“The Cleft and Shimmering Hour” includes recent photographs and video work by Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg. In A Study for a Character, McCaw and Budsberg display photographs of an installation they built for the Chipstone Foundation’s “Museum of Rooms,” a 2014 project for which rooms in the Foundation’s carriage house were offered as installation spaces for four Milwaukee artists. McCaw and Budsberg’s room was conceived as a reflection of the interior life of a character for a short film they were creating and, as such, provides occasion to reflect on the way that our personal spaces are exhibitions of our identities. Other works to be displayed by McCaw and Budsberg include photographs that challenge our conventional perception of the picture frame as the border between “art” and “reality.”
“Ideal State” collects watercolors of Wisconsin landscapes by Robert Lahmann (1923-2014). Graduating from Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art in 1949, Lahmann jobbed around before settling at the Milwaukee Electric Tool Company where he worked for 20 years. Before clocking in for his second-shift stint amid man-made machines, Lahmann would drive into the country for a few peaceful hours of landscape painting. This routine yielded peaceful studies of afternoon light in rural Wisconsin.
An opening reception will be held 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13. The exhibitions run through March 26.
“Film Noir and Technicolor Characters”
Timothy Cobb Fine Arts
207 E. Buffalo St.
The cinematic chiaroscuro of film noir and the exuberant hues of Technicolor lend themselves well to the painter’s palette. “Film Noir and Technicolor Characters,” at Timothy Cobb Fine Arts, Jan. 13 through Feb. 3, finds six local artists inspired by the two motion picture movements. Jeff Darrow, whose paintings try to capture the stillness of life in rural America, limns a sultry glance by Lauren Bacall. Colleen Kassner contributes a vivid portrait of a swashbuckling Don Giovanni Wannabe.
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“The Biennial Kenosha and Racine Invitational Show”
H.F. Johnson Gallery of Art
2001 Alford Park Drive
Every other year, the Biennial Kenosha and Racine Invitational Show exhibits representative works from both emerging and established local artists. Twenty-eight artists have contributed to this year’s iteration, which features an opening reception 4:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12. The Biennial surveys the variety of media in vogue with local artists and is a rare opportunity to see a cross-section of contemporary Milwaukee-area art in one fell swoop.
