"Olafur Eliasson: Photographs" Olafur Eliasson presents a world with a quietly powerful, contemplative and fascinating beauty. For his exhibition at the Menil Collection, he's taken photos of Iceland and grouped them in grids, creating series of images and recording his movements though landscape -- over a trail, down a river. He creates what are essentially portraits of the natural and man-made phenomena he explores: chunks of intensely blue glacial ice, boulders, broken stones, bridges. Portraits of rocks may sound boring as hell, but his carefully examined presentation makes them fascinating. Nature's incredible variety is a patently obvious concept, but Eliasson explores it without heavy-handedness. You go through the same process of discovery he did in taking his pictures, editing them and grouping them together. The path series (1999), a grid of 24 photographs, depicts lush green grass worn away to reveal rich, dark earth, footsteps embossed in a line in the snow, and a trail burnished into a desolate stony field. It's a record of different landscapes and a document of the artist's walk through his environment. And what a strange environment it is. In The moss valley series (2002), a grid of 16 large photographs records sections of rocky, moss-covered earth. The undulating carpets of dull green look like NASA shots of an alien landscape. They're beautiful and just a little bit creepy. The landscape series (1997) has some lovely images, but the scenic shots aren't as compelling because they're not as specific as his other investigations. Eliasson's work is at its best when parameters are more closely defined. Through September 5. 1515 Sul Ross, 713-525-9400.

"Perspectives 142: Boys Behaving Badly" Chloe Piene's short film about a boy in his undies, Little David, is projected onto a wall at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The boy tromps around in the grass, flailing about in an imaginary fight with an invisible adversary. "I'll squish 'em, I'll squish 'em, I'll squish 'em," he says, using words taken from letters written to the artist by an incarcerated pen pal. "I'm a barbarian." By slowing down the video and putting a murderer's words in her subject's mouth, Piene has shown us how all little boys can be demonic. The work is unique in the way it flip-flops a cliché: Rather than showing us how all murderers were once little boys, Piene has shown us how all little boys could be murderers. The CAMH's literature states that the exhibition "features work that explores the clichés, isms and myths surrounding adolescent male behavior." Too bad many of the other pieces -- like Jen DeNike's wrestling adolescents or Pia Schachter's death-metal guys with a sensitive side -- just wind up being cliché. On the other hand, with his obviously staged photos of skaters, knights, vikings and bullies, Olaf Bruening takes clichés and amplifies them to the level of parody. And Anthony Goicolea does an exceptional job exaggerating, and thus unmasking, typical clichés of male adolescence. In Porn, four clones of the artist himself hang out in a tackily rustic room, watching a kinky lesbo love scene on the television, eating Oreos and drinking beer. One of them signs a cast on the leg of another, writing things like "fart-head," "penis wrinkle," "fuck you" and, of course, "get well soon." Through September 12 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250.

"Round 20 Artist Installations" Project Row Houses has always been as much about community as art, so it's not surprising that the idea of community should run through most of its new exhibitions. For its decade-long existence, PRH has used art to advocate for Third Ward residents, working to reclaim and revitalize the neighborhood -- and helping to build the pride of place that's encouraged residents to resist developers who've tried to move in. All over the Third Ward, you can see signs warning that "The Third Ward is our home and it's not for sale." Six installations make up the current round, counting an ongoing workshop that's making mosaic-covered benches for the neighborhood (they're starting out with just four, but the plans are ambitious). The rest are by artists both local and national. One of them, Seed House, is part of a larger project three years in the making, an exhibition and landscaping plan for PRH and the neighborhood. The installation serves as something of a progress report, with a neighborhood model, a Big Book of Ideas, books hanging from the ceiling, copies of a field guide to the neighborhood and, in one corner, a domestic arrangement of chairs and tables. If some of Seed House seems a bit cutesy, it still effectively makes the case that a community will grow with planning and nurturing, not by letting developers do whatever the hell they want and hoping for the best. Through September 5. 2500 Holman, 713-526-7662.