oil-on-canvas portraits in Michael Kowbuz 's exhibit "Michael, Where Are You? Altered States of North America." Though the show includes 16 pieces total almost all of which involve cars, a curious fixation given that Kowbuz doesn't own one these three works are by far the most compelling. They prod the viewer to ask herself questions about identity, objecthood, nostalgia and the dubious similarities between crushing on a car and falling for a woman.

Kowbuz, co-owner of Cerulean Arts, is exhibiting for the first time since opening his gallery in 2006, and blames his laborious pointillist style for holding things up. It was well worth the wait: In Caddie, Honda and Rocket Car, his dots of paint look as elaborate as needlework, and his layers of yellow, purple, red and opaque glazes give the illusion of photographs left in the sun.

Kowbuz's method also deftly reflects the exhibit's themes of nostalgia and the past. "To me, the dots are like a dream, or memory," he says. "They are coalesced now, but could in a moment dissipate into the ether."
Ends Jan. 8, Cerulean Arts, 1355 Ridge Ave., 267-514-8647, ceruleanarts.com.

Slought Foundation

If you have blood pum...

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The Clay Studio
Joanie Turbek suffers no illusions about her art's place in the world: Cupcakes, she knows from experience, always trump it.

As part of her "Minor Malfunction" exhibit, she cast a basketful of porcelain cupcakes, baked the same amount of ordinary edible cupcakes, and asked strangers which they preferred for $2.50 each. Not a single person took the fakes.
"Sometimes art is not the answer," says Turbek. "All artists have a very strong belief in what they're doing, but it's important to play around with that belief a little bit. Sometimes people just want to eat a cupcake."

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Her installation pieces also courageously ask viewers to assess their worth until, as Turbek puts it, "they realize how pleasant they are." Prosthetic Lawn (pictured) is a snow angel-shaped chunk of grass that you can lie on in the gallery, while Being Close to Disaster & Other Things that Make You Feel Lucky provides the willing with a tent to sit under as artificial rain drips on them. The latter is so peaceful it'll hush even the biggest contemporary art critics.

When I suggest that she may be able to monetize these simulated natural occurrences in the dystopic future, Turbek insists that her work isn't meant to have such a dark tenor. "I'm more optimistic than that," she says. "I just want to create a really rich, temporary experience for people." Ends Nov. 29, The Clay Studio, 139 N. Second St., 215-925-3453, theclaystudio.org.

2424 Studios
To paraphrase, Jeff Koons has said that his Balloon Dog a metal sculpture that looks just like a clown-made balloon dog, only much larger is all in good fun, and nothing more. Jason Hackenwerth's exhibit, "The Ti...

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Seraphin Gallery

Like the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, Hiro Sakaguchi's paintings in the exhibit "Idle Daydream" invoke a complex, knotty fear one that cleverly layers horror in between preciousness, childlike innocence and pastel colors. "People read my work as scary," says Sakaguchi. "Scary like a tiny stuffed bear holding a knife."

Take Bear Fishing (pictured), in which the Japanese-born local artist paints a dozen airplanes paddling eagerly upstream like fish, while being ripped in half by a Godzilla-size bear. Meanwhile, a rainbow glows in the right-hand corner, it's a beautiful day out, and a few tourists look onto the scene, seemingly unfazed. Does the scary-pretty piece comment on overpopulation? Globalism gone wild? Nature eventually swallowing man whole? Or is it simply about the fear of planes?

Kinda? "That idea came from a nature show, where salmon, after they grow up, returned to where they were born to lay eggs," says Sakaguchi, who moved to Philly 18 years ago. "And they go through all that trouble to get home only to be eaten by bears. I started associating the salmon with myself, when I take a plane to go back to my home, Japan."

Planes pop up frequently in Sakaguchi's works, which, in addition to his trips to Japan, may have something to do with the fact that he often watches the horizon speckle with them from his home near the Philadelphia International Airport. In School of Pinwheel Airplanes, there's such a critical mass of planes that the scene appears warlike. But, as usual, the chaos is inconsistent: The sky is bubbly blue, and the townhouses below the planes are unscathed.

Tying all this cutesiness and terror together is Sakaguchi's greatest talent his disarming painting style, which is modest, youthful and akin to comic-book illustrations. "When you're a child, you're drawing your imaginati...

