Author: Ann Klefstad

Catherine Sullivan, erstwhile dorm-mate of local dancer Dylan Skybrook (who collaborated on this show), now fields world-wide commissions to make her critically acclaimed video installations and films. For Triangle of Need, her latest project, Sullivan produced eight different works for simultaneous projection.

At the heart of these disparate strands of images are three locations: the Vizcaya Mansion, a Florida palace of excess built by the industrialist James Deering; a Chicago tenement that represents the dwellings of Deering’s workers; and an ice rink where the extraordinary local skater Rohene Ward dances to a reading of Baudelaire’s beautiful poem “Invitation to the Voyage.” It’s impossible to explain much about this eccentric and amazing work, but do plan on spending an hour or so in the gallery. Advance research into Neanderthals and their supposed language, Mousterian, will only enhance the experience. 612-375-7600; www.walkerart.org

This young (got his BFA from MCAD in 2005) and fast-rising (fellowships from Jerome, McKnight, Bush, and Skowhegan) Minneapolis artist works in the mode of the moment: a combinatoire of painting, assemblage, ragpicking, and video. These are fragmented times we live in, and it’s artists like Bryant who pull together the pieces of exploding cultures in unaccustomed ways. High-art references like the Mona Lisa meet with drawn lines that have the deftness of a tagger who studied with Rembrandt. These elements snuggle up to camouflage fabric and the occasional “identity” reference. This is Bryant’s first-ever solo exhibition; count on lots of interested parties angling to get a look. 1021 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-872-7494; www.franklinartworks.org

Megan Rye’s brother supervised the regional detention facility in Fallujah and transported Iraqi detainees within the Sunni Triangle. He took more than two thousand photographs during his tour of duty. As a painter, his sister is the real deal; she used these images to make huge paintings that are for keeps. These paintings are part of her current exhibition, I Will Follow You Into the Dark.

War Mediated, the concurrent group show, is less concerned with combat than with how stories get disseminated on the home front. It includes Megan Vossler’s drawings of bands of tiny refugees filing through great blank fields of white, Camille Gage’s paintings of flag-draped coffins with blacked-out “censored” areas, and Justin Newhall’s photos of World War II battle re-enactments—works that inflect our fears and desires in interesting ways. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

Orin Rutchick, Kristine Heykants, Angela Strassheim, and Mickey Smith now show the fruits of the past year’s labors as winners of the McKnight Foundation’s annual photography fellowships. These are fairly approachable artists, standing in relation to average folks’ uses of the medium: Orin Rutchick’s project is all about tourist snapshots; Kristine Heykants’s theatrical studio work rides atop her commercial work shooting models and brides. Angela Strassheim worked in forensic photography before moving on to document life in the suburbs (arguably more of the same), but her work has always borne some resemblance to both family snaps and famous paintings. Recent fame has encouraged Strassheim to push her candy-colored malign line further; these photos are interesting but you probably shouldn’t have dessert before you go see them. The one photographer here who shows nothing really new is Mickey Smith—someone get that girl out of the library! 165 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-824-5500; www.mncp.org

Segrelicious is described as a “multi-media, poly-racial-gender exquisite corpse of poetry, performance, and artistic experimentation.” That tall order is maybe even possible to fill, given Shoebox proprietor Sean Smuda’s polymorphous involvement with dance, poetry, photography, iron sculpture, and even improvisational music. Each artist was directed to make work in response to a piece from another artist. On August 4 from 6-9 p.m., in both the Obsidian Arts and Shoebox Gallery spaces, the visual-arts part of the show opens. For the Soul Food gathering August 25, bring a dish, a drink, and a story or talent to share that afternoon; a physical and intellectual potluck will unroll throughout the Roberts Shoes building at Lake and Chicago. Segrelicious performances begin at 8 p.m. Call it a bohemian rhapsody … 2948 Chicago Ave. S., Suite 220, Minneapolis; 612-825-3833, www.mnartists.org/Shoebox_Gallery; www.obsidianarts.org

Cynde Randall has been in touch with just about every artist in the five-state area, thanks to her work as a longtime associate with the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and as the founder of the annual Bird x Bird exhibition, a benefit for avian well-being. Now, fittingly, she has her own eco-gallery on the shores of Lake Pepin, in the heart of the Mississippi flyway. It opened in June and its new show, Plant Worship, includes new works by Pat Callahan, Dennis Conrad, Andrew Neher, and Luke and Valerie Snobeck. Randall says the satiric but heartfelt work from this crew illustrates “the problematical relationship between human behavior (and industry) and nature.” As Neher notes regarding the issues his work explores: “What we are facing today isn’t the end of life but the end of a lifestyle.” 3557 W. Main St., Maiden Rock, Wisconsin; 612-250-9222

You know what printmaking is: creating multiple copies of an image, by any means possible. Print is a parallel art-world with its own histories and propensities. Some techniques are ancient, like woodcuts; some are former industrial processes, like stone lithography or screenprint; some are intimately allied with books and illustrations, like intaglio. Print is a fairly democratic medium, too: If you have some skills, you can join Highpoint as a co-op member and work in its fabulously well-appointed studio. The work of the current co-op is notably wide-ranging, with many artists in this exhibition (Clara Ueland and Nick Wrobleski, for example) transmuting the living world into more iconic, resonant forms. (Much as good illustration does, and that’s no insult.) Prints are affordable; go shopping. And maybe think about becoming a printmaker yourself—Highpoint has adult classes. 2638 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-1326; www.highpointprintmaking.org

Pablo Picasso: a name that started as a revolution, became mainstream, evolved into a platitude, and ended up as a punch line. He became the repository for everything Europe knew about art, and was the hinge between the School of Paris and the immense gathering energies of the New York School. Every artist in the last century has had to face him down; local legend Frank Gaard writes of his own struggle: “Most of my pals in high school called me Pablo or Picasso even in signing the yearbook … ” (read more). This much-anticipated show includes a couple dozen Picassos, and work by such grand types as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and David Smith, as well as Marsden Hartley, Louise Bourgeois, and Andy Warhol, among many more. 612-375-7600; www.walkerart.org

Local artist Strassheim is a former forensic photographer who now shoots her own family in disturbing tableaux. Her reputation has been growing ever since her work was featured in the last Whitney Biennial. Small wonder, then, that she has a beautiful show at the Burnet Gallery in the Chambers Hotel—which, of course, has built its own reputation on both overweening hipness and an abundance of adventurous art. Since good art is rarely served in close proximity to good cocktails, don’t miss this chance to take in both. 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612.767.6900; www.chambersminneapolis.com/hotel-events

Jantje Fisscher’s breathtaking constructions really are “drawings in light”: She uses certain plastics to construct light-gathering patterns that take her longtime fascination with natural form and rhythm to new heights. Her work has developed over the years from interesting but relatively dry explorations of pattern to increasingly ecstatic immersion in an expanded idea of the natural. Mary Griep’s drawings of notable sacred buildings from around the world may seem pale beside Visscher’s indulgent work, but she has solid merits of her own, and also explores the relation of form and the meaning that is power. Ultimately, it makes for a very interesting pairing. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org