"Calaveras Mexicanas: The Art and Influence of Jose Guadalupe Posada" The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, commemorates the 100th anniversary of Posada's death with an exhibition titled "Calavaveras Mexicanas: The Art and Influence of Jose Guadalupe Posada." The exhibit decorates the white walls between the lower-level staircase of MFAH's Caroline Wiess Law building. It is separated into three sections, looking to the viewer like an unfolded pamphlet. In the center are Posada's pieces, which include La Calavera Catrina, his "most iconic calaveras" and others, such as La Calavera Amorosa (The Skeleton of Love). Drawn in 1907, it was printed in a Mexican newspaper in 1911 as the principal image for a cartoon depicting the execution of two Guatemalan criminals who assassinated General Manuel Barillas. Posada's El doctor improvisado (The Improvised Doctor), hanging in the very center of the exhibit, tells a different story, albeit with the same outcome: a traveling doctor who comes across death. As a gesture of friendliness, the doctor offers the bony burier his coat; in return, Death gives the doctor the ability to know whether his patients will live or die. In the end, however, it's the doctor who dies. The expiration of both the murderers, who took life, and the doctor, expected to sustain life, makes clear that death is not a respecter of persons. It falls on the just and the unjust. The left and right sections of this wall "pamphlet" display the artists influenced by Posada's works. To Mexican-American artist Luis Jimenez, death is a dance. His Baile con la Talaca (Dance with Death) (1984) lithograph shows him in a lusty tango with La Catrina, while Self-Portrait (1996) shows the artist decomposing. That Self-Portrait was created after Baile is probably a coincidence, but it does help to illustrate the inevitable conclusion to being in death's clutches. Baile shows Jimenez and Lady Death as half-human and half-skeleton. They embrace each other, with Jimenez's hand grazing her ribs while her bony fingers clasp his head. Jimenez is also half-skeleton in the latter lithograph. He is not a completed calavera, but the process is under way, as his sagging, pockmarked flesh reveals bone underneath. Jimenez's eyes and lips are uncovered, revealing hollow eye sockets and an eerie grin. The image takes up the frame, forcing viewers to come close — and become entangled in death's permanent embrace. Posada's influence reached Texas, too. Jerry Bywaters, an American artist and native Texan, created a lithograph painting of a graveyard in Terlingua. This place, Mexican Graveyard-Terlingua, transforms every year during Dia de los Muertos, when residents of the city come to pay tribute to the dead. Through December 15. 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7300. — AO

"Funnel Tunnel" Clunky, streaked wood and wiry metal are the last things one would consider using to celebrate Art League Houston and the colorful Montrose neighborhood that surrounds it. Then again, talent is as talent does, and bare-bones as they may be, Patrick Renner's pieces are feats of size and color. Bounded Operator (2012) is a wall of windows glued together and filled with sand, rock and gravel, mingled with pieces of wood splashed in tie-dye, exchanging its windowpane aesthetic for a swirling metal one. The rainbow brightness of Wooddauber (2012) is one of many rainbow-colored chunks of wood from Renner's "Vestigial Structures" show exhibited last year at Avis Frank Gallery. The two pieces are combined to create "Funnel Tunnel," a metal-on-wood masterpiece so big that Art League publicly called on volunteers to help paint the wooden strips in the weeks before its opening. Before then, Renner could be seen blowtorching metal pieces together to create a wiry foundation for the wooden strips to attach to. It would, however, be inaccurate to describe "Funnel Tunnel" as skeletal. While other Renner pieces may come off as hollow, the wood and metal in "Funnel Tunnel" work together to create an artwork representative of the inclusive nature of the area around it. Those wooden strips? Painted in the hues of the rainbow, they very accurately represent the diverse people, businesses and culture of Montrose. The metal? Permanently melded together to hold the rainbow strips of wood, it represents the collectivity of this community. These materials create a 180-foot civic art sculpture seen whirling down the center of Montrose Boulevard. "Funnel Tunnel" will be on display in front of Art League Houston for the next nine months. 1953 Montrose, 713-523-9530. — AO

"Gary Komarin: The Bowman Sixpence Has Got to Have Soul" The first thing you notice about "Gary Komarin: The Bowman Sixpence Has Got to Have Soul," showing at Gremillion Fine Art & Co., is the absence of theme. There is no identifiable rhyme or reason to any of the paintings; each oil on canvas tells its own little story. Even the series of birthday cakes hanging between the canvases seem disconnected, random. However, a little bit of prodding reveals that the randomness is the theme. "The Bowman Sixpence" is an exhibit created by, of course, Gary Komarin, a New York artist who resides in Connecticut. Komarin graduated from University at Albany, State University of New York, followed by an MFA from Boston University. His curriculum vitae boasts more than 100 solo and group exhibitions in places from Houston to Zurich. With all the accolades Komarin has won, it's understandable that his current exhibition is so carefree; like a retired teacher who comes back to substitute when the mood strikes, Komarin can now paint what he wants, when he wants. Unburdened by the looming deadline of negative or positive reviews, he creates with childlike abandon, and so "The Bowman Sixpence" is the manifestation of this self-actualized freedom: a collection of cute, candy-colored abstract paintings on canvas and on paper. The colors of many of the pieces bowl you over as well. Ipso Facto in Orange with Black is a mixed-media of bright, bright orange with pockets of white blobs and black lines — a suitable Halloween decoration to go in a quirky billionaire's mansion. The Egyptian Hat Trick is another mixed-media on canvas. An assortment of blue, orange, purple and pink doodles saves a pretty dull white-and-gray background, like a shower of multicolored sprinkles livening up a plain sheet cake. Komarin further sweetens the exhibition with images of lovely layer cakes hanging alternately between the abstract paintings. This is one the kids can appreciate: These decadent treats are outlined in hot reds and pinks, inducing drools and pleas like "Can we get some when we get home...please?" Untitled (Green Cake on Pale Pink), a stacked confection outlined in lime green, is sure to be a mouthwatering crowd-pleaser. Through October 11. 2501 Sunset, 713-522-2701. — AO

