Maximilian Toth, one of the latest hotshots to come out of Yale's MFA program, shows a single enormous painting this month at Franklin Art Works. "The Insurgents" is a black canvas spanning an entire gallery wall, stretching 12 feet tall and 42 feet wide. Because of its size, only part of the image has been released in advance, but it's enough to send the brain churning with curiosity. Reminiscent of a blackboard sketch, Toth's ghostly chalk lines curve and crisscross like tangles of fishing line to illustrate the form of a man lying in a hospital bed. A glowing red stain burns in his trachea like a mechanical larynx or a spreading strep infection. The strategic flashes of color and the mysterious title send an ominous mood through the painting. But one can never jump to conclusions with Toth's subject matter, which has ranged from youths toilet-papering a house to a couple engaged in sexual acts of bondage. (Free opening reception 6-8 p.m. Friday 04/11.)

Thomas Barry Fine Arts is Minneapolis' unofficial archive of abstract painting. Bunkered below street level in a Warehouse District building, the gallery devotes itself exclusively to painted maps of the subconscious, and its subterranean location seems perfectly suited to the buried psychological environments it catalogs. The setting is ideal for local painter Glenn Grafelman. In his oversized paintings (some are as tall as 7 feet) Grafelman overlaps layers of unstructured color to create a subliminal fog, and then cuts through the abstraction with a clean stroke of geometry. In "Attis," a broad white check mark strains over a murky background, its pointed joint about to snap like a wishbone. The urgent tension of the check mark contrasts with the contemplative backdrop, adding just a touch of drama to an otherwise passive scene. (Free opening reception with the artist, 5-8 p.m. Saturday 04/12.)