John Snyder: HELLO
Opening Friday: Over the past quarter-century, artist John Snyder has dipped deep into American folk painting, pre-Renaissance Italian frescoes, arts-and-crafts porcelain, Hudson River landscapes, Buddhist cave painting and, most recently, African and Oceania imagery. From this heady stew of images and ideas he has concocted vast tableaux of allegorical figures caught up in enigmatic stories. Now settled near Decorah, Iowa, Snyder returns to Minneapolis for his first show in a decade, including woodcuts, drawings and paintings on new themes and moral conundrums. Nothing is simple or straightforward in his elaborate pictures, but their narrative power is always arresting. (Opening 6-9 p.m. Fri., free. Ends April 6. Noon-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Bockley Gallery, 2123 W. 21st St., Mpls., just west of Lake of the Isles near W. Franklin Av. 612-377-4669 or www.bockleygallery.com)
Mary Abbe
