"Altered Angles: George Grochocki & Shayne Murphy" Two very different painters are having their work shown at the sleek Anya Tish Gallery — both take chances, and are courageous. George Grochocki seems minimalist but gives a lot, relying on three-dimensional shaping and the wit of almost-hidden color accents to add drama. All Quantities are Straight Unity is all white and has two vertical pillars, each with four varying recesses. This could be a maquette for a futuristic apartment house, or for an IKEA bookcase to house computers that will one day dominate us with elegance of design. His color accents come into play in Pluralities of the Plane Fall into the Unity of Shape, white with some black, where a small panel of pale gold color seems to want to escape a confining structure. Shayne Murphy has two paintings suggesting action figures from a graphic novel. Their titles, Blight and Calamity, hint at deeper meanings, which escape me, but I admired their vivid vigor. Remains of a Grimace has an air of mystery, purple globules piled behind restricting fragmented walls. St. Helena's Discotheque is my favorite, a building and its sidewalk floating mid-air like a figment of the imagination, but detailed in its depiction of trees and their shadows, with large blue vanes on a seemingly authentic roof — the vanes are yellow and purple on the edges. There is a solitary walking male figure who's wearing a shirt emblazoned with what I took to be the flag of Italy, with green, white and red vertical stripes. The work reveals the richness of Murphy's imagination, his dexterity and a cheerful outlook devoutly to be encouraged. Through August 15. 4411 Montrose, 713-524-2299, anyatishgallery.com. — JJT
The Beat'n Trail It's wonderful to enter a gallery and be struck immediately by a powerful work, my experience with an exhibition of Texas artists at the Alliance Gallery of the Houston Arts Alliance. The striking visual is a sculpture by Katie Pell titled Charming Are Your Unformed Wishes, a number of large wooden links, some curled on the floor, others interlocking and rising to the ceiling, to be continued even there. It was inspired by a family heirloom, a locket, and it gains enormously by its size. The wood is warm, making the links an ornament instead of a chain, and its immensity suggests a generosity of spirit and a richly expansive personality. George Zupp has a fabulous sense of humor that carries through into his art. He has a large wooden sculpture of a man in a casket, rough-hewn and open at the top to show the man's zombie-like face. It is also open below the waist to permit a large wooden column to protrude upward, unrealistically large, with a hatchet buried in its top. The work is titled, appropriately, The Last Woody, and has the primitive strength of folk art. Zupp has created a continuing character, a chimp, and the portrait of it here is titled Jolly Chimp, though the lettering over its head reads "Fail." The chimp is holding clashing cymbals, and has a wide-eyed air of rapt attention, as though trying to figure out a concept beyond its capacity to grasp. Zupp has several other works here as well, priced modestly. Other artists showing are Kenny Lantz, Steve Neves, Vachu Chilakamarri and Meredith "Butch" Jack. Through August 29. 3201 Allen Parkway, Suite 125, 713-581-6120, houstonartsalliance.com. — JJT