Todd Murphy’s pieces are striking for several reasons, including their scale—a third of the works in this show are of imposing proportions (around 10 by 12 feet). Murphy’s imagistic vocabulary of undefined symbols afloat in an open-ended syntax may or may not be intended as narrative. In various combinations, the works feature: geese; chandeliers; a wind-up toy duck; faceless figures in voluminous dresses; a boxer in long underwear, dukes raised, standing on a brocade chair; another figure, its face hidden from the viewer, standing on an ornate chair shouldering a small old-fashioned airplane;

The world within Tom Knechtel’s drawings and paintings consists of two principle elements: animals and sex. Under that potent big top the material expands and divides in a carnival of raging extremes—psychogiddy riffs on fairy-tale and childrens’ book illustration; the flexibility and beauty of paint; the disruption of composition; and decoration frenzy. Knechtel’s pictures detail the extravagant inner-workings of the body, animal and human, to the point where the artist becomes a dandyish vivisectionist who presents a strong visual spiel about individuality, solitude, and teeming feelings of