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I'll Teach Your Grandma To Grow Gills

Think of Ashley Payne's mixed media as a self-monitored Rorschach test: The Philly artist blindfolds herself, paints, scribbles or draws whatever comes to mind, removes her blindfold, and then asks, "What do I see?" "Then, at that point, I have a rule," says Payne. "No matter how embarrassing or stupid what I first see is, I have to allow the viewer to see it. I have to develop it."

What gurgles to the surface isn't so surprising or freakish, given that Payne's method leaves her subconscious practically unfiltered. Naked women, plump whales, pink-colored poop and weird amalgams of disparate animals are all in her mind's eye, and most of it is, expectedly, half-evolved, dreamy, hazy. In some pieces, though, it's fair to assume that Payne broke her second, and last, rule to spend no more than three weeks on a piece. ("It's fun sometimes, spending four weeks on it instead," says Payne. "I feel devious going against myself.") The Way We Give Comfort is one such work its two female forms, while alien-like and odd, are fully realized, perfect in their strangeness.

A better result arises when Payne plays by the rules, leaving an element or two slightly unhinged. Wissahickon with Suzanne (pictured), for instance, depicts a pleasantly fuzzy white animal with beady eyes and pointy ears, as well as a creature that may or may not be human with a gray, swanlike neck. Like a dream, it's unclear exactly what they are. Ends Oct. 2, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, paintedbride.org.

Bright Path

This group show is irreverent, but it's also funny and admirable. The rabble-rousers include Duke Riley, whose comic-book name befits his hobby of messing with the Coast Guard in his video Belmont Island. Perhaps John Henry...

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Passage of Time, Passage of Place

When I was almost 10, I begged my dad to let me plant a time capsule in the backyard before we moved out of our one-story Baltimore home. He humored me — and we poured troll dolls, a Nintendo game I was no longer interested in, a Strawberry Shortcake notebook and other various preteen artifacts into a cardboard box, and topped it off with dirt. Looking at Matt Hollerbush's photographs of the Divine Lorraine Hotel, I realize I did it all wrong. I should've buried the entire house instead.

His shots of the Philly landmark, first built in the 1890s for the nouveau riche and later run by the progressive but kind of cult-y Universal Peace Mission Movement, robustly capture various time periods in a way that not even the most carefully curated museum exhibit can.

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"In 2006, everything was surprisingly intact, as if the tenants had just left," says Hollerbush. "Rooms with furniture, personal belongings and lots of peeling paint." Indeed, his photographs — of retro couches (pictured), immaculate china plates, and cracked walls painted in innocent colors like seafoam green and periwinkle — seem to capture the site of an ancient disaster, which everyone had fled in a hurry. Unfortunately, these tiny footnotes in history may soon ...

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Philadelphia and Its Manufactures: 1859 & 2009

In 1859, Edwin Freedley could feel the end of Philly's manufacturing days barreling toward him. In his book Philadelphia and Its Manufactures, he woefully wrote that the city "has gradually receded from her former glorious position in the commercial firmament." Exactly 150 years later, in early 2009, Jacob Hellman found himself surrounded by Freeley's predictions — he was living in a run-down warehouse on Berks and Howard streets, and working in the onetime industrial center North Philly. That's when he came across Freedley's book.

"I was in Temple's library, looking for something else entirely," says Hellman. "So finding it was sort of a reason to start something."

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And so he began to photograph Philly's industrial artifacts. His most stunning works are the result of wandering around in places he probably shouldn't have — like the Robert Bruce Sweater Factory, which is now home to five utterly empty floors. In two photographs, he captures the factory's only signs of life: brown mushrooms (pictured) and a green plant poking through the concrete. Coincidentally, the plant will grow up to be a paulonia tree. "They're an invasive species from China," says Hellman. "Which, if you think about it, is supremely ironic — since...

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NATURAL ORDER

Awkward relationships, whether between two middle-schoolers crushin' on each other or Angela and Dwight, are always comical. David Kimelman, a photographer from Brooklyn, agrees: "A lot of my pictures are about the uncomfortable relationship people have with nature, and I think uncomfortable relationships are inherently funny."

In Long Walks on the Beach (pictured), for example, an elderly couple — one sporting a bikini and the other a leopard-print thong — trot hand in hand, their skin poking out and folding up in all sorts of unsavory, humorous ways. "[That] represents the upside of the relationship," says Kimelman. "In this case the subjects' environment, the beach, is fostering a very tender and genuine human moment."

