"Interactive Random Chromatic Experience" Carlos Cruz-Diez, the grand master of optically kinetic art, is presenting his paintings/ constructions, the results of decades of optical experiments. He utilizes the optical flicker that happens when slender parallel lines of color radiate against each other, separating sections of lines with slender strips of tinted Plexiglas or thin painted strips of aluminum that stick out from the surface at a right angle. As the viewer moves, the painting shifts, causing the color to further flicker and creating a staccato effect on the eyes. Physichromie No. 2378 (1998) is almost 18 feet long, and as you walk past it, geometric forms appear and disappear. The painting moves from yellows and pinks to greens and blues. Another work, Physichromie No. 2364 (1996), appears yellow and black when seen from the left, and orange and black from the right. These paintings reach out and grab your retinas, whether you want them to or not. There's no way they can be experienced passively. And they can't recede into the background. You just want to wrap yourself in the works, surrounding yourself with optical sensation. Cruz-Diez is also making art digitally, a medium many artists who are decades younger find daunting. He's designed a program that "invites visitors to delve into his chromatic research and vibrational discoveries." You can select from a library of forms, colors and effects to create your own work. A time limit had to be added to the program at a previous exhibition -- people became so engrossed in constructing images that they refused to share the computer. Through April 30 at Sicardi Gallery, 2246 Richmond, 713-529-1313.
"Jacob Hashimoto: Superabundant Atmosphere" Jacob Hashimoto has filled Rice Gallery with thousands of kites for his phenomenal installation there. They aren't the kind you flew as a kid -- they're little elliptical ones made of pale silk stretched across a bamboo frame with crosspieces. Hashimoto strung the gallery ceiling with taut parallel lines of wire and hung the kites from them by slender black threads. With 9,000 kites -- that means tying 18,000 knots -- the artist and the Rice Gallery installation team must all have carpal tunnel syndrome. But the effect is fantastic. The kites are hung at varying heights, starting low in the back of the gallery and undulating up to the ceiling, moving back and forth with the air. The result is elegant and ethereal, like walking into a cumulus cloud. You just want to haul a mattress in and go to sleep under it. Through April 17. 6100 Main, 713-348-6069.
"Perspectives 145: Bodys Isek Kingelez" Bodys Isek Kingelez has designed a fantastic new world downstairs at the CAMH -- and he wouldn't hesitate to tell you so. In fact, he might add a couple more superlatives to the description. The Congolese artist, who in a video says people think of him as a "small god," makes over-the-top architectural models from paper, cardboard and found objects. Beautifully and crisply executed, they point the way to a fabulous new world, a utopia of the artist's own design. But Kingelez's hyperbole and egomania kind of fit. After all, what would you expect from someone who wants to remake the world? And somebody ought to give him a shot at it, large-scale. His Aeromode is pink, yellow and gray, with curving, arcing forms, and it's way cooler than any air terminal anywhere. Kingelez's designs look like the master-planned city of Brasilia on steroids, cut with art deco and sprinkled with a dash of Dr. Seuss. Through May 1 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250.
"Thomas Deyle" On panels of frosted Plexiglas, Thomas Deyle rolls 600 impossibly thin layers of the same color. The acrylic is highly diluted so the pigment slowly accumulates. At the end of the hundreds of coats, the center has a mass of dense, rich color that dissolves into edges that seem to have only fine flecks of pigment. The effect is one of free-floating color set against the pristine white of the gallery walls. The Plexiglas supports disappear, and the viewer is left with these mists of cadmium orange, pale yellow, lush aqua... Scarabaeus No. 5 (2002) is the largest of the series. A mass of deep cobalt floats on a six-foot square of Plexiglas. It feels otherworldly, like a digital special effect inserted into the real world. There's no definite edge to it, but your eye seems to continuously search for one, creating an optical buzz that charges the color. The work isn't about monochromatic color on a surface, it's about the color itself and its inherent richness and sensuality. Deyle has embarked upon a labor-intensive quest for pure color. Through April 24 at Gallery Sonja Roesch, 2309 Caroline, 713-659-5425.
