"Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge Part 2, Daniel Arsham": MoCA's much-ballyhooed salute to the avant choreographer culminates with a turbo-charged bang at its Wynwood annex space. This exhibit focuses on Merce Cunningham's eyeSpace, a collaboration with Miami artist Daniel Arsham and composer Daniel Berman, which premiered at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts this past February. The set Arsham designed for eyeSpace anchors the show. In ODE/EON, Arsham used forced perspective to create a set resembling the façade of an art deco movie theater, with the top half suspended overhead and the lower section crashing through the stage. A huge neon marquee rips like a steamer's prow through a wall. Arsham has also recreated the performance's lighting in the space for dramatic effect and included a series of gouache on mylar studies inspired by his tête-à-têtes with Merce during the legend's South Florida debut. The electronic soundtrack of Berman's score, Long Throw, pierces the air, adding a haunting note to the affair. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through June 23. MoCA at the Goldman Warehouse, 404 NW 26th St., Miami. Call 305-893-6211, or visit www.mocanomi.org.
"You've got to trust space": Video artist Natalia Benedetti's work is just one part of Dr. Arturo Mosquera's Art @ Work project, in which the orthodontist showcases the work of local artists at his office in West Dade. Near the office entrance, check out Perfume, a video piece in which a veil of mist detonates over what appears to be the bottom of a copper pot. As the fountain catches the light like a Fourth of July sparkler, the sweet scent of lavender from an atomizer freshens the air. In Everything in Between, colorful grains of rice appear to magically fall from the sky atop a metal surface filling the screen and ricocheting off as they produce the sound of a tinny drum. The green, yellow, blue, and pink candylike bits fly about the screen like salmon swimming upstream until a hand appears to clear the mound in a clean sweep. On a small DVD monitor tucked in the far lobby corner, The Sun and the Moon captures incandescent drops of water as they accumulate on a pane of glass. The light illuminating the rising steam from behind gives the impression of a canopy of stars under the night sky. Next to the monitor, the artist has drawn a pair of disembodied hands with graphite right onto the wall, which appear to hover in space in a prayerful pose. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through June 30. Art @ Work, 1245 SW 87th Ave., Miami. 305-264-3355.
"New Paintings": In Victor Payares's paintings, abstract and figurative elements collide in whimsical, almost hallucinatory ways. Mangled cartoon trees, flaming boxcars, scooters, and pickup trucks pinwheel across a blazing sunflower yellow field. A spaceship and a skier bubble up in acid green and hot Pepto Bismal pink swirls. Helicopter gunships battle in a fog inside a room of an old house. A piano made of bricks explodes while a family bleeds on the floor. The people, creatures, and machines in his large-scale canvases seem to defy gravity, or appear on the verge of hurtling off the world's edge. Black Cloud, the largest work in the show and nearly the size of a garage door, is awash in tarry black paint, suggesting deep space in which cotton candy nebulas shoot lightning bolts and a toy robot hitches a ride atop a car crumpled like a beer can. The artist's paintings oscillate with energy and narrative possibility, reflecting a remarkably inventive mind and a world where the laws of physics are twisted beyond belief. Even more impressive is the fact that the artist is only 21 years old, and half of the works on exhibit were snapped up by collectors during his solo debut. — Carlos Suarez De Jesus Through July 12. Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, 2441 NW Second Ave., Miami. 305-573-1333; www.artnet.com/reitzel.html.