Other pieces are less precious — Offering provides an up-close look at a butchered chicken, and Tall Hedge examines the always-off interactions between nature and industry. But Kimelman claims his work is less about environmentalism than it seems. "My main interest is in what our relationship to the natural world says about us. You can tell so much about a person by how he treats his mom," he says. "I feel the same is true of us people, and our mother, nature." Ends Aug. 26, Hudson Beach Glass, 26 S. Strawberry St., 267-319-1887, hudsonbeachglasspa.com.

FILTHY

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Vox V

It's fun to picture 52 national and international artists, curators Ryan Trecartin and Larry Mangel, and assorted interns and friends schlepping 100 pieces of work up Vox Populi's rickety stairs. OK, so maybe that's a tad mean. But really, how did they get Sarah Knouse's Crawl, a sculpture of a woman on all fours made completely of red string and resin, there without it unraveling?

Other pieces in this fifth annual exhibit are better for transport, but no less intriguing: Jaime Treadwell's oil paintings Guns "n" Religion and Fairy Tale reveal nightmarish worlds in which unrelated subjects intermingle. How unrelated? Well, neon-colored RVs, Roman pillars, a little girl shooting a hot pink gun, religious statues, porn stars, Olympic gymnasts and camouflage outfits are pretty different. Speaking of porn stars, Giacomo Fortunato's adults-only photograph Sex on the Mind captures a man watching porn on two separate laptops, while he's wrapped like a present — head to toe — in pornographic magazines. So that's technically sex on the mind, and elbow, and belly button ... Ends Aug. 2, Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., third floor, 215-238-1236, voxpopuligallery.org.

Damn the Valley

If American soldiers' documentation of their lives through grainy, shaky YouTube videos is interesting, then Sgt. Tom Hunter's slick digital photographs of his time in Afghanistan are enthralling. Look out for the photos depicting local, aged children, like Shoe Salesman (pictured). Ends Aug. 7, Cerulean Arts, 1355 Ridge Ave., 267-514-8647, ceruleanarts.com.

One Mile

Proximity Gallery just turned one, and to celebra...

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[ catch it or regret it ]

Three Headed Presents: Adventures in the Land of Smoke and Mirrors

Ends July 26, FLUXSpace, 3000 N. Hope St., thefluxspace.org

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Rika Hawes says she's moved by nostalgia, memory and childhood, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from walking into her installation, "The Room of Mirrors" (pictured). The problem isn't that her work is too opaque, it's simply too distracting. The installation — one of many pieces in the exhibit, created along with Kim Harty and Charlotte Potter — first takes you through a dark, skinny hallway littered with mirrors. After a series of wrong turns (you think something is a hallway when it's actually a mirror), you end up in another room.

This room is covered, top to bottom, with gold-painted carousel horses and more mirrors. There's also enough gold glitter on the floor to decorate 100 teenage girls' MySpace pages. The result is very fun, and a little frustrating: You accidentally run into several mirrors because you think they're open space, until you get so disoriented that you decide to poke, prod and examine everything first, just to make sure it's real.

So what did Hawes mean by all this, exactly? "I'm interested in nostalgia, and many adults are nostalgic for carousel rides at carnivals, because that sort of fun is very inaccessible to them," she says. "This distorted version of the carousels that I created here represents our memories. When you remember something, you're not accessing the same neurons — you're creating new ones. So you're literally piecing memories together, and they're not perfect."

Think Global, Go Local

Ends July 18, Pentimenti Gallery, 145 N. Second St., 215-625-9990, pe...

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[ catch it or regret it ]

Wind Challenge 3

Ends July 3, Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St., 215-922-3456, fleisher.org

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Of the three seemingly unrelated artists in this show, Constantina Zavitsanos stands out the most. Her installations — inspired by new steam-punk aesthetics and ancient optical illusions — are spellbinding. As you walk into one, located in a small white room, a live video camera records your back. Expecting to see your face instead, you barely recognize yourself, which is Zavitsanos' way of reminding us that our mental maps of ourselves are barely set in stone.

Another highlight is a rigged pair of headphones that has old-timey clocks where the speakers should be, perhaps commenting on the ability to measure time through music. A sculpture constructed of pieces of metal and matches also presents a captivating look at time — with two lights swinging above it, the movement of its shadows make you feel as though you're watching the day pass by abnormally quickly.

