Art Capsule Reviews

Newrotic: Experiments in Eroticism With new gallery director Luis Garcia in place, the Vault has gathered paintings of women resembling Tank Girl, airbrushed hip-hop portraits and girls who look straight out of manga. But one person's Playboy centerfold is another's unsexy nightmare. Accordingly, the works in this group show are a bit of a sensual smorgasbord — what one viewer finds titillating, another might find mundane. Adrian Halpern's delicate, disjointed figures (a screaming girl wields a sword in one hand; her other arm is a fish, her legs a mass of snakes) are set next to a series of photographs called "Mine Is Bigger Than Yours" in which Beanie Babies are placed in provocative positions with ... mushrooms. The piece that provoked the most laughter on opening night involves Ronald McDonald proclaiming "I'm loving it" as a woman, naked but for thigh-high stockings and a corset around her midsection, goes down on his Big Mac. We'll skip the joke about supersizing it. Through Nov. 24 at the Vault Gallery at Leedy-Voulkos, 2012 Baltimore, 816-405-3562. (R.B.)

Larry Schwarm: Rites of Renewal Larry Schwarm obsessively photographs immense prairie fires. His horizons glow, and flames appear to leap off the prints. Either nature has a keen eye for composition and graciously sets up all kinds of beautiful shots, or Schwarm — an artist and not, say, a firefighter — knows instinctively how to position himself relative to a fast-moving fire so that he catches mind-blowing moments where everything's lined up just so. All this, and he still makes it out safely with his rolls of film. Some of the photographs are blurry from the smoke and look unreal, like watercolors. Others, taken from a greater distance, look almost too real to believe — a tree glows a strange golden brownish orange from the light of an off-camera flame that also renders the grass a hazy shade of purple — because they're the kinds of things that most of us expect not to see without being in extreme danger. To stand back in awe without having to be afraid is a privilege. Through Oct. 22 at the Sherry Leedy Gallery, 2004 Baltimore, 816-221-2626. (G.K.)