Art spotlights: 'Lifelike,' 'Stand Out Prints' and Robert Polidori

'Lifelike'

Opens Friday night 2/24: It's, like, life. Walker Art Center's new in-depth show explores the visual, conceptual and psychological terrain of art masquerading as the real deal. Is Ai Weiwei's jar packed with sunflower seeds actually hand-painted cast porcelain? Yes. Isn't Vija Celmins' "Eraser" just like the wedgy Pink Pearl Faber eraser on my desk? No. And don't sneak a kick at Jud Nelson's "Hefty 2-Ply," a stuffed-to-the-gills garbage bag twin, because it's marble. Antiquity aside, the Western World spent 1,600 years perfecting the idea of realism in art, only to let it slip-slide away into total abstraction by the early 20th century. Through 90-plus works from the 1960s to the present day, ranging from the real to the surreal, "Lifelike" proves that realism's pulse is vital while posing big questions about what it means to be real. But really, does this art cast a reflection?

STAND OUT PRINTS 2012

Opens Friday 2/24: National in reach and an aesthetic barometer for the vitality of the contemporary print world, Highpoint Center for Printmaking's new juried exhibition is slated to become a biennial competition. This first edition was deluged by nearly 800 entries, submitted by 276 printmakers from 42 states -- a tribute to Highpoint's national reputation. Jurors Susan Inglett, director of New York's I.C. Editions, and Mark Pascale, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, selected works by 51 artists that demonstrate a varied approach to subject matter, themes, scale and print processes. It's all there, from the traditional to the experimental, the expected to the provocative. Happily, 10 Minnesota printmakers are part of the compelling artist roster, including James Boyd Brent, Bernice Ficek-Swenson, KimyiBo and Jeremy Lund.

ROBERT POLIDORI: WORLD INVENTORY

Just opened: A go-to snakebite cocktail for winter wanderlust, these 18 large-scale photographs seduce with unconventional locations, whether it is a spare, modernist garage in Southern California or a theatrical lineup of midcentury apartment buildings in Havana. Obsessive detail competes with jewel-toned color in Polidori's "Historical Revisionism" series, which documents with a critical, sometimes humorous eye the restoration of the Palace of Versailles. (Steidl has just published a three-volume boxed set on Polidori's 25-year project.) If France, Cuba and California are too tame, the acclaimed French Canadian photographer presents idiosyncratic views of Bahrain, Beirut, Shanghai, New York City and Chicago, all laced with a luminescent light that hits consistently behind the eyeballs. The gallery is also premiering images of Michelangelo's "David," a project it commissioned in 2005. Once again Polidori teaches us how to see.