Capsule Art Reviews: "AES+F," "Agustina Nuñez: Little Polymorphous," "Flicker Fusion," "The Thames Mudlarks"

"AES+F" AES+F is a Russian art powerhouse comprised of Tatiana Arzamasova, a conceptual architect; Lev Evzovitch, a conceptual architect and filmmaker; Evgeny Svyatsky, a graphic artist; and Vladimir Fridkes, a fashion photographer for the likes of Vogue. The group combine their diverse skills to spectacular effect: Their work is slick, smart and infused with a sense of the macabre. Three phenomenal installations by the collaborative are on view at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in "AES+F," curated by Olga Sviblova. The installation Suspects: Seven Sinners and Seven Righteous (1997) contains large photographs of 14 teenage girls. Seven of them are convicted murderers, and seven are ordinary Moscow high school students. AES+F doesn't tell you who's who. The portraits are all taken the same way; they're head-on, mug shot-like images against a white background. Ultimately, anybody could be anything, the series seems to say. The photographic series Defile (2000-2007) presents seven life-size images of people clad in avant-garde fashions. You might think it's just Fridkes exercising his fashion-photography skills — until you notice the models' sunken eyes, crudely stitched autopsy scars and rigor mortis. AES+F shot pictures of unidentified corpses at the morgue and then digitally clad them in edgy fashion. It's a provocative strategy, and showing big pictures of dead people has a creepy allure. Last Riot (2007) is the centerpiece of the exhibition. This apocalyptic three-screen video presents a surreal, digitally animated panorama of the end of the world. It's a tour de force, a dark and intensely contemporary vision. Through February 29. 1502 Alabama, 713-529-6900. — KK

"Agustina Nuñez: Little Polymorphous" A quick once-around of this mural by Argentine artist Agustina Nuñez won't unlock its mysteries. A brief glimpse only reveals the apparent: scenes of playing children scattered among misshapen human appendages and animals. Sometimes the body parts and creatures coalesce, as in a twisted, hairy hand sprouting a dog's head off the forearm. There's a large child's head sporting a kind of grotesque mustache, an old baby carriage with a tree growing out of it, and a freakish, floating man/boy wearing oversize boxing gloves. Using acrylic on white walls, Nuñez creates figures that look like uncolored pictures in a coloring book, while some look as if they were made with a stencil. From a certain distance, the acrylic almost resembles colored vinyl, an effect that Nuñez purposely attempted. Eventually, a theme of childhood innocence lost begins to emerge. The animals, mostly dogs, take on a predatory nature. A cartoon elephant hovers over a seesaw ridden by six children, and with this touch, the "elephant in the room" materializes; danger looms large over fleeting youth. Through February 23. DiverseWorks, 1117 East Fwy., 713-223-4608. — TS

"Flicker Fusion" Fans of independent film and animation should hurry to DiverseWorks to experience this treat of an exhibition. The name "Flicker Fusion" refers to the visual fusion produced by a continuous flow of video frames; the show loops through a 12-video cycle presented at seven viewing stations. As one enters, the cacophonous sound produced by the simultaneous screenings is a little daunting, but later, the churning noise adds an interesting layer to the show as a whole. Among the works on view are Houston artist Wendy Wagner's The Eternity of a Second, an ethereal narrative involving characters from her paintings, rendered in computer flash animation; Brent Green's Hadacol Christmas, which imagines the origin of Christmas as a cough syrup-induced rampage by a bony, withered Santa; Federico Solmi's King Kong, a crude yet outrageous drawing animation that takes the iconic movie monster and transforms him into a lumbering pop-culture critic; Lars Arrhenius's The Street, an amusing microcosm of monotony featuring a night-and-day cross-section of urban life populated by pictograph people (like the ones on public information signs); and Martha Colburn's Meet Me in Wichita, a stop-motion work that melds photography, painting and mixed media into a muscular, transfixing mixture of movie mythology and American foreign policy. Hands down the most entertaining video is Ich Bin Ein Manipulator by Wright & Rojas. Fashion and advertising get skewered and manipulated in this elaborate excuse to destroy magazines. "Flicker Fusion" is a fantastic buffet of powerful and curious animation. Through February 23. DiverseWorks, 1117 East Fwy., 713-223-8346. — TS