"Nice. Luc Tuymans" With "Nice. Luc Tuymans," the painter of the same name uses his enduring style — realism — in portraiture. Tuymans has been painting portraits of himself, family members and public figures since the start of his career in the 1970s, but these are no ordinary faces. With the famous figures particularly, Tuymans uses his oils to re-examine feelings about these people. He muddies greens into colors of puce and washes out blacks into gray-scale hues, the combination of which leaves an ambivalent or even negative feeling about the person being portrayed. The Heritage VI (1996) takes a photograph of late white supremacist Joseph Milteer, whose name was tossed around in connection the JFK assassination, and turns it into a black-and-gray portrait adding Tuymans's signature ghoulish green tint to the oil-on-canvas remake of the original black-and-white photograph. He does the same with a picture of Condoleezza Rice (The Secretary of State 2005), his blurry oils turning her signature scowl into a mush-mouthed, mismatched miasma of drab colors. Brown oil pools into the corners of her squinted eyes, and her notable red lips are painted in a burnished burgundy shade. Milteer's portrait provides a wide politician's smile in comparison to Rice's, whose lips are slightly parted, barely letting through her other notable feature, her gap. Iphone (2008) is a self-portrait of Tuymans, drawn to turn him into a smudge, made so by the flash of the camera. Thus, he is nothing more than an outline of a man in a hat. As with a person you pass on the street, his facial features are not visible. With his ease at making the features of the other characters so visible and his not, is he removing critique of himself from the viewer? Through January 5. The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross, 713-524-9400. — AO

"São Paulo 2013" The art world is currently experiencing an outpouring of multi-venue, multi-person exhibitions of 50 pieces or more. By comparison, John Palmer's 11-piece "São Paulo 2013" series seems tame. But the amount of work that went into creating the exhibition outweighs all the others. Every year, Palmer chooses a destination to visit, and, having returned, produces a body of work based on that visit that he exhibits in his gallery, the self-named John Palmer Fine Art Gallery & Studio. This year, Palmer traveled to São Paulo, Brazil. He decided on his destination based on an essay contest in which entrants were "to select from one of ten types of emotions and describe how that emotion you selected would be the best one to influence John's next international series," according to Ryan Lindsay, co-owner of the gallery. The winner was Julio Montano, whose essay conceptualized the emotion of surprise. Palmer chose to integrate the element of surprise into the entire exhibit, and instead of announcing his trip to São Paulo, told friends, family and collectors that he was headed to Shanghai, China. He didn't land in Shanghai, of course. With the help of Flavia Liz Di Paolo, an aptly named tour guide, Palmer and Lindsay embarked on four days in São Paulo, immersing themselves in the city's culture, geography and museums — even in an instance of political unrest, which they witnessed during a walking tour through the city's back streets. A mural of a bird stood out to him; ironically, Palmer's nickname is "Birdy." Thus, a black-and-white bird — representing freedom — became the second theme of the series. There are three other elements that tie each of Palmer's series to the others: intense color, photography and abstraction. Remarkably, no matter how many times they are repeated, these controlled variables never become stale in Palmer's pieces. São Paulo 2013 No. 4 (still for sale) makes use of all five themes — surprise, freedom, color, photography and abstraction. Most notable among them is the surprise that pops out in this piece: a picture of Palmer, Di Paolo and an unnamed gentleman next to another photograph of a city hall building and a bridge. All three pictures are touched up with colorful squiggles, giving the piece a light, free feeling. All 11 pieces are enclosed in a brick-red compartment titled Closed Box. This container is itself a work of art, as is Open Box, in which the red doors are flung open to reveal what's inside. What you get, ultimately, is not one piece of art but three. Surprise. 1218 Heights, 713-861-6726. — AO