"Dan Kopp: TIMEAWAY" and "Josh Bernstein: Galveston" The two artists in this dual show deliver wildly different sets of work, in content, tone and methodology. Brooklyn-based Dan Kopp's colorful abstracts are puzzles of technique and material, layers of acrylic and urethane on fiberboard panels that seem almost like organic matter that's been sanded to reveal its mineral components. And yet, it's also imagery (when it wants to be, like the bizarre and angular creature clutching a little black device in Fucking Phone). It's obvious this work requires deep focus and skill, a solitary exertion. Josh Bernstein's collage and photographic works are more narratively outgoing. According to Bryan Miller Gallery, Bernstein is riffing on the adventures of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca on the Texas Gulf Coast. He includes maps of the area, cut and manipulated on Plexiglas, as well as photographs featuring himself, wearing wacky masks and helmets, taken at locations on Galveston Island. The result is a juxtaposition of past and present, a time-travelling comment on myth, conquest and alienation. Through August 13. Bryan Miller Gallery, 3907 Main, 713-523-2875. – TS
"Hayden Fosdick: Paper Compounds" Hayden Fosdick's small, minimalist collage works feel right at home on the walls of downtown urban boutique The Tipping Point. The little cut-and-paste jobs, utilizing imagery and paper from a collection of old books the artist inherited from his late father, look like tiny wheat-paste street-art works. Most contain only two or three image components, combined to create a simple yet visually compelling hybrid. Fosdick slips up occasionally, but only because he tries, perhaps, to keep it simple, and some of his juxtapositions lack an organic connection. In other words, some pieces feel unfinished. But there's much to enjoy in this show, like an ear inserted into an incomplete female face, where the earlobe is transformed into the end of a stuck-out tongue; and one in which the upper torso of a woman doing a workout routine springs from the funnel of a tornado. Another plus: The price is right. Most of these pieces can be bought for $150-$200, just a shade more expensive than that cool pair of PUMA high-tops on the shelf. Through October 15. 1212 Main, 713-655-0443. — TS
Marc Swanson: The Second Story This exhibit's title, "The Second Story," suggests that there was indeed a first story, a previous narrative — that this show is in effect a sequel. Or it references a San Francisco gay bar by the same name. Both are true. Viewers familiar with the artist Marc Swanson who are clued in to his gay-culture (specifically ball culture) references, may walk away from the show smugly satisfied, feeling as if they'd received a secret message. But the work is also enjoyable as a series of contemporary memorials: the "second story" of a life. Immediately visible upon entrance is a turtle shell encrusted with rhinestones (Swanson is known for his taxidermied deer heads covered in crystals), a reference to a character in the 19th-century novel Against Nature, who sets gemstones in his pet tortoise's shell, and the extra weight kills the animal. Other works are arrangements of items, chains, fabric and photos, boxed and hung like shrines. One piece is a kind of stacked totem displaying a man's portrait; it includes a little shelf where you might place a candle. Overall the show comes off as a highly personal set of works, and viewers' personal histories will determine the degree to which its symbolic content connects. But even without a reference library, the show emits a strong emotional charge. Through October 9, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250. — TS
"Mitch Dobrowner: New Work" If you've ever felt the eerie calm before a funnel cloud ravages a row of houses just a block away, or braced yourself while the offshore hurricane creeps toward landfall, you'll appreciate the new batch of spectacular photographs by Mitch Dobrowner currently on display at John Cleary Gallery. Dobrowner's hero is Ansel Adams, and he photographs a lot of mountain scenes in the Southwest and California. It's pretty stuff — placid, contemplative. But Dobrowner's storm photography is even better for its sense of action and impending violence. He captures mythological cloud formations in Tornado Alley, some resembling the special-effects storms caused by the mother ships in alien-invasion movies. Dobrowner's low horizon line in a photo like Arm of God, Galacia, Kansas characterizes the storm as a supernatural entity. It isn't a new idea. The hokey movie Twister used that "finger of God" language too, but Dobrowner's distance from his storm subjects suggests a more stark and sober mood than the adrenaline-fueled hysteria of a storm chaser. For Dobrowner, the swirling wind and danger is far away. For now, we're safe. But for how long? One photo, Monsoon, Lordsburg, New Mexico, captures a storm in the shape of a mushroom cloud, as if nature is mimicking human destruction, building up enough strength to blow us away. Through August 31. 2635 Colquitt, 713-524-5070. — TS
"R.W. Northcutt: Indigenous Genius" This exhibit comes off as an elaborate joke, as well as an intellectual treatise on the natural world's influence on building and sculpture. As a result, it's a little too busy being clever for one to completely enjoy the joke or the art. All of the "artifacts" on display come from the private collection of R.W. Northcutt, an Ohio-based professor of woodworking. Northcutt also includes a series of drawings he executed himself. Northcutt's own works are the most successful artistically, like his graph of the highly technological, unseen supports underneath beavers' dams (it's funny). But much of his "collection" relies too heavily on background story that stretches the truth pretty far, like the displayed wooden shoes made by a collaboration of woodpeckers and beavers. The collective moral of Northcutt's stories is that man has much to learn from animals that build, and we should avoid and avert our antagonism to them, which could possibly result in breaking down the human-animal communication barrier (and assure the survival of our wooden furniture). It's certainly a valuable lesson. But Northcutt's tongue-in-cheek, believe-it-or-not tales make this exhibit as much about the collector/artist's own pretensions and stunts as the content and themes posed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing — big ups to Northcutt for displaying not one but two sex toys. Yes, there is an actual "wood pecker" on display. We challenge you to find the other one. Hint: Don't think "beaver"; think "butthole." Through August 26. Art League Houston, 1953 Montrose, 713-523-9530. — TS