"Kermit Oliver: Tracing Our Pilgrimage" The man's face looks aged and weathered. Accordionist is the last vocation you would pick for him, since his wrinkled hands relay the same signs of aging; still, he holds the instrument expertly, fingers lingering over keys the way a lover's graze soft flesh. However nimble and confident his fingers may be, it is his face that catches the eye. He wears an expression of fear, and it's not hard to see why: Behind him, a tiger's body is caught in mid-pounce. His left paw is raised, his claws, unsheathed. The success of Orpheus, a painting by Kermit Oliver, is its realism, created by the expert application of acrylic oil to canvas. The acrylic oil is applied in short downward strokes, creating vertical lines that imply movement. Acrylic oil is also put on in layers, one on top of the other, making the picture look wet. Because liquids are known for their fluidity, this technique also gives the painting kinetic movement. This is what makes the man look so tight, the tiger so taut, as if he (or she) may in fact bypass Orpheus altogether and jump out of the painting toward you. "Kermit Oliver: Tracing Our Pilgrimage" is an exhibition of 17 paintings — including Orpheus — taking up Art League Houston's front and hallway galleries. The works on display span 30 of his 40 years as a painter. Dido and Aeneas (1997) is split vertically into halves, with the left side portraying a black and bleak funeral procession. Not one to divert from the African-American lineage present in most of his paintings, Oliver paints the originally Carthaginian Dido as a black woman with long dreadlocks accessorized with golden beads. Her face has a ghostly pallor. Oliver's talent with oils is evident here also; whereas in Orpheus he made the oils wet, here he takes a wet substance and makes it look dry, like powder. Oliver is a native Texan and Texas Southern University graduate who, until a month ago, quietly sorted mail in a Waco post office. However, his Texas roots were not enough to inspire the famously reclusive painter to come to his own opening Friday evening. (Ironically, this elusiveness doesn't stop Oliver from designing a scarf every year for one of the world's most coveted couture brands, Hermès. Fancy, huh?) Despite this, Art League Houston not only exhibits Oliver, but honors him with its 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award — hermit factor notwithstanding. Through November 15. 1953 Montrose, 713-523-9530. — AO

"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

"Wols: Retrospective" Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze's art is like his personality was: nonconformist and uncompromising. Wols was a principal adopter of "Tachisme," an outgrowth of the "Art Informel" (art without form) movement. Wols's "formless art" is different from abstraction in that, even in the ruin, there is still the faint outline of an image. Wols's art was also ever-changing. Thanks to this restlessness, the German artist's catalog is a bevy of photographs, watercolors, oils and the occasional ink doodle. What a fortunate coincidence that Wols was one of Dominique de Menil's favorite artists; her expansive museum makes room for "Wols: Retrospective," an exhibition that takes up nearly the entire first floor. Starting with two big spaces, the exhibition disappears into smaller and smaller rooms. Turn right, and you come face to face with Wols's Tachisme paintings. Each of these oil-on-canvas works starts out as stains of one or two colors, with more and more color added toward the center, until in the middle, a smudged, abstract mess drips down the canvas. Careful observation reveals subtle images in the center of this pile of goo. Oiseau (Bird) is a picture of poultry; without the image of the bird, there would only be a green-stained background filled with a bevy of colors that looks like chicken (get it?) scratch. Turn left, and you enter a room filled with small- to medium-size watercolor, ink and gouache pieces. These are less polished than the oils, looking like something Wols scribbled down quickly while in art class. While the other pieces are a centripetal pull into a center of schizophrenic colors, these little works draw you in with ink markings. In a smaller adjacent room, the walls transition from white to blue. Washing the walls in baby blue encourages emotion as the viewer encounters the most personal pieces in the exhibition. The photographs in this room are of random odds and ends and of Wols himself. Self-Portrait (Wols grimacing) is a series of six photos that show Wols to be a funny, balding man with a heavy mustache and large, expressive eyes. Next to it, Untitled (Grety's Mouth) is a half-parted pair of lips, wet with either lipstick or spit. It's hard to tell which, since the photo is in black and white, and, with only a single name in the title and a monochromatic color scheme, it's difficult to discern if the subject is a man or a woman. The only tell is a crop of facial hairs sprouting from the upper lips, and even they are sparse enough to warrant confusion. These photos, however eyebrow-raising, are where the spirit of Wols truly resides. If the main rooms are where the viewer learns about Wols the artist, it is here, in this dark cove, that he or she learns about Wols the man. Through January 12, 2014. 1522 Sul Ross, 713-525-9400. — AO