FRIDAY: 'Where the Sky Meets the Earth'
Like many traditional fableists, Kelly Connole chooses rabbits to convey her narratives. Only her stories don't unfold on a page. In fact, they don't unfold at all. Connole's rabbits -- oversized and deftly detailed ceramic sculptures -- languish in a state of permanent interruption, frozen still and silent in Augsburg College's Christensen Center Art Gallery. She has bestowed each of her 38 creatures -- one corresponding to each year of the artist's life -- with human hands, a psychological pose and an expression of dreadful uncertainty. The pathos deepens with a trick of lighting: As dark crow shadows sweep across the rabbits' backs and the gallery floor, the flitting movements make the rabbits' stillness eerier. There's a lesson here somewhere, though it may be a dark one. (Artist reception 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday 02/29, free.)
SATURDAY: Tiit Raid: New Paintings
When it comes to abstract painting, orientation matters. Hang a work upside down, and that cone of color symbolizing heavenly ascent suddenly becomes a doom-slickened downward spiral. Artist Tiit Raid knows this, and, in his clever new show he studies how wall arrangement can transform the way his paintings are perceived. While his technique is not abstract, his subjects are. Raid paints blurry reflections of farmhouses and bridges that appear in a lake surface outside his Wisconsin studio. Although each painting has a horizontal format, Raid stacks them one above another on 4-foot-tall vertical panels, like progressive images on a film strip. Each image features the same subject, but with a liminal shift in position, as the water ripples through the reflection. The effect is massively disorienting. Not only can we no longer tell if the lakeshore is on top or bottom, our eyes can't decide whether to move up the column or down it. (Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Saturday 03/01, free. Exhibit through April 5. Thomas Barry Gallery.)
