Solar Powered

The works of Xul Solar -- the late Argentine painter, sculptor, architect and poet -- display a sporadic and sublime use of color and light. Beginning today, 90 of Solar's works will be on display for his first American retrospective: "Xul Solar: Visions and Revelations" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Solar's city landscapes and building facades hark back to M.C. Escher, but without the paradoxical twists or complete disregard for logic and gravity. (Watch for City and Abysses, a green futuristic city of adobe-style buildings with endless spiraling staircases, and Pan Klu Delta Project, a building on a seaside dock with brightly colored facades.) Solar waxes religious in works such as Pan Altar Mundi, a wooden foldout piece that resembles a tabernacle used in communion, complete with a wooden cross and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exhibit runs through April 16. 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7540 or visit www.mfah.org. $3.50 to $7; free for MFAH members.
Jan. 30-April 16