Michael Queenland made his auspicious solo debut at Daniel Hug in 2004 with a series of enigmatic black-and-white photographs and a select assembly of tables and stacked pallets on which he arranged an idiosyncratic collection of books and images or displayed spare, haunted sculptures (in one, a small chopstick scaffold traps cobwebs and Styrofoam packing peanuts); he managed to escape the desultory by adhering to his gently severe aesthetic and unlocking the surprising auratic potential of his outwardly impoverished materials.

In his recent show “X X,” Queenland capitalized on his earlier stark

In his first solo show at Regen Projects since 2002, Berlin-based artist Manfred Pernice continued his ongoing formal investigation with a terraced installation of blocky sculptures. Eight discrete constructions, all titled exscape (all works 2006)—which also served as the name of the show—were arranged on several wedge-shaped planes demarcated by a gray vinyl mat and a raised platform covered in gray carpeting. An additional sculpture, titled ikebana 1, which effectively recalls the Japanese tradition of flower arranging with a twisted scrap-steel “bouquet” situated on a cylindrical base,

Beverly Semmes’s second solo exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery was billed as an homage to Annie Oakley. A photo of the markswoman staring down a barrel graced the show’s announcement, three of Semmes’s trademark dresses-as-sculpture sported exaggerated right arms, possibly alluding to Oakley’s trigger hand (though she was actually an ambidextrous shooter), and twelve crystal vessels subtly referenced the glass balls that Oakley was known for shooting as part of her act. But the muse who guided Semmes in the studio was still not too overweening a presence in the gallery, and this was all for

Violet Hopkins’s recent exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery consisted of five large-scale paintings on paper, the biggest over ten feet long and five feet high. The title of the show, “Chromatophoric,” refers to a kind of pigment-producing cell found in squid, many fish, and certain reptiles, which allows them to change hue when threatened or in the mood to mate. For Hopkins, the discovery of scientific evidence linking the biological generation of color to its function as an expression of an emotional state was a profound breakthrough, and its implications infuse her recent work.

Hopkins’s