Various frames of reference, from art history to fashion, theater to architecture, feminism to science fiction, structured Klára Hosnedlová’s refreshing exhibition “Nest,” all contributing to an overall sense of the gallery’s transformation into a retro-futuristic, period-drama, high-fashion stage set. One way to think through the composition of the show was to take a hint from Hosnedlová’s embroidered “paintings” (all works Untitled, from the series Nest, 2020). Several depicted people using a magnifying glass to enlarge details—a fingernail being cleaned with a sharp metal implement, say, or

If you encountered Esteban Jefferson’s paintings in Paris, in the Petit Palais, whose rotunda provides the setting for the scenes depicted in the five canvases in the New York–based artist’s recent show “Petit Palais”—you’d likely think them uncompleted, and to some extent you’d be right. In Entrée, 2020, for example, we can discern the museum’s ticket desk, employees behind it, and guests ascending a short staircase into the halls. But all of this appears only in the form of ghostly penciled outlines on brown-stained linen, the only element fully and attentively painted being a marble bust,