Though not quite as strong, the accompanying artists Johanna Inman and Yvonne Lung present highly competent exhibits. Inman's photographs (pictured) of old, yellowed, cracked and water-stained books will be beautiful to anyone who enjoys walking around old libraries. And Lung, a Mandarin interpreter, creates a insightful video documenting immigrants' experiences in the United States.

The Fab Show

Ends July ...

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Gold Mountain
Ends June 21, Pageant : Soloveev, 607 Bainbridge St., 215-925-1535, pageantsoloveev.com
Jessica Doyle’s watercolors (pictured) aren’t simply odes to nature. Just look at the colors: Next to earthy blues, browns and greens are hues you’d normally see only in fruit-flavored candy and dance clubs — sickly orange, lime green, hot pink. She further meshes the natural with the artificial by placing well-dressed ladies next to dirty tents, an upholstered chair near a shabby cabin and naked girls in extravagant roller skates. In the wrong hands, all this countryside chic could look like a hackneyed Cosmopolitan fashion shoot. But Doyle, painting both plain farms and decked-out people sensually, renders it a dream world, in which the urban and rural combine.
The Rose Tattoo
Ends June 21, $12, Old Academy Players, 3540-44 Indian Queen Lane,
215-843-1109, oldacademyplayers.org

This Tennessee Williams play is fond of stereotypes — Sicilian ones in particular. The main character, Serafina DelleRosa, regularly asks her Virgin Mary idol to give her signs, is sickeningly protective of her young, boy-crazy daughter, and spends most of the production weeping in a nightie. In other words, DelleRosa could easily become a bobble-headed Italian cartoon. But Susan Triggiani, herself an Italian-American with seven brothers and sisters, plays the character with enough...

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Naive American Art

Ends June 7, Art Star Gallery & Boutique, 623 N. Second St., 215-238-1557, artstarphilly.com
While Jason Sho Green's paintings are only occasionally sexy, they are always sexual. Take "Golden Girls," for instance, in which busty, curled-up blondes are stacked on top of each other in physically impossible positions — like M.C. Escher's stairs, but dirtier. Sexual, yes, but not sexy. Likewise, in "Milked and Cookied," a Playboy bunny has three breasts on her chest, two tits where her eyes should be and one boob where her mouth is, and she's straddling an anything-but-freaked-out man.
Rendered in a comic, freehand style, Green’s works are more than just representations of the horny straight male’s mind — they capture the naughty thoughts of gays, women and animals, too. Taking obvious cues from Mark Chamberlain, "How to Make a Pencil Disappear" shows a gay Batman — except he’s gay for another Batman, instead of Robin. Other works show a brunette rubbing down a manticore, and a red fox wrapped sensually around a woman’s neck (pictured).

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The weirdest part about all the boobs and humping and bestiality is that Green claims he’s more inspired by his c...

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Micro | Meso | Macro

Ends May 31, Bahdeebahdu, 1522 N. American St., 215-627-5002, bahdeebahdu.com

Often times, an artist's statement seems more like a poem about inspiration than a true examination of what her art is about, or even what it looks like. (Stumble across a Pollock-esque, abstract painting that supposedly depicts Buddhism, and you'll know what I mean.) Jon Olivieri's prints, paintings (pictured) and videos are different. Inspired by his time in Iceland, his work resembles the seismic activity and violent floods he encountered there — multicolored, spaghetti-like noodles burst wildly through white grids with the same vigor that volcanic lava climbs up through the Earth. Olivieri says his work mirrors the "brute physical becoming of the Earth's anatomical structure." His claim is hardly hyperbole.

Informative Segments

Ends May 24, F.U.E.L. Collection, 249 Arch St., 215-592-8400, fuelcollection.com
In this group show, which aims to examine how our world is simultaneously made more dull and more fantastic through technology, two artists stand out: Matthew Conradt and Lee Heekin. The former, who works with collage, draws attention to the things that we discard either individually or as a society — parking lots, grassy fields, blighted homes. Rendered in cutup scraps, Conradt emphasizes the slow decay of these items. Heekin, a sculptor, creates beautifully geometrical wooden works and wax-light boxes. Her obsession with grids and order, which pops up even in her structures that look like they're about to fall apart, mimic the Information Age's reliance on hard-line mathematics.

Macbeth

Ends May 24, $20, Philade...