Twin Cities' 5 must-see art shows this weekend

OPENING

Adriana Lara: No Angles

Opening reception: Saturday, May 12, 6-8 p.m.

Midway Contemporary Art (527 Second Avenue SE, Mpls)

Hours: Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m – 5 p.m.

Free.

Mexico City-based artist Adriana Lara, who is also known for her curatorial group Peros Negros, makes work that's often times drive by critique or research. In a NY exhibition a couple of years ago, she superimposed keyboard symbols -- !%@&* -- onto her face. Hopefully there will literally be NO ANGLES in any works for this new exhibition. Show runs through June 30.

Contemporary Cuba with Walker Curatorial Fellow Fabián Leyva-Barragán

Burnet Fine Art & Advisory (775 E Lake St. E., Wayzata)

Thursday, May 10 at 6:30 p.m.

Free

If you saw "Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950" at the Walker Art Center, you're already familiar with the work of Walker Curatorial Fellow Fabián Leyva-Barragán, who worked with former director Olga Viso on the exhibition. Tonight he will discuss the current exhibition at Burnet, which focuses on contemporary Cuban art from the 1980s to the present.

Opening reception: Friday, May 11, 7-10 p.m.

The White Page Gallery (3400 Cedar Ave S., Mpls)

To celebrate her two-month artist-in-residence at the White Page, Moncada presents her poetic new work. She received her BFA from MCAD in May 2016. "I've been thinking about the ground lately / Starting low, getting high / Head to toe / Forever coming home / To the ground," she writes in the press release. More about Linda here: https://cargocollective.com/lindamonlala. Exhibition runs through June 10.

Above: Shannon McElree, Ulf, 2017, Gesso on shellac on Masonite, 57.5 x 62 inches.

OPENING

Douglas Flanders & Associates (818 W Lake St, Mpls)

Opening reception: Sat., May 12, 6-9 p.m.

Two formalist-based Twin Cities painters who graduated from MCAD a generation apart – Meillier in 2013, McElree in 1994 – present new work at this Minneapolis mainstay gallery. The thing they have in common? Both are painting in only black-and-white. Talk about a lack of gray area.

Above: Jason Moran, STAGED: Three Deuces, 2015, Photo: Farzad Owrang © Jason Moran; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

ONGOING

Walker Art Center (725 Vineland Pl, Mpls.)

Hours: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Tues., Wed., Sun.; 11 a.m. - 9 p.m. Thurs.; 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Fri., Sat.; closed Mondays

Cost: $15 adults; $13 seniors (62+); $7.50 active military; $10

If you stay still and listen to the various soundtracks playing in Jason Moran's new exhibition at Walker Art Center, you'll hear a moment that's like the perfectly harmonious vibing frenzy of an improvised jazz concert. It happened for me while watching Glenn Ligon's "The Death of Tom" (2008), abstracted and blurry black-and-white film footage that reflects on America's history of racism. It is set to the 1905 song "Nobody," the signature theme of Bert Williams, vaudeville blackface performer and Broadway's first black star, as performed by Moran. This is just one of many films screening in Moran's refreshingly interdisciplinary solo show, which proves that no artist is confined to one medium — if they don't want to be, that is.

Better known as a jazz pianist, Moran has released eight albums with his trio the Bandwagon, scored the film "Selma," and worked on more than 30 albums as a sideman. Contemporary art entered the picture in 2005, when the Walker and two other arts institutions invited him to create music through residencies. That experience, and the resulting album "Artist in Residence," began his foray into the art world, and other jazz musicians have followed his lead.