Author: Ann Klefstad

These two artists (plus Burton Fialk, in the MCP’s Minnesota Projects Gallery) make work about seeing others—in particular, seeing them under duress. Photography lends itself to this, although it’s a use that most of us would not dare undertake. Annabel Clark has documented her mother, Lynn Redgrave, as she endures breast cancer and its treatment (Redgrave plans to visit during the run of the show; see www.mncp.org for dates), while Arlene Gottfried documented the life of a man named Midnight for over twenty years. At first he was beautiful enough to command a premium price as a hustler; then he melts down with madness, bad drugs, and the simple toll of years. As standards narrow for all of us in a consumerist world, we need to push against the limits of what we can love, and what we can find lovely. This show helps. 165 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-824-5500; www.mncp.org

The work in SAD, says curator Diane Mullin, “probes conditions of light, atmosphere, and isolation, addressing how our northern surroundings affect and define us.” Mounting this show in summer is a counterintuitively interesting idea: When the weather gets too good, go and soak up a little soggy gray despair (maybe we’ll discover we’re even SADder than we thought?). The artists involved are all Twin Cities-based: Ana Lois-Borzi sews and crafts bulbous glandular things and makes other body-centric conceptual objets; Jan Estep uses video and embroidery to address the relationship of a lone self to the rest of everything; and Katherine Turczan photographs often isolated human beings here and also in Ukraine. The work of the other artists (Theresa Handy, Chris Larson, Charles Matson Lume, Andrea Stanislav, and Piotr Szyhalski) is equally disparate, and represents a sort of honor roll of the Cities’ most kick-ass conceptualists. 333 E. River Rd., Minneapolis; 612-625-9494, www.weisman.umn.edu

A fruit so juicy that you have to lick your arm after eating it, and a technology so viral that it threatens ubiquity. Are these opposites? Or, in some sense—desire, say—are they the same? They’re things you want and don’t want; they’re too much. That is, roughly, the theme of this show, curated by Soap Factory director Ben Heywood. He’s gathered a selection of odd sculptures and … well, let’s call them “states of affairs” … from the slew of artist submissions the Soap receives annually. None was deemed worthy of taking over the sizable joint; but all were sufficiently tasty to deserve inclusion in this big survey of … what, exactly? The Imaginary as double for Consumer Desire? Dreams of the cost of this era of culture? It’s a complicated picture, but one worth a visit to the cavernous, cool reaches of this vast converted factory. Molly Roth and other recently celebrated local artists share the rooms with young artists from New York and elsewhere. 518 Second St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-623-9176; www.soapfactory.org

Both Shinique Smith and Michael Paul Britto were in a show called “Frequency” at the Studio Museum of Harlem last year, curated by the incisively yet inclusively smart Thelma Golden. Also included was Kalup Linzy, whose hilarious and fond videos of various homefolks recently showed at Midway Contemporary Art in Northeast Minneapolis. Indeed, it seems that much of the most interesting art in circulation around here—including the recent show by Jim Denomie and Andrea Carlson at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Kara Walker’s survey at the Walker—is being done by people with access to at least a couple of different cultures. Maybe that double vision provides the binoculars we need to see the real lay of the land. I’m not sure which of Britto’s videos will be presented, but his Dirrrty Harriet Tubman is pretty funny, an action-thriller parody using a sanctified figure. The thing to ask is, can we all play? Franklin Art Works, 1021 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis; 612-872-7494; www.franklinartworks.org

Paintings by Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Carl Larsson, August Strindberg, Harald Sohlberg, Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Eero Järnefelt, and Fanny Churberg will shimmer on the walls of the MIA. The show explores Nordic attitudes toward nature and the past and present significance of landscape in Nordic culture and thinking. Expect a beautiful show—rampantly pretty as well as expressionistic and emotional. In the face of full-on loveliness, there’s not much to say—so why not go with someone you’re squabbling with? All that stuff will melt away. 612-870-3000; www.artsmia.org

This show features three intellectually hard-charging but often funny conceptual types from New York doing a wide variety of media (painting, sculpture, and video). This goofball name, Des Derrières, opens itself to all kinds of interpretations, from the opposite of the avant-garde (le derriere garde, the rear guard, those in fighting retreat) to pure scatology. All of this will matter, from the high-toned French history of the abject radical to the jokes and irreverence of fringy American art. It is also reminiscent of the old Monty Python joke: “And now for something completely different: A man with three buttocks.” It opens May 5 with a party everyone is invited to; if the opening is typical for this gallery, there’ll be music and ways for audience members to participate in the work. This is not the kind of gallery where you get something to go above the sofa, but you could figure out something to do behind it. Or maybe under it. Art of This Gallery, 3222 Bloomington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-721-4105.

Jil Evans’ paintings are beautiful. She’s also a thinker who’s deeply ingrained with paint. A founding member of the long-standing Art and Philosophy reading group, Evans strives for meaning in form and color. The Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is a major influence; she named her dog after him. In keeping with this intense relation to other artists’ work, The Dutch Opera is influenced by painters from the opposite end of Europe. On a visit to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Evans was transfixed by their Baroque Dutch still-life paintings: work by Willem van Aelst, Simon Verelst, and Jan Weenix. The paintings she made in response take the form of operatic theater; thus, they are absolutely huge. Form + Content is a new gallery, and a lot of excitement has accompanied its opening. It’s a co-op put together by a few of the best mid-career artists in the city, of whom Evans is one. These will be shows to watch. Form + Content Gallery, Whitney Square Building, 210 2nd St. N., Minneapolis; 612-436-1151.

Since the heyday of conceptualism in the ’70s, there have been artists doing interesting things with sound—not “music,” which is something very different, but sound as evidence of the natural or human world, combined in ways that intensify your consciousness of surroundings. This survey doesn’t cover everyone who has done this kind of work over the last few decades (Usry Alleyne, for instance, isn’t here) but it does represent sound artists ranging from Leif Brush (a pioneer, now in his sixties) to Abinadi Meza (in his twenties). There’ll be a lot of depth to this show, so you’ll need time; give yourself a couple of hours to hear the murmurs and cries of stars, light, and trees. Minnesota Museum of American Art, 651-266-1030.

This show gathers some of the city’s best younger artists, across a broad spectrum of styles and media. Sean Connaughty takes a thoughtful conceptual approach to the intersection of natural form and cultural tropes, using ink, photo, sculpture, words, and whatever else comes to hand. Clea Felien searches for the essence of portrait subjects in her small, left-handed drawings. Celeste Nelms constructs weird photographic metaphors whose open-ended resolutions act like telescopes that track the psyche’s trail across the sky of time. Ben Olson’s expressionistic self-portraits seem to look for the borders of the bearable. Melissa Stang hasn’t shown around here lately but was an important figure in the ’90s, with shows at the Soap Factory and elsewhere. It’ll be fascinating to see what she’s been up to. Gallery Co, 400 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-5